Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Jul 11, 2019 1:35 am

Hank wrote:I still have serious difficulty with Argentinian and Colombian accents. (Even though I have to admit that I think it's really cool that I recognize accents! :lol: ) Mostly though, I'm convinced that it is intentional in Mexican tv to have certain characters not speak clearly. It seems like the "bad guys" usually have mush-mouth.
You may have hit upon something here. I am going to try to check whether this happens in French TV and movies, too.
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Hank
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby Hank » Sat Jul 13, 2019 3:00 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
Hank wrote:I still have serious difficulty with Argentinian and Colombian accents. (Even though I have to admit that I think it's really cool that I recognize accents! :lol: ) Mostly though, I'm convinced that it is intentional in Mexican tv to have certain characters not speak clearly. It seems like the "bad guys" usually have mush-mouth.
You may have hit upon something here. I am going to try to check whether this happens in French TV and movies, too.


Interesting. Let me know what you decide.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:26 pm

Hank wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:
Hank wrote:I still have serious difficulty with Argentinian and Colombian accents. (Even though I have to admit that I think it's really cool that I recognize accents! :lol: ) Mostly though, I'm convinced that it is intentional in Mexican tv to have certain characters not speak clearly. It seems like the "bad guys" usually have mush-mouth.
You may have hit upon something here. I am going to try to check whether this happens in French TV and movies, too.


Interesting. Let me know what you decide.

Will do. And am wondering wheter this might be the case with other modern languages on TV and in films.
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Hank
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby Hank » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:52 pm

I read a Welsh language, geek blog. https://fideowyth.com/ If anyone is interested. (Probably not. :lol: ) The latest entry is about a book that the author of the blog recently published. He said it was currently only available at the Eisteddfod, which is kind of like a fair centered around the Welsh language. I'd like to read this book, but I'm not making a trip to an Eisteddfod any time soon. I went to the blog's Facebook page and asked, in Welsh, if it was going to be available on Amazon at some point. I'm sure my post didn't even quite make it to "sleepy 3 year old" level but apparently it was good enough for him to understand because he answered back and thanked me for my interest.

One of the most exciting things about language learning is the little victories along the way.
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overscore
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby overscore » Wed Aug 07, 2019 5:14 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
Hank wrote:I still have serious difficulty with Argentinian and Colombian accents. (Even though I have to admit that I think it's really cool that I recognize accents! :lol: ) Mostly though, I'm convinced that it is intentional in Mexican tv to have certain characters not speak clearly. It seems like the "bad guys" usually have mush-mouth.
You may have hit upon something here. I am going to try to check whether this happens in French TV and movies, too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWoiMLEDPkw
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Cèid Donn
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby Cèid Donn » Wed Aug 07, 2019 5:40 pm

Hank wrote:I read a Welsh language, geek blog. https://fideowyth.com/ If anyone is interested. (Probably not. :lol: )


I am. Thanks for posting this.

I understand the difficulty of getting books for a TL like this. Books in Celtic languages are particularly difficult to get over here--and films! so many Gaelic-language films that are only shown at UK festivals, argh!!!--and depending on what you're looking for, you'll run into the same headaches with even more common languages. I recently frustrated myself thoroughly in trying to procure a copy of a French-language book on a rather niche topic printed by a small Quebec publisher not available on Amazon but was only able to find a couple copies of it online via out-of-country vendors who required about as much in shipping as they were charging for the book. :|
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:18 pm

overscore wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:
Hank wrote:I still have serious difficulty with Argentinian and Colombian accents. (Even though I have to admit that I think it's really cool that I recognize accents! :lol: ) Mostly though, I'm convinced that it is intentional in Mexican tv to have certain characters not speak clearly. It seems like the "bad guys" usually have mush-mouth.
You may have hit upon something here. I am going to try to check whether this happens in French TV and movies, too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWoiMLEDPkw
So French Canadian is actually Swedish. :lol:
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Hank
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby Hank » Fri Aug 16, 2019 2:01 am

Me gusta las programas de televisión en español, pero parece que siempre hay personajes que no entiendo tan bien. Estoy viendo Bolívar en NetFlix. He visto 23 capítulos. (¡Solo falta 37 capítulos más! :lol:) A veces puedo entender el actor de Bolívar, pero a veces no. Fue difícil de entender la actriz de la joven Manuelita Saenz. Siento mal (¿vergüenza?) cuando leo los subtítulos y creo que debería entender las palabras.

Acabo de ver un capítulo de la programa. Parece mucho más facil de escribir en español cuando escucho o leo español antes de escribir. ¿Es más facil de hablar? No lo sé. Yo hablo casi nunca.

Bolívar es una programa muy bien. No estoy seguro si la programa es totalmente precisa. Probablemente no. Ahora quiero leer un libro sobre Simón Bolívar. El verdadero Bolívar.

Estoy leyendo Ready Player One. Es un libro realmente bien y emocianante. Acabo de leer algunos libros sobre los narcos y yo quería leer algo menos serio. Recuerdo casi todos de los videojuegos de los ochenta en el libro. Siempre he gustado los videojuegos. No recuerdo todas las películas y programas de televisión. A veces los nombres de las películas y programas son un poco diferentes en español. En el libro el nombre de Knight Rider es El Carro Intelegente o algo así. Supongo que Knight Rider no tiene sentido en español.
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Hank
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby Hank » Tue Aug 27, 2019 11:58 am

I'm a professional firefighter, and on Saturdays we go to different neighborhoods in the city and install smoke detectors for the residents who need them. I think I wrote a post last year where I had the opportunity to speak to a monolingual Spanish speaker while installing smoke detectors, but I absolutely froze up. Shameful stuff! :oops:

This has all changed now.

I worked last Saturday and my crew went out to install smoke detectors. At one house we were at the family was from Guatemala, but two of the family members spoke English very well so I didn't see a need to try to speak to them in Spanish. One of the family members didn't speak much English, but I was just unsure if it would be appropriate, or even welcome, if I were to try to speak to him. After we left the house, the captain asked why I didn't speak to them in Spanish.

Little did I know that my Spanish adventure for the day was just getting started.

A while later we came to a duplex where we happened to meet both occupants in their driveways. Both were speaking accent free English. When we went into the first apartment there was an older lady and a middle aged man speaking Spanish. While the other firefighter and I were installing smoke detectors the captain called me over. There was an old, black and white photo hanging on the wall and he wanted me to ask the older lady if it was her. As soon as I said "Hola" the lady and the middle aged man lit up like Christmas trees and they rushed over to talk to me. We had a conversation about the photo. The older lady was just terribly excited to talk to me in her own language. It was a little difficult, and far from eloquent, but I felt like it went very well. The biggest issue that I had was I wanted to start every sentence with "estoy" for some reason. She told me that she was so beautiful back then and I started to reply "Estoy linda todavía" :lol: but corrected myself pretty quickly to "Estás linda todavía". I regulary think about what I would need to say situations in my job if Spanish was required. This was a totally impromtu conversation. It was fun and it felt like a great accomplishment, but I was nervous and flustered when it was all over. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.

But wait...we're not done yet.

We went to the second apartment of the duplex. The girl we met in the driveway said that this was her boyfriend's house and that he wasn't home. I don't remember what she said his name was but it was obviously a latino name. While we were installing smoke detectors the boyfriend showed up. He spoke only Spanish. I explained to him who we were and what we were doing. I was still flustered over my previous Spanish conversation. This second conversation didn't go quite as well, but I got the job done.

Writing in Spanish on a forum, or chatting in Spanish on a computer, is a far, far different thing than having an actual, impromptu, face to face conversation. It was quite a day and it took me quite a while to get calmed down. When I finally started relaxing I realized how cool this was and I was excited about it. It was far from perfect but it went well enough. The big issue was my nerves. Hopefully next time this happens I'll be more calm and it will go even better. I certainly couldn't have been more nervous and flustered! :lol: The captain was very impressed and he told me how jealous he was. When we got back to headquarters to drop the stuff off he told all the other crews and chiefs that were there how good I was at Spanish.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Hank's Adventure in Spanish (Now with 100% more Welsh!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Aug 27, 2019 11:42 pm

Well done, Hank. A case of the nerves is hardly unusual for the first few conversations. Especially in kind of impromptu situations like what your were in. Not asking where the post office is, or when the bus arrives, or how much the hat costs. But the sense of accomplishement can be a real gas, as I think you discovered. Cool. 8-)
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