What I did the last two weeks (March 12th to March 25th):- Spanish language lunch (but I only listened and said two words)
- Listened to 14 minutes of Radio Ambulante: 3/14/17, El superhéroe
- Watched a bunch of YouTube things of native Spanish speakers
- Watched Lady Dynamite episodes 1-10 with Spanish dubs, no subtitles
- Read 7 pages of La casa en Mango Street
- Read 2 pages of Taller práctico de escritura de telenovela
- Read 26 pages of La ciudad de las bestias
Some comments:Note to self: when I have some time, I should go through and update my media list at the beginning of this log
Feeling of malaiseI've been feeling a bit of malaise with my language learning and using. I don't quite know what's wrong, but I've abandoned my current book and TV show and I'm hoping the change in routine will snap me out of it. I did practically nothing the week before last; only the two words at Spanish lunch and 14 minutes of Radio Ambulante were during that week. Everything else was in the past week.
The weirdness of inconsistent listening comprehensionIn addition to or as part of my malaise, I've had the weird-to-me feeling that it's easier to watch things than it is to read. I don't think this means my reading is stronger than my listening, but it's been weird for me to have it be so hard to get started reading and then watch some native speaker YouTube videos where I understand everything like it's in my native language. Again, only some of the videos were like that, while others were not, but it was odd and freeing to understand everything in some videos while I've been watching a telenovela where my comprehension is definitely less than that. I also don't know what it is that's causing the difference in comprehension between the videos where I understand everything and the videos where I understand just a lot.
Anyway, I decided to stop
Celia, at least for now, and try to watch Spanish dubbings of shows I know well so I can go for quantity and try to understand the Spanish being spoken rather than have to figure out plot and character stuff on top of that. Which brings me to my next subtopic!
The process of deciding which dubbed series to watchI have a collection of TV DVDs, and I know at least some seasons of Buffy DVDs have Spanish dubs, but I decided to search Netflix, because it's easier to just turn to Netflix than dealing with the physicality of DVDs. I went through
the list of series on US Netflix with Spanish audio looking for shows I've watched more than once and would want to watch again. There were none, but there were a handful of comedies that I've watched once and would want to watch again. I decided to start with
Lady Dynamite because I'd been wanting to rewatch that anyway. In just a couple of days, I've gone through 10 episodes, totalling 279 minutes. I don't think I've watched that much Spanish TV in that amount of time since I started, so it's a good start to getting a large quantity of Spanish listening.
Giving up on El último juradoIn changing everything about my routine, I gave up on
El último jurado, not because it was a bad book, but because I needed a change and I wanted to read a book on my Kindle.
La casa en Mango StreetI started
La casa en Mango Street, but I didn't like it. It’s a first person kind of stream of consciousness narration of a child, who apparently is supposed to be 12 or 13 years old, but seems, from what little I read, much younger, to the point where I was wondering if she had some kind of intellectual disability that I had missed in my brief googling about the book before I started. Anyway, from my reaction to this and the Manolito Gafotas book, I think I may not like child narrators? Whatever it is, I really did not like it, and only made it 7 pages before deciding I could not go on.
Taller práctico de escritura de telenovelaIn following the "read what you read in English but in Spanish" advice a while ago, I had looked for books about TV in Spanish and found this book about writing telenovelas. This week, I read the introduction and a few paragraphs of the first chapter. I'm keeping this open as my non-fiction book, but will probably focus on the following fiction book.
La ciudad de la bestiasI've started
La ciudad de las bestias and that seems to be going well so far. I've had a smooth start. It was immediately engrossing. In just three pages, I had come upon a phrase I love the sound of. I'm sure it's common, because it sounds too perfect not to be, but it's the first time I remember coming across it: "tonto, pero no tanto." (English: "dumb, but not that dumb", from the more literal translation of "dumb, but not that much".)