Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Tue Dec 28, 2021 2:01 am

I just came across an interesting idiom from a Mexican show I'm watching.

"una probadita de su propia chocolate" which I figure is figuratively equivalent to "a taste of her/his/your own medicine"

In another Mexican show I've seen/read

"agua pasada" -> water under the bridge

I wonder how country-specific some of these sayings are. Are some well-known or universal to most of Latin America?

Regardless, it's interesting to hear some of these on shows, sometimes double check the Spanish subtitles, and intuit the English meaning.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Tue Dec 28, 2021 11:00 pm

So I know we're all a little crazy in the language learning community. But I just spent the last half hour of work (down-time, finished with paper work etc.) and hung out in the waiting room just doing my best to not be obvious about eavesdropping on a conversation between two Spanish speaking clients. I'd say I understood 85% (trying to grade yourself on the fly in listening to real world conversation is tricky). Masks don't help, neither does the sneaking suspicion that I'm suffering from gradual hearing loss at a rather young age. One of the two clients was harder to understand and the other was much clearer with her speech. Regardless, I count that as a mini-win for me.

It's interesting how we mark progress. Especially with something like language learning where the landmarks aren't always so clear. Part of me feels like I'm still in the same spot as when I started almost 2 years ago. Another part of me knows I've made progress. I know I said it in another post on my log but if only there was a way to capture the amount I understood when I started. It'd be fun to compare.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:45 am

Anki subs2srs is fun :shock:

I'd say I'm not really using Anki the way the purists do...and I don't care. I'm using it as an intensive listening/listening-reading (although only to single lines of dialogue/subtitle). Sure Audacity and Language Reactor may also fit the bill but I like using Anki in this way. I'm basically going to wear out the R key on my keyboard super fast. Lots of repeated listening to the audio clips. Examining the structure of the line and often times fixing the English subtitles.

I'm glad emk did his experiments with subs2srs and I'm glad I stumbled on his posts about it. I actually ordered Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien from Amazon, so now I'm really following what emk did. Although I'm approaching subs2srs with a decent base in Spanish and if I recall correctly he started from zero (but with a good French level under his belt).
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:41 am

Binge watched a Mexican show over the holidays with no subtitles (except for an occasional spot-check here and there) and understood most of it. Just started another Mexican show and there are lots of scenes where I need to rewatch and then rewatch with subtitles and then sometimes again with English subtitles (usually because of unfamiliar vocab).

It's a little frustrating but I'm slowly accepting the ebb and flow of listening comprehension when it comes to media and "in the wild". But I hope what will happen over time, as I continue to log hours of input, is that maybe all I'll need is intensive listening of an episode or two before extensively watching the rest of a series and the comprehension issues will be far less than before. Or perhaps there will always be a "warm-up" period where it takes a few episodes before you start to be comfortable with the rhythms of the way the characters in a show speak.

Also, just as a little experiment, I've tried watching short stretches of other shows with English subtitles while focusing on what is being said in Spanish. I think for a total beginner this would be useless, but if you have somewhat of a base it can be useful. It becomes a game of using intuition and your current target language knowledge to figure out what is being said without the aid of target language subtitles (but the aid of at least a rough English translation). This, of course, requires some pretty intense concentration to have any benefit. I don't think I have any plans of continuing this experiment and instead want to try to do as much as possible without any subtitles. But I thought it was interesting because much of what I've read on the internet is people discounting using native language subtitles for target language content.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Jan 03, 2022 5:56 pm

FeoGringo wrote: But I thought it was interesting because much of what I've read on the internet is people discounting using native language subtitles for target language content.
IMHO, "people" are worth far less than my own experience. Not to say some people don't give good advice.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:50 am

At the beginning of the year I started tracking a lot of stuff with a multisheet Excel file. It is motivating and gives me an idea of how much time I'm actually putting in each day towards my Spanish goals.

Right now my tracks/strands or whatever you want to call them are as follows:
1) Extensive watching of Spanish tv shows and movies on Netflix with no subtitles for the most part (although I do a very imprecise note for each episode I've watched if I did a lot of look-ups or rewatching of scenes with subtitles)
2) Intensive listening/reading with subs2srs
3) Language Transfer, trying to do 1 lesson a day.

So far I've logged:
24 hours of TV and Movie watching
11 hours of Anki which is strictly subs2srs with each 45 minute episode being a separate deck
Currently on Lesson 36 of Language Transfer (started on January 1st at Lesson 24).

So roughly 2hrs per day extensive watching, 1hr of Anki intensive and 1 lesson per day of Language Transfer. I would love to up this average but this is manageable for now.

Once I am through Language Transfer, I might give Paul Noble a shot or finally sink my teeth into FSI Basic.

Focused pronunciation practice is something I want to eventually incorporate into my routine, but so far I think I have enough on my plate and I really want to log those listening hours with the mix of intensive and extensive.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Jan 24, 2022 1:11 am

I had grand plans to try to figure out a way to essentially subs2srs episodes of RadioAmbulante, but I'm afraid I don't have the computer skills for the project, even after rdearman directed me to his old thread where he was trying to align text with audio.

I was manually extracting clips from Audacity and copying and pasting from the Spanish and English transcripts of a RadioAmbulante episode and made a whopping 25 cards covering maybe 3 minutes of audio, and it was extremely tedious and time consuming. So this idea is out. There are more valuable things to be doing with my time than spending hours and hours to turn one episode into an Anki deck. I just think subs2srs has been an effective method for me thus far and was hoping to expand on it.

While attempting this it sparked another idea which was to strategically extract audio from these specific episodes that revolve around a town in the Dominican Republic (the episode is a two-parter titled "Somos Millonarios").

The Caribbean accents have always interested me. But it has proven difficult to find material with accurate transcripts to train my listening comprehension. I haven't listened through the entire episode yet, but there's plenty of real audio of Dominican speakers in here that I could extract with Audacity and then do intensive listening with an accurate Spanish transcript for reference. This is something that could be done piecemeal to gather an accent library. Hopefully I will be able to dig up some other sources and clips as well.

As far as the RadioAmbulante episodes themselves. Looks like turning it into Listening-Reading might be fun and much easier to do than trying to make an Anki deck out of them.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby iguanamon » Mon Jan 24, 2022 1:57 am

FeoGringo wrote:...The Caribbean accents have always interested me. But it has proven difficult to find material with accurate transcripts to train my listening comprehension.

I can't escape Caribbean accents here in the VI. I'm only 70 miles away from Puerto Rico. 15% of our population is Puerto Rican or Dominican.

Before there was youtube, before there was podcasting, before there was television... there was radio. There were scripted radio "shows", just like TV shows- dramas, plays, comedy. It was the only game in town for a long time. I bring up this background to tell you about a pre-revolutionary Cuban radio show that ran from 1942 to 1961... and it i still broadcast on the radio airwaves today- La Tremenda Corte. The humor is still funny, even 60 years later. I listen to it over the air whenever I'm in the car between 1300 and 1400 AST on WPAB Ponce, Puerto Rico.

The app is available in the google playstore. It has the radio episodes and TV episodes. I found five or so scripts online several years ago.

The show was hugely popular all over Latin America. After the Cuban Revolution, the show ended and a reboot was attempted in Mexico as a TV show, but it just didn't have the same magic as radio. The videos are on youtube.

There are around 250 radio episodes still extant. Each one lasts between around 12-15 minutes. There are a few transcripts out there on the web. Each episode is a "trial" with an accuser(s) and an accused (Tres Patines), witnesses, the judge and his secretary. Of course all of the accents are Cuban. There is Cuban slang too. There was a website with all the slang defined but I am unable to reach it tonight. Still, with some searching, you can probably find something.

Here's one to get you started: Tamalicidio: Link to pdf script/guión

FeoGringo wrote:As far as the RadioAmbulante episodes themselves. Looks like turning it into Listening-Reading might be fun and much easier to do than trying to make an Anki deck out of them.

Yes, you are correct! You'll get better at listening and then you won't need the transcript anymore.

La Tremenda Corte- Poeticidio
Guión

¡Póngase tres pesos de multa si no escuches al episodio!
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FeoGringo
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:58 am

iguanamon wrote:
FeoGringo wrote:La Tremenda Corte- Poeticidio
Guión

¡Póngase tres pesos de multa si no escuches al episodio!


Jajaja! (*just started listening along while reading the transcript, I see you're referencing the episode :lol: ) Thank you for the recommendations.
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Re: Throwing Mud at the Wall - Beginner Spanish

Postby FeoGringo » Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:14 am

Another mini success today out in the wild. Had an interaction at work with a Spanish speaking client (helping translate for a coworker) and understood 98% of what she said to me. I was also able to successfully "talk around" a specific word that I didn't know how to say. I was able to use other words to effectively explain it to the client. I think all my non-subtitled listening practice along with the intensive subs2srs is helping my listening comprehension. My progress in understanding native media seems so slow and incremental. It's motivating when I have an experience like this where I am understanding native speech on the fly.
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