Reading Spanish

[nuncapense]

I think this is really good advice. I'm still aiming to finish the Harry Potter book, just because it's going to mean something to me when I do. But I'm taking a break from so closely monitoring the number of pages I get through in a day. I'm reading a little big of Harry Potter, a little bit of a Sherlock Holmes book that was too difficult for me a few months ago. I've also been watching some really bad dubbed TV on netflix. I watched a couple hours one day, and then that evening found that I felt much more fluent than normal when speaking Spanish. I've also been reading some web pages and forums in Spanish. My google has been set to Mexico for a long time, but usually when I search for something, I ignore the Spanish pages, and just read the English ones. But now I'm finding that I can generally understand enough to make it worth my while to read the pages in Spanish. For some of my interests, there is more information available in Spanish than in English--never realized this before. I also took another look at Don Quijote, but it looks pretty difficult.

[reineke]

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[nuncapense]

Thanks for the good links.

I had a roommate in Mexico City who learned Italian by reading famous old Italian works. He said that when he talked to Italians they said it was like talking to someone from 300 years ago because of the words he used. He had a thick accent in all languages, he said. His English was excellent. Weirdly, I've noticed that a lot of Mexicans have really different types of accents in English. I can't figure it out. Both my tutors have had the same type of accent in English, but they are from different parts of Mexico, and have different accents (to me ear) in Spanish. Other people only know a few phrases of English, but have a really good approximation of an American accent.

I've gotten really lazy recently. I've been watching way more TV than normal. In Spanish. But reading would be better for me. I have been reading articles online. They are more autobiographical and informational, and I'm finding I enjoy the writing style of one particular author. He's actually an American originally, but more of his talks are in Spanish, and apparently most of his articles are in Spanish. He lived in Mexico for decades, but he writes using "os" and Spain Spanish, with a few US phrases, along with some neologisms. When I read in English, I'm usually more interested in the humor and sentiment in the style than in reading plot packed thrillers or something. Maybe I can get to that place in Spanish. But! I don't know what to read! I would rather read nonfiction articles in Spanish right now. Getting tired of fiction, maybe because I'm writing a novel, and when I read English the same day or week, my writing changes to roughly mimic what I'm reading. I thought by reading Spanish I could avoid that, but it seems like it is starting to have an influence, which I find annoying. I don't want to write like JK Rowling. Just 4 months ago I would have argued she was a genius, because I was just reading her Spanish. Now I think she can't write! Or got lazy. Or... I don't want to be subject to a lawsuit here. I don't she's British. And I know a little about British libel laws from this site. Harry Potter 1 is written more like literature.

With really good older English books, I'm always amazed at how NEW they seem. Moby Dick is modern, and clean. William Blake is even newer than the newest books now. Newer than they ever could be.

So I watched some terrible NETFLIX shows. The most terrible of the terrible-est. "The B-- in Apartment 23." "The Unstopable Kimmy S." "Love."

"Sherlock," is a little better. I don't like the crime, or the mysteries. But I like when Sherlock lazes around the messy apartment in a funk, abusing nicotine patches. I like the accouterments. The plot is boring.

[reineke]

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[nuncapense]

That's interesting you say the languages are more formal. I've noticed that in my private classes, my teacher is fine with using slang when speaking, but when we write, he always wants it to be very formal. I still don't feel like reading much, for whatever reason, so I have been watching TV and movies again. This is what I spent the first 6 months of my Spanish study in Mexico doing. I feel like it is 'passive activating' (if that makes any sense) some of the things I have learned by reading. But generally I am not aware that I am watching tv in Spanish. I was watching this British series Sherlock in Mexican dubbing, and I thought to myself, "I'm curious if the actors changed their British accents for this show at all, or if this is how they talk in real life." So I went to youtube to watch an interview with the main actor, and found myself completely shocked that he was speaking English, something that should be been obvious! Apparently I had thought I was listening to "British" Spanish, without realizing I was listening to Spanish. It's a good thing I can't lip read.

I often feel discouraged communicating with people here. I have been going to the same butcher for months, but today I happened to have a ten minute conversation with her, during which she said, "You're from France, right?" She also said "It didn't cost you much to learn, Spanish, right?" I felt so overconfident from my brief interaction that I marched right over to the juice stand and committed a series of grave linguistic errors in a serious and sure-of-myself manner. I keep stepping back and forth over the line that divides trying to prove that I know the language well, to actually trying to say what I want to say: I told an elderly woman at a party that she should drink Coca Cola every day of the week, rather than just one weekends, because it's very good for the health. I simply didn't know what else to say or how to say it. I agreed with a taxi driver that the Chinese (often Mexican slang for all Asians, unfortunately) eat all animals all days of the week (I know this is not true, but often a slanderous rumor skewing ancient cultural differences). I also told him that a local language institute teaches all languages of the world, because I didn't know the word for "various," a complete cognate, until he corrected me.

[reineke]

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[James29]

Spanish (Libro de Palacio - Ayala c. 1400)

Pecado de avaricia
Avaricia es pecado, raíz e fundamiento
e de todos los males este es muy grant cimiento:
esquivarlo debe homne de buen entendimiento,
ca d'este nasce al alma muy grant destrüimiento.

Sardinian, the most conservative of all Romance languages, in many ways looks very much like Latin. Dante wrote in De vulgari eloquentia in rather unflattering terms that Sardinians had no vulgar language of their own, that they imitated Latin "like monkeys imitate men".

Compare that to Chaucer (1390's)

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Very interesting. The Spanish is easier to read for me than the English.

[reineke]

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[nuncapense]

I live in Mexico. I see what you mean about the conservative nature of the language. I assumed that would mean that modern written Spanish tends to be a little more formal--if formal just means old.

[nuncapense]

It's probably telling about my Spanish level, but for me Chaucer is easier to read. So Chaucer was around the time when French was influencing English, changing the language?

I signed up for conversation exchange, a website someone here recommended. There are plenty of people who want to do exchanges on skype. I'm meeting with a Mexican today and a Columbian Sunday. It's kind of silly to do skype exchanges when I live in Mexico, but it's going to be easier, and less time will be wasted if they can't make it. My experience has been that people here tend to not call if they can't show up, or they are too busy to be able to meet in person on a regular basis. I'm also curious about Columbian Spanish--when setting up the time he used words like "vos" which I only vaguely understand from reading, and my teacher told me they often address each other as 'usted' even when fairly familiar.

I like the bucket analogy. Yeah, if I was back home I'd feel like I'd reached an impossibly high level (where I'm from, there aren't a huge amount of Spanish speakers, unlike other areas of the country, so my use of the language would be very limited), but here I know it's simply a barely (almost) adequate level. What I mean is that I don't know many people at home who have learned a second language later in life. Most of the people I knew who spoke more than one language were immigrants, and their English was often a little faulty. There just isn't a big use of other languages, except by groups like the somewhat sizable Ethiopian community in West Philly.