Spanish Group

[James29]

Does anyone know where there are episode summaries of the telenovela Celia?

[DaveBee]

Does anyone know where there are episode summaries of the telenovela Celia?

IMDB?

[iguanamon]

Does anyone know where there are episode summaries of the telenovela Celia?

Here's one source for episode summaries of all the Celia episodes on Canal RCN (Colombia) en español. Try not to read ahead! They are also on telemundo

Episode summaries for telenovelas are plentiful online- mainly because people may have to miss a few episodes and don't want to be lost when they pick it back up again. To find espisode summaries for telenovelas, try searching for name of telenovela + resumen capítulos.

[Tomás]

I once came across a very useful website on telenovelas--in English. The best feature was the community's crowd-sourced list of best telenovelas. I have forgotten the name of the site and now I cannot find it. Anyone here know?

[klvik]

Does anyone know where there are episode summaries of the telenovela Celia?

I haven't looked for an episode summary, but thought that these two documentaries provide interesting backstory.

Documentary on the Cuban singer "La Lupe" . The singing style of the character Lola Calvo is based on "La Lupe".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_bIHCbeC8

Short program about Celia Cruz that touches on some of the events depicted in the telenovela.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNKVe3W_UkQ

[Brun Ugle]

Spanish started as a marriage of convenience for me, but has in this last year or so, turned into a passionate romance. At this point, Spanish is one of the two languages that actually make me feel all tingly and giddy inside.

I want to join this group, so here’s my introduction (you can skip my early failures if you want and go right to my more recent successful effort or to the summary at the end):

Background and early attempts

I always loved languages, probably since I was born, but since I came from a very monolingual family who regarded language-learning as something vaguely magical and pretty much impossible, I never got the chance to learn any until high school. My first actual, very brief contact with Spanish was in kindergarten, when the teacher said a Spanish speaking girl would be joining our class and then taught us one word of Spanish, which she pronounced “row-haw” and said meant red.

After that, I had no contact with languages (except for teaching myself the Greek alphabet from the encyclopedia) until eighth grade. In junior high (7th-8th grade), we had a class called “cycle” where each year we cycled through eight of the different elective classes we could choose from in high school. The languages we could choose from in high school were Spanish and French, and French was chosen for our cycle class in eighth grade. The teacher was one of those obsessive Francophiles who think that no other language or culture can approach the French in terms of beauty and sophistication. She told us very seriously that if aliens ever came to Earth, they too would consider French the most beautiful language. I couldn’t imagine a Klingon picking French as the most beautiful human language and I don’t generally feel comfortable around those that present opinion as fact, so I decided to study Spanish in high school.

So, that is how I originally chose to learn Spanish. Had I been able to pick from any language in the world, I wouldn’t have chosen Spanish, but I could only choose between Spanish and French and the French teacher was off her rocker. I ended up only taking three years of Spanish in high school because I got kicked out for a year, but I don’t think I’d have learned a whole lot anyway. I didn’t know how to learn languages and the language teaching consisted mostly of the teacher writing vocabulary and conjugations on the chalkboard and us copying them into our notebooks. Only once in those three years, did our teacher bring in a tape of spoken Spanish and we listened to a few minutes. Other than that, we never heard it spoken by a native. Once in a while she would go around the room asking each of us how many siblings we had or something similar and we would each answer, but that was our only experience with talking. However, I don’t think the classes were a complete waste. When I took up Spanish again as an adult, even though I had no memory of ever learning the grammar beyond the present tense of verbs, I found learning grammar very easy and natural. So, I think the grammar study I did in high school must have imbedded itself somewhere in my subconscious.

After high school, I moved on to more exotic languages and forgot all about Spanish. Then I moved to Norway and forgot all about every language except Norwegian. I made a few half-hearted attempts to revive my Spanish with an old high school textbook, but never got past chapter two or so. I later found FSI, but again I didn’t get past chapter 15 of the Programmatic course before giving up. Then, finally, in April 2015, I decided I wanted to go to the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in 2016 and I was too embarrassed to think of showing up speaking only two languages fluently and only remembering a few phrases from a bunch of others. Since I only had a year, and Spanish is supposed to be easy, and I had studied it before, I thought I should be able to revive Spanish and go with three fluent languages. It didn’t work out that way, but I did manage to get Spanish up to a level where I could sort of manage a conversation. Now it’s been about a year and nine months since I restarted Spanish and my Spanish is finally starting to get somewhere. I recently had a conversation with an italki tutor and he said I was probably about a B2. I think that’s pretty accurate, though I feel my speaking is on the weak side of B2 still, or maybe B1 depending on the topic and my nerves.

My most recent and successful effort

And now a summary of how I got from false beginner to B2ish in a little less than two years: I started again with FSI Programmatic. I heartily recommend this course to beginners and false beginners. The pronunciation exercises might seem tedious and endless, but they will help you to achieve excellent pronunciation and listening skills. The grammar drills are also very helpful. At the same time as FSI, I also went through Duolingo (not great, but a fun supplement), and Language Transfer Complete Spanish (an excellent overview of the language). I only fairly recently finished FSI Programmatic, but I got through Duolingo and LT a while back. I then added Notes in Spanish Intermediate podcast and was amazed that I could understand it. Every time before when I’d tried to listen to Spanish, it was just a blur of sound, but the tedious pronunciation exercises from FSI Programmatic taught me to hear and distinguish the sounds of the language. I continued to listen to Notes in Spanish while walking and do FSI Programmatic at home. I also added in “Gramática de uso del español” workbook level A1-A2 (an excellent series that I highly recommend). I also added in FSI Basic for a while, but eventually decided to drop it until I’d finished the Programmatic course. I even read a free Kindle novel (Dos gatos y el misterio del Mercado de la Cebada) I found on Amazon, which turned out to be strange, but kind of fun and easier than I’d expected. I also watched a telenovela for learners called "Destinos" (available on the Destinos website) and a short sit-com for learners called "Extr@" (available on YouTube).

About a year ago, I started watching my first real telenovela, “La fea más bella,” a comedic, Mexican version of “Yo soy Betty, la fea,” the Colombian telenovela that inspired “Ugly Betty.” At first, I didn’t understand a lot of the dialogue, but I could still mostly follow the story. It took something like 60-100 episodes before I started to feel like I could follow most of the dialogue without a lot of strain. Around Easter, the story got very exciting and I developed a 10-15 episode a day addiction for a while. After that, the telenovela might as well have been in English. I rarely had any trouble except when there was a lot of background noise. During this time, I also had occasional language exchanges on Skype, but they were fairly short and infrequent. I also finished level A1-A2 of the grammar workbook and moved on to level B1-B2. I also moved on to the advanced level of Notes in Spanish, but honestly I don’t notice much difference between their intermediate and advanced levels. After I finished the 300 episodes of the Mexican telenovela, I moved on to the Colombian version, “Yo soy Betty, la fea” (available on the YouTube channel “Los Capítulos”). I had to strain a little for the first 15 episodes or so, but I soon caught on to the new accent and followed along with little trouble. I finished it and its sequel, “Ecomoda,” and also read the one Star Trek book I could find in Spanish and Isabel Allende’s “La casa de los espíritus.” I then watched the Spanish series, “El Ministerio del Tiempo” (available with subs on RTVE’s website and app). European Spanish is still the hardest for me and I cheated a little by having the Spanish subtitles on. There were only two seasons available since they haven’t started season three yet, and it wasn’t enough to make the language easy for me, so I’ll have to watch another series from Spain to fix that. It was around this time (this autumn) that I finished FSI Programmatic and continued on with part two of FSI Basic.

At present, I’m nearly finished watching the 174 episode Argentinian series “Grande Pa” (available on Telefe’s YouTube channel, but with bad sound quality). I’m also reading Harry Potter. I’m nearly finished with part two of four of FSI Basic and I’m a few pages from the end of “Gramática de uso del español” level B1-B2. My main study routine involves occasional progress in FSI and my grammar workbook, a bit of reading, and massive TV watching.

Future plans
I don’t want to plan too far ahead and at this point Spanish is something I just like to relax and have fun with. I don’t want to ruin my relationship with it by trying to force myself to “study.” So, my plans are: once I’ve finished with the B-level grammar workbook, I will wait with the C-level until I’ve finished part 3, and possibly even part 4 of FSI basic. I will continue to watch loads of TV and try to read a bit more. I’ll probably finish Harry Potter because that should be pretty easy and then my reading level will probably be such that reading unfamiliar, native literature should be relatively comfortable. I also hope to practice a bit of writing and speaking, but in all things, I will take an easy route. I’ve found that doing massive quantities of things I find easy, comfortable and fun is more effective than small amounts of hard work, at least for now. Massive amounts of hard work would probably be even more effective, but it isn’t going to happen.

Secret to my “success” (TL;DR summary)
I’m far from the most successful or best language learner around, but I feel like I have achieved quite a bit with Spanish considering it was pretty painless. Basically, I used a few good courses (FSI Programmatic and “Gramática de uso del español”) plus whatever remnants of grammar from high school that still remained in my subconscious to build a solid core of grammar. I then used massive and fairly passive input in the form of podcasts and TV. I just did a rough calculation of how many hours of TV shows and podcasts I’ve watched/listened to and it comes out to about 500 hours. That many hours of focused study would have probably taken me much further, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.

[Hundetier]

When I was actively listening to these podcasts, I thought that Spanishpodcast.net was easier than A mi Aire and I find it interesting that you find it more difficult. I think that at the A2-B1 level our perceptions of difficulty is strongly influenced by the vocabulary used. Perhaps, my vocabulary at the time was better represented by Spanishpodcast.net.

I started very early with Spanishpodcast.net and was overwhelmed. Then I reduced podcast-listening and started with the "Español in Episodios"-Youtube-videos. And some time later I discovered "A mi aire", and this level is (now) good for me. Today I can also understand the first podcast a lot better, but this only shows, that classifications are very subjective and depending on your own knowledge. This is indeed very interesting

Thank you very much for your descriptions of the podcasts for the first page - I'm not good in writing texts.

[Keth]

¡Buenos días/tardes/noches a todos!

I'm really glad to see so many people interested in learning my own language. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Barcelona, Spain. Most of you seem to be interested in south american accents rather than castilian, so I'm afraid that I might not be able to help you with you speaking. Nevertheless, if you ever need help with a grammar point or anything else don't hesitate to send me a private message and I'll help you (I have a degree in Spanish language and literature, so my grammar knowledge is, supposedly, pretty good ).

Material suggestion

Aquí no hay quien viva - A comedy TV series that was pretty popular here and even in other european countries. You might find chapters in youtube, although it could be a little difficult to follow for beginners.

Laura Gallego / Carlos Ruiz Zafón - Two authors who wrote successful (and really good) books for teenagers. You've probably heard about Zafón's adult trilogy, but he adopted a baroque and obscure style in these; if you want to read something written by him, I'd recommend El Príncipe de la Niebla for beginners/intermediate learners.

[Cavesa]

I am interested mostly in the European Spanish!!!
And I've aready read Zafon's el príncipe de la niebla trilogy

And I happen to have tons of questions! Thanks for showing up in this thread!
-do you know any tv series or other listening resources using southern castillian Spanish? I mean that mysterious cryptic language the andalusians and other people in the south use to confuse the rest of the world, including northern Spaniards occassionaly from what I've seen and heard.

-do you have any favourite adult fantasy or sci-fi authors to recommend? I know many people with literature degrees aren't interested in these "low" genres, but one never knows. I've already found some but I am always looking for more. I have quite a good overall idea of the magical realism and other high literature variations on these genres, but I don't need those for now, perhaps in a few months.

-educational websites, that are not wikipedia? Wikipedia is good but sometimes the format is not that comfortable to read. I mean stuff like popular science, webs for highschoolers, history, accessible university resources, moocs, anything like that?

-really good historical and/or crime fiction? There are tons of these in Spanish, I believe. It is not hard to encounter some. But it is hard to choose really good stuff, without happening to read at least a few mediocre ones at first. El Reino del Norte (a besteller from three years ago) is waiting for me back at home on a shelf and looks promising, but there must be more. And Falcones is waiting there too, and he surely didn't make it among the internationally famous writers for nothing. But there must be many more!

I hope I haven't just scared you away!

....................
Brun Ugle those telenovelas you've been exposed to are showing in your writing
Just joking. But I'll need to read it all in several episodes.

[Random Review]

¡Buenos días/tardes/noches a todos!

I'm really glad to see so many people interested in learning my own language. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Barcelona, Spain. Most of you seem to be interested in south american accents rather than castilian, so I'm afraid that I might not be able to help you with you speaking. Nevertheless, if you ever need help with a grammar point or anything else don't hesitate to send me a private message and I'll help you (I have a degree in Spanish language and literature, so my grammar knowledge is, supposedly, pretty good ).

Material suggestion

Aquí no hay quien viva - A comedy TV series that was pretty popular here and even in other european countries. You might find chapters in youtube, although it could be a little difficult to follow for beginners.

Laura Gallego / Carlos Ruiz Zafón - Two authors who wrote successful (and really good) books for teenagers. You've probably heard about Zafón's adult trilogy, but he adopted a baroque and obscure style in these; if you want to read something written by him, I'd recommend El Príncipe de la Niebla for beginners/intermediate learners.

Aquí no hay quien viva was fantastic, I totally second that recommendation. A friend of mine (who doesn't speak Spanish) read one of Zafón's books in English translation a few years ago (on the recommendation of his Spanish girlfriend) and he in turn recommended it (highly) to me. I remember the audiobook was available on ivoox at the time, perhaps it still is, but I didn't read it/listen to it in the end.
Laura Gallego is very readable, I have read and enjoyed a few of hers (which is embarrassing as she obviously writes for girls). I think I commented on HTLAL a few years ago that one of the joys of language learning is the excuse to read and enjoy stuff you'd be too ashamed to read in your own tongue (IIRC the book I had in mind was Tan veloz como el deseo by Laura Esquivel, which is a fantastic book of the kind that guys aren't normally allowed to read in the UK). She (Laura Gallego) writes for all different age groups, so something like Retorno a la Isla Blanca is for young kids and therefore very simple to read, whereas books like La emperatriz de los Etéreos are probably more for teens. IIRC I didn't think she is terribly original TBH, but she seemed to have a real knack for giving her own spin to other people's ideas or combining them in interesting ways and the result is very readable.