FSI Spanish Walkthrough

[kunsttyv]

Unit 22

Another conjugation unit. Not fun. At least I'm progressing through the course.

On to the next one.

[BOLIO]

Keep up the good work!

[kunsttyv]

Thanks for the encouragement BOLIO. I kept it up with one more unit today:

Unit 23

Yet another conjugation unit, but today it was just a lot of fun! I don't know, things were just flowing wonderfully and I felt truly fluent for the first time with FSI. It was almost as if there was someone else answering the drills, because everything came out instantly without any errors. Very strange.

The last three drills we have been practicing irregular preterite forms, present tense irregular verbs with stem changes and stem extensions, plus a couple of common uniquely irregular verbs. I was quite comfortable with all of this from before, so the units weren't that useful, but now the rest of part 2 of the course (up until unit 30) is going to be about imperatives and a lot of different pronoun combinations. Like reflexive pronouns, reflexive and indirect pronouns together, reflexive and direct pronouns, pronouns appended to the imperative, infinitive and gerund. I love that FSI focuses so much on the pronouns. It's definitely what I need to practice the most.

I'd also like to thank iguanamon for his great advice to novice learners like myself. I have basically been following a multi-track approach from the beginning, with a strong focus on listening. At least a couple of hours every day. And now I feel like I can understand pretty much anything I listen to: definitely my courses, but also radio, podcasts, series, even movies if they are in relatively standard Castilian Spanish. My reading fluency and productive skills are not that great, but I'll address all of those step by step. It's funny, because I initially started to learn Spanish to be able to read the literature I love in the original, but so far reading is probably my worst skill. I also remember what iguanamon said about actually finishing a course and move on to other things, that this is more important than to get caught up in the details. I'll try to follow this advice with FSI and progress at a lively pace (but not too fast either, got to look out for any burn out) of a couple of units every week. I'll try to finish part 2 before the summer holiday in about a month, and then the rest of the course this fall. Well, this was kind of random, but I had a good day today and just wanted to say thanks to this great community!

And now the next unit -->

[kanewai]

This is the strangest course, isn't it? I'm currently working through the third volume, and it feels like I'm reading some lost Mad Men in Central America script. I can now invite the gordita to join me for drinks at the consulate, ask the colonel how many bombers are on the air base, and hope that the student protesters make it back to campus before the police arrive and shoot them.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Yes, obviously I mean a list of relatively common verbs that forms a basis from which to extrapolate to other less common verbs. Like with any other grammar explanation.

Do these help?
http://www.spanishdict.com/guide/direct ... in-spanish
http://www.spanishdict.com/guide/indire ... t-pronouns (some common verbs at the end)
http://www.spanishdict.com/guide/direct ... in-spanish

[kunsttyv]

kanewai: yes, it's a curious course, and by all appearances a great one. I'm excited to start on the subjunctive units. Have you reached that point yet?

jeff: thanks for the links!

[blaurebell]

I just finished Volume 1 and it has the strange feel of watching a 1960s spy movie set in a fictional latin american country. Very odd, but strangely entertaining. I wonder whether FSI French also feels like that. The Russian one definitely doesn't because it was developed by a university.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Despite Spanish being an "easy" language, one still has to struggle. By the way, which of the FSI courses are you using? The four volumes one?

[blaurebell]

To be honest I think Spanish is only easy up to B2. Then suddenly one gets inundated by all the accents, the redundant basic vocabulary that can be entirely different in every country, the subtleties of correct subjunctive usage which even the natives only learn as teenagers (if at all) ...!

[kanewai]

kanewai: yes, it's a curious course, and by all appearances a great one. I'm excited to start on the subjunctive units. Have you reached that point yet?

Oh yeah, knee deep in it. I agree, it's a great course.

I just finished Volume 1 and it has the strange feel of watching a 1960s spy movie set in a fictional latin american country. Very odd, but strangely entertaining. I wonder whether FSI French also feels like that. The Russian one definitely doesn't because it was developed by a university.

I remember noticing a bit of this in French, but no where near the level of the Spanish course. It gets more intense as it goes on, too. I never realized how fragile American masculinity was back then. In one lesson the footnotes assure the budding diplomats that it is not effeminate at all to compliment a host on their coffee. Seriously. Here's the discussion on the sentence ¡Que buen café!:

Occasionally English expressions with 'what a' sound somewhat effeminate or juvenile ('What a nice party!), though not necessarily always ('What a beautiful girl!' sounds natural enough for an adult male). The equivalent Spanish expression does not have these overtones of effeminateness or immaturity and therefore a better translation is often 'It sure was a nice party!, This sure is good coffee!, etc., when the English situation does not call far a real display of emotion, but only a more or less mild expression of opinion.

They also are cautioned about those wild Latin haircuts. When Señor White asks the barber to only use scissors, and not the clippers, FSI explains why:

You may have observed that Latin American men prefer their hair longer than men in this country. A haircut often therefore becomes just the trim that Americana might get for a special occasion. It is possible that White's preference for scissors here reflects unhappy experience (since he is, after all, an American) on previous occasions with a Latin barber who used the clippers horizontally to mark the hair-line as sharply as though he had used a bowl - a practice that is reported once to have been frequent

To be honest I think Spanish is only easy up to B2. Then suddenly one gets inundated by all the accents, the redundant basic vocabulary that can be entirely different in every country, the subtleties of correct subjunctive usage which even the natives only learn as teenagers (if at all) ...!

You aren't kidding! Here's what I faced this morning in Unit 43, regarding when to use más de and when to use más que in a sentence:

• In comparisons 'than' is translated de when different specific amounts of the same thing are compared. When lo modified by a clause is the second term of the comparison (what is compared to más or ménos), the difference is usually conceived as one of amount, using de.
  
• When different things are compared, 'than' is translated que. A difference mentioning a specific amount of something can still be a difference of kind if the amount itself is not what is being compared. This is particularly true in negative sentences, where a specific number may be considered entity rather t an an amount on a scale.

I can't even grasp the English here. The best I can hope for is to drill drill drill until I just know what sounds rights.