BeaP wrote:Based on my vocabulary from TV series the 4 most frequent (Peninsular) Spanish words (beside articles) are: joder, coño, hostia, follar, gilipollas (in this order). I don't have any problems with having words like these in my log, because they are an important part of everyday language. Spanish people curse a lot. And these words are not as powerful as in other languages. (At least it's my impression.) I'd translate 'joder, coño' for example as 'Oh, well'.
The last 2 on your list were 2 of the 3 I looked up. The third word is milder: pacotilla = trash/rabble.
BeaP wrote:I tend to stop and think: is it por, para, en or what?
One of the simplest explanations of por vs para I saw in FSI Basic Spanish:
In almost all their contrasting uses, the meaning of por can be thought of as 'motion through' and para as 'motion to'.
I usually think of en as 'in' or 'on'.
But really, although I've trained these prepositions, it really is more by feel (or maybe it's the exercises). It makes sense that these take time. Your 2 minutes with notes is probably all you need.
We may be in agreement on what doesn't work for things like por and para, which is a list of all the possible translations. (In that same FSI lesson, they give about 12 different translations for each of them). Big long lists don't make sense to me. 'Through' and 'to' make sense.
I re-read Morini's dream and what came next (pp67-73) and it seems like 2666 might get scary in places.