Trying to take it easy

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luke
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby luke » Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:54 pm

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.
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SpanishInput
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby SpanishInput » Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:58 pm

BeaP wrote:Spanish people curse a lot.

I once stumbled upon a blog by a Spanish girl who visited Ecuador. She said that she had to remind herself not to curse while being here. :lol: And yes, Spaniards are famous for cursing. Some words that are considered malsonantes in other places are just everyday normal words in Spain.
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:05 pm

SpanishInput wrote:Some words that are considered malsonantes in other places are just everyday normal words in Spain.

Thanks for the reinforcement. I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to use the opportunity that a native speaker has turned up in my log. Several threads have made me think recently about the variants of Spanish. Are they really so different as some say? And the question that interests me the most: is there such as thing as Latin-American Spanish? Or the linguistic difference between the countries or regions is as big as between Spain and any country in Latin-America?
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SpanishInput
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby SpanishInput » Wed Nov 17, 2021 11:21 pm

BeaP wrote:Is there such as thing as Latin-American Spanish?

No. It would be equally valid to divide the Hispanidad into "Argentine Spanish vs. the rest of the world" or "Chilean Spanish vs. the rest of the world".

BeaP wrote:Or the linguistic difference between the countries or regions is as big as between Spain and any country in Latin-America?

Exactly. In reality, you can find even more diversity within Spain than in Latam, because Spain also has several languages very similar to Castellano that at some point were considered "dialects" but now are considered languages. So even though people might speak to you in Castellano, when they're talking among them they might be using Valenciano, Catalán, Aragonés, etc.

Also, some features of the Latam dialects can also be found in regions of Spain, because... well, these features actually came from Spain. This includes seseo, the L/R confusion and dropping the S or pronouncing it as an aspirated /h/. (Edit: although in some parts of Spain they always say "ustedes" instead of "vosostros", I'm removing this item from the list of "things that came from Spain" because I would need to do more digging before establishing a causal relationship).

Since these questions were so frequent in Reddit in r/Spanish and r/learnspanish, I ended up creating a video to answer them: https://youtu.be/56ojrhmbIT4

BTW, at one point in the early 2000s Disney/Pixar were producing 4 different Spanish dubs of their movies. They have now settled on doing only one for Latam and one for Spain. Buuuuuuttt..... We originally had only one dub worldwide to rule them all, and these early dubs had a mix of different accents. You can still find these in "The Jungle Book" and "Dumbo". The era of only one Spanish dub for everyone meant that we all had a chance to have exposure to different accents. Even Spanish people hate it when nowadays Disney broadcasts old classics with new dubs made in Spain, because they grew up with the original dubs. Unfortunately, now that we live in the era of "One dub for us and one for them", you can see hate going in both directions among fans of dubbed movies.

As a bit of extra info, "neutral Spanish" is pretty much a Disney creation. But that's a long story for another day.
Last edited by SpanishInput on Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:11 am

SpanishInput wrote:Since these questions were so frequent in Reddit in r/Spanish and r/learnspanish, I ended up creating a video to answer them: https://youtu.be/56ojrhmbIT4

This is a great video. Thanks a lot for the explication. Eres el puto amo. (In the kind peninsular sense of the sentence. ;) )

The DELE C2 guide states that the candidates must understand all varieties of Spanish (I'd add formal here), and must use one variant exclusively (no matter which). So you can't speak a kind of mix, at least not in an obvious way according to the assessment of the examiners. You lose points, if you mix the varieties.
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:28 am

luke wrote: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.


I totally agree with you on both. I like grammars that are concise in explanation and give a lot of good example sentences. Once I was thinking about learning Portuguese, and I found a grammar that contained a CD with all of the exercise solutions recorded. That means a huge amount of good example sentences divided according to types of structures. I searched for a similar one in my other languages, but didn't find any.

2666 is very scary, and we are not even close to the murders yet.
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:23 am

I started the grammar work with Gramática de uso and concluded that I can't follow any plan of repetition rigidly. I've found it very beneficial to do the exercises orally and say every sentence out loud more than once. I think that I don't have problems with the logic part of the grammar, the verb form (conjugation) gives me more trouble. I didn't start from the beginning of the book because the verbal structures are more important than anything else. (I started with the subjunctive.) I've learned this from the Michel Thomas course. I find it way overpriced, but he was right in putting the emphasis on verbs. I miss the audio of the sentences very much, and I have no idea why the publishers don't make audio for grammar books. They wouldn't even need to make CDs anymore. The situation we all live in causes me a lot anxiety, although I'm trying not to watch or read the news. I find it very hard to concentrate, and try to do those types of exercises that require less effort on my part. So the possibility of listening to these grammar drills would be a huge benefit. I've rewatched the subjunctive videos on my two favourite youtube channels: Spanish with Vicente and Español con Juan.
I've also finished re-reading the first book of 2666, and looking forward to the second. Luke has already drawn a connection with Cien años de soledad, and I think Latin-American novels have a lot in common. Creating a mythology seems to be a common topic, and during the second reading I formed a different view of the scholars. They are called 'archimboldianos' in the novel, because they research the novels of a mysterious writer called Archimboldi. For me this word, 'archimboldiano' was then a synonym of European with the meaning: lunatic and vain idiot. During this second read I rather saw them as prophets or apostles (there are 4 of them), who are in search of a spiritual leader, and have very scary dreams that might foreshadow the apocalypse. In the meantime I'm almost halfway through Poeta chileno, a novel I'm enjoying just as much. I experience a bit of a culture clash with this novels, which is very interesting for me.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Nov 24, 2021 6:36 pm

BeaP wrote:
luke wrote:
I like grammars that are concise in explanation and give a lot of good example sentences. Once I was thinking about learning Portuguese, and I found a grammar that contained a CD with all of the exercise solutions recorded. That means a huge amount of good example sentences divided according to types of structures. I searched for a similar one in my other languages, but didn't find any.
Interesting. Can you please tell us the name of that Portuguese grammar?
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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

BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:47 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Can you please tell us the name of that Portuguese grammar?

https://www.lidel.pt/en/catalogue/brazilian-portuguese-as-a-foreign-language/materials/gramatica-ativa-1/
There is a European Portuguese version as well, but that one doesn't contain CDs, only the Brazilian. There is also a second volume for intermediate students.
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luke
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby luke » Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:23 pm

BeaP wrote:I've also finished re-reading the first book of 2666, and looking forward to the second. Luke has already drawn a connection with Cien años de soledad, and I think Latin-American novels have a lot in common. Creating a mythology seems to be a common topic, and during the second reading I formed a different view of the scholars. They are called 'archimboldianos' in the novel, because they research the novels of a mysterious writer called Archimboldi. For me this word, 'archimboldiano' was then a synonym of European with the meaning: lunatic and vain idiot. During this second read I rather saw them as prophets or apostles (there are 4 of them), who are in search of a spiritual leader, and have very scary dreams that might foreshadow the apocalypse. In the meantime I'm almost halfway through Poeta chileno, a novel I'm enjoying just as much. I experience a bit of a culture clash with this novels, which is very interesting for me.

Very interesting.

I just finished up book 1 this morning too. I might should look up more words than I have been, but I've been doing this as kind of an extensive reading experiment. Some words though are difficult to get from the context. Probably should start marking them with a highlighter or something so I can look them up later or even look them up now.

One thing that has helped a couple of times, with El Cerdo and Rebeca and maybe another character, was to use do an electronic search for their name to gather together the various scenes they were in. This has been useful when it wasn't clear the character would be in 20 pages instead of just 2. I.E., they're a bigger character than may seem evident at first.
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