Bex's Spanish log 2018. Chapter 2: Improbable ambitions

[Jaleel10]

Sucede I have come across this word before but it made me wonder why you would choose this over say "occurir" or "passar"?

I actually know this one. In Mexican programs I have heard them say ¿Qué sucede? for what's happening or what's going on ? It's a nifty synonym.

Hopefully noone thinks I'm too odd for pondering this stuff, feels odd sharing it on here with so many seasoned learners about...this stuff must seem so obvious

I love pondering about it too lol. Especially how versatile my most hated verbs are. Dar and poner. I swear each have like 20 different meanings. And the phrasal verbs. ¡Joder! But it's fun at at the end of the day lol. But yeah, there are a few wrong sentences that even I at high A1 can recognize lol.

Huge benifit of Clozemaster is reading, definitely. I can now more easily read articles on El País than 2 months ago. I am finally beginning to get used to the very flexible way in which Spanish is often written. Another big thing is the subjunctive. I can now recognize it way better than before and now I love it lol. It was my most hated tense at one point.

I like to set goals for myself with Clozemaster. I am at 2.6K already in 34 days (Fluency Fast Track). At 3k I will read a short story a day. At 5k I will start playing Pokemon in Spanish (after a previous failed attempt). 10K I will start reading the 21 book children series The Famous Five by Enid Blyton and at 20K I will tackle H.P. Lovecraft.

Sorry for rambling on your log

[Bex]

Sucede I have come across this word before but it made me wonder why you would choose this over say "occurir" or "passar"?

I actually know this one. In Mexican programs I have heard them say ¿Qué sucede? for what's happening or what's going on ? It's a nifty synonym.

Hopefully noone thinks I'm too odd for pondering this stuff, feels odd sharing it on here with so many seasoned learners about...this stuff must seem so obvious

I love pondering about it too lol. Especially how versatile my most hated verbs are. Dar and poner. I swear each have like 20 different meanings. And the phrasal verbs. ¡Joder! But it's fun at at the end of the day lol. But yeah, there are a few wrong sentences that even I at high A1 can recognize lol.

Huge benifit of Clozemaster is reading, definitely. I can now more easily read articles on El País than 2 months ago. I am finally beginning to get used to the very flexible way in which Spanish is often written. Another big thing is the subjunctive. I can now recognize it way better than before and now I love it lol. It was my most hated tense at one point.

I like to set goals for myself with Clozemaster. I am at 2.6K already in 34 days (Fluency Fast Track). At 3k I will read a short story a day. At 5k I will start playing Pokemon in Spanish (after a previous failed attempt). 10K I will start reading the 21 book children series The Famous Five by Enid Blyton and at 20K I will tackle H.P. Lovecraft.

Sorry for rambling on your log

Please feel free to ramble away on here...I love to hear how your Spanish is going and the targets that you set yourself, I love setting myself random targets but it's great to hear about other peoples targets too.

I am following you on Clozemaster so I can see exactly how you are doing ...I see you are following me too

As for the dreaded subjunctive...I could just hug Clozemaster forever for teaching me the subjunctive... I had no clue about it's usage or even it's conjugation before I started with Clozemaster.

See I can ramble away too...I thought that's what my log was for...

[BOLIO]

Thanks smallwhite for the suggestion, here are yesterday's interesing sentences but I'm not sure anyone else is actually interested in my sentence pondering...



Apenas was a new word for me...it appears to work the like acabar, to mean "just having done something".

"Hacer blanco"...so cool. So it appears white is not only a colour but also a target. I just love this sentence!

Sucede I have come across this word before but it made me wonder why you would choose this over say "occurir" or "passar"?

My main intrigue at the moment seems to be around why you would use one word over another such as "apenas" instead of "acabar" or "sucede" instead of "occurir"?

Hopefully noone thinks I'm too odd for pondering this stuff, feels odd sharing it on here with so many seasoned learners about...this stuff must seem so obvious

I always have a tendency to view APENAS as something like “barely”. So in this example if you said “ barely yesterday “ it implies the same as just yesterday in this sentence but many times it will not translate to “just”.

I see you are a big fan of Clozemaster. I just started using it myself. I use it for their examples with Por and Para. Last night I was around several native speakers and one native speaker corrected another native speaker on a Por and Para situation. It made me feel better for not having mastered it yet.

Keep up the good work.

[AndyMeg]

Thanks smallwhite for the suggestion, here are yesterday's interesing sentences but I'm not sure anyone else is actually interested in my sentence pondering...



Apenas was a new word for me...it appears to work the like acabar, to mean "just having done something".

"Hacer blanco"...so cool. So it appears white is not only a colour but also a target. I just love this sentence!

Sucede I have come across this word before but it made me wonder why you would choose this over say "occurir" or "passar"?

My main intrigue at the moment seems to be around why you would use one word over another such as "apenas" instead of "acabar" or "sucede" instead of "occurir"?

Hopefully noone thinks I'm too odd for pondering this stuff, feels odd sharing it on here with so many seasoned learners about...this stuff must seem so obvious

"Apenas" doesn't mean "acabar". Here is the official meaning from the DRAE (Diccionario de la Real Academia Española):

1. adv. Casi no. Por la ventana apenas entraba el sol.

2. adv. casi. U. con neg. No comió apenas.

3. adv. Escasamente, solo. Hemos llegado apenas hace una semana.

4. adv. en cuanto (‖ inmediatamente después). Apenas bajé a la calle, se puso a llover.

apenas si

1. loc. adv. apenas (‖ casi no). U. para evitar la ambigüedad con otros usos del adverbio. Apenas si sale de casa.

I think in english the world "barely" has a similar meaning/usage. And in some contexts it can also mean "as soon as" (apenas llegó a casa se puso a llorar --> as soon as she/he arrived home she/he started to cry). In this sense it is similar to what you said about "just having done something" but you can't replace it with "acabar". "acabar" and "apenas" are not interchangeable words.

Yes, blanco also means "a target". For example:

- Jugaron al tiro al blanco. (The played target shooting)
- No hay que ser un blanco fácil. (One shouldn't be an easy target)

And, about "suceder", "pasar", "ocurrir":

Verbs of Happening

[Bex]

I see you are a big fan of Clozemaster. I just started using it myself. I use it for their examples with Por and Para. Last night I was around several native speakers and one native speaker corrected another native speaker on a Por and Para situation. It made me feel better for not having mastered it yet.

Keep up the good work.

That makes me feel so much better about Por and Para....I think they were just invented to give us Spanish learners a headache

I have been using the por vs para grammer challenge a bit on Clozemaster as well, I've covered about a third of it but even after 300+ sentences just testing por vs para but I still get it wrong a lot of the time

Thanks for your help with clarifying Apenas...with your and Andymegs posts it's much clearer now. Thanks

[Bex]

"Apenas" doesn't mean "acabar". Here is the official meaning from the DRAE (Diccionario de la Real Academia Española):

1. adv. Casi no. Por la ventana apenas entraba el sol.

2. adv. casi. U. con neg. No comió apenas.

3. adv. Escasamente, solo. Hemos llegado apenas hace una semana.

4. adv. en cuanto (‖ inmediatamente después). Apenas bajé a la calle, se puso a llover.

apenas si

1. loc. adv. apenas (‖ casi no). U. para evitar la ambigüedad con otros usos del adverbio. Apenas si sale de casa.

I think in english the world "barely" has a similar meaning/usage. And in some contexts it can also mean "as soon as" (apenas llegó a casa se puso a llorar --> as soon as she/he arrived home she/he started to cry). In this sense it is similar to what you said about "just having done something" but you can't replace it with "acabar". "acabar" and "apenas" are not interchangeable words.

Seems my reasoning was wrong...thanks for the clarification...I shall adjust my brain accordingly. Seriously though, thanks for the explanation.

And, about "suceder", "pasar", "ocurrir":

Verbs of Happening

Oooh more super helpful stuff...you are a star.

[Bex]

Friday update:

Reading is getting easier...but I'm getting really bored of graded readers. I finished my short stories book this week, I think I should now try and continue reading my Harry Potter book.. it will be interesting to see if it's any more enjoyable now.

Need to work on everything else as ever

Seems looking back at my log I can only focus on one thing at a time, I tend to binge listening or reading or writing or courses, SRS etc, etc at the exclusion of everything else...maybe I should work with this tendancy instead of against it all the time.

[Bex]

Bookmarking: Cool parallel text books (classics in many language pairs)...
http://paralleltext.io/

[Bex]

Bad week.

I sometimes really question why I am living here in Spain...4 years and I still talk like a 2 year old. It's so hard and some weeks are really very difficult.

Sometimes I just want to go home.

[AndyMeg]

Bad week.

I sometimes really question why I am living here in Spain...4 years and I still talk like a 2 year old. It's so hard and some weeks are really very difficult.

Sometimes I just want to go home.

Maybe this book could help a bit? (I found it thanks to a comment made by reineke and it gave me a lot of very useful insights) :

What do you need to know to learn a foreign language?

¡Ánimo! ¡Ánimo! ¡Ánimo!