ozymandias wrote:luke wrote:Fernanda del Carpio:
Estaba "reina de Madagascar"
Era (?) (not sure what you wanted to say here) la "reina de Madagascar" en el carnaval de Macondo, y hubo una matanza, en la cual Aureliano Segundo la conoció. Úrsula se ocupó de ella como si fuera su hija. Fernanda regresó a su aldea natal. Aureliano Segundo la estuvo buscando / buscó durante seis meses y la encontró. Después, la llevó a Macondo para ser su esposa.
Thank you again very much for your corrections. On "Era" versus "Estaba". Fernanda was dressed up as the "queen of Madagascar" for the carnaval (parade - not like in the USA, where a carnival is a bunch of rides and "silly games of skill"). But, her parents told her she was a "queen" and they were "immensely wealthy", but that wasn't exactly the case. I chose "estaba", meaning it was her attire, rather than she was royalty. Pienso que "estaba" es lo que quise decir.
You've got me wanting to look up when to use the indefinite article and when it's okay not to. That looks like one of the frequent mistakes I'm making. I'm away visiting family, so my grammar book is not as near as the bookshelf.
luke wrote:Entendimiento del texto
ozymandias wrote:COMPRENSIÓN del texto
Hay dos cosas, que son casi iguales, que me permitieron descifrar el texto y conjuntar (?) (''conjuntar'' doesn't fit here, but I don't know the original meaning you wanted to convey, so I can't give you an alternative)
In English, I would probably say "put together", like you could "put together" a puzzle. No veo un ejemplo de la palabra "puzzle" con "put together" a SpanishDict.com.
ozymandias wrote:Simplemente leyendo el libro por sí solo me ayudó mucho a comprenderlo. Es decir, sin audios, sin diccionarios, sin distracciones. No es simplemente más tiempo para descifrar las cosas, sino también la visualización de la estructura del texto.
Dos cosas que hice que me divertieron en los últimos días:
1) Leí el texto, leí el texto mientras escuché el audio en inglés. (Dos veces a través del mismo capítulo).
2) Escribí a mano un "plan de estudio" para Cien años de soledad mientras estaba desayunando.
Two things have I've enjoyed doing the last few days:
1) I read the RAE book extensively. I didn't mark unknown words, although if I got "lost", I did go back a bit and re-read to figure out what had just happened.
2) My "plan", once I get back "home", will be to go at the book sequentially, but carefully. I may use multiple modalities for the same chapter or part. E.G., read in Spanish and make notes about things that aren't clear or words that are mysterious. Possibly a few Anki cards for nouns that would be well supported by an image. On walks, may be listening ahead or listening behind my reading, but making notes of what's fuzzy so that I can come back to it. Will use the parallel text to support the RAE book and make corrections if I find them. May shadow some with con Kepa Amuchasetegui for parts that strike my fancy or seem particularly challenging. I'm thinking the best way to do this all is not necessarily to "figure everything out" this time though. Only to keep filling in details and coming up with "long shot" explanations of certain things.
García Márquez has this fascinating way of dropping in a tiny detail, between commas, about some other thread of the story. Those tiny details seem to me to be more than just a clever technique. I think they're integral to how the whole narrative fits together. (That's where I might have been thinking "conjuntar", if I'd been writing this in Spanish).