dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5014 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 225 of 319 26 February 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged |
Thanks Chung! I was aware of the University of Texas exercises, but not of the cultural interviews! That looks like a fantastic resource.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 226 of 319 01 March 2014 at 4:03am | IP Logged |
Learning Resources:
I've grown rather fond of using Pimsleur to kick-start a language. It definitely isn't the
cheapest option, but it gets you into the habit of producing the language early on and is
audio-only so it can be done during a commute or other tasks where your visual focus is
required elsewhere.
I've also grown quite fond of Destinos. I've watched 39 of the 52 episodes so far and
while the pace is a bit slow at times, it is still interesting enough to keep watching. In
addition, I suddenly realized at one point that the English had vanished from the series
somewhere along the line without me noticing. In the first few episodes there is some
English narration thrown in here and there but soon that disappears and the only
English at all in the later episodes is the "An Introduction To Spanish" phrase that is
said and displayed during the intro at the very beginning and the credits.
For an online dictionary I tend to use WordReference, which works well and also has a
conjugator and searches the forums along with the dictionary which is useful as those
forum posts often do a very good job clarifying a usage or grammar point.
Songs:
Most of the songs I've happened across in Spanish recently have come from one of two
sources. The first source is this forum where songs were recommended in various posts
in the past. From those suggestions, I picked up "Jarabe de Palo - Bonito" and "Café
Tacvba - Eres". The other source was the "Learning Spanish From Music Videos" series
from http://howlearnspanish.com/ (which seems to have become hardly
more than a "buy my book" site now {sigh}). From there I picked up a sampling of Shakira
songs (my favorites being "Suerte" and "Te Aviso, Te Anuncio") and "Juanes - Yerbatero".
Movies / TV:
I'm not really watching much native Spanish media (other than a movie here or there) but
have been watching a fair bit of US media that is dubbed in Spanish. I remember when
looking through my DVDs in the past that half or more of them had Spanish audio tracks
available.
My primary video watching (other than Destinos) has been Buffy La Cazavampiros which
has proven to be quite entertaining in Spanish as well. One nice thing about this series
is that the humor doesn't often require complex dialog. For example, the dialog below
was from season 1, episode 5 and was quite humorous (to me, anyway) yet has no
complex grammar or vocabulary at all, nor does it rely on any puns.
The scenario is that Buffy is upstairs (with Willow and Xander) getting ready for a date
with Owen. For further context, she had also talked previously with Giles about some big
supernatural event that was brewing that, as the slayer, would of course require her to
intervene.
{doorbell}
Buffy: {excitedly} Ese es Owen.
{Buffy dashes downstairs and opens the door}
Buffy: {dejectedly} Ese es Giles.
Giles: Tenemos que hablar.
Buffy: Buffy no está en casa.
In fact, now that I read that dialog on its own, it doesn't really even seem all that
humorous. In context, however, I found it quite funny and if you watch that scene you will
find that this is a good example of the type of humor that is spread throughout this
series.
Comics:
One nice thing about Spanish is that many popular print comics in the US are available
online in Spanish versions as well. The link below is a list of the Spanish comics
available at gocomics.com and many of them are Spanish translations of US print comics
they host there as well. As such, you can read those comics in parallel and compare
the English and Spanish versions of the same comic strip.
http://www.gocomics.com/explore/espanol
Edited by Warp3 on 02 March 2014 at 9:08pm
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 227 of 319 02 March 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
Estoy tratando de decidir si suscribirme a 'People en español' o no. Mis sobrinas
venden revistas para recaudar fondos para su escuela, pero sólo hay tres revistas en
español. Dos de esas son para mujeres ('Latina' y 'Siempre Mujer') y la otra es 'People
en español'. Normalmente no leo mucho las revistas pero quizás esta revista sea útil
para mis estudios. ¿Qué me recomiendan? ¿Se parece una buena idea o no?
Traducción:
I'm trying to decide whether to subscribe to 'People en español' or not. My nieces are
selling magazines to raise funds for their school, but there are only three magazines in
Spanish. Two of those are for women ('Latina' and 'Siempre Mujer') and the other is
'People en español'. Normally I don't read magazines much but maybe this magazine
would be useful for my studies. What do you recommend? Does it seem like a good idea
or not?
I think that may be one of the longest Spanish posts I've written yet.
Edited by Warp3 on 02 March 2014 at 9:09pm
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BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish
| Message 228 of 319 02 March 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
@Warp3: It may not be a bad idea, above all because you want to show support to your nieces. There's that old joke about being able to read an entire issue of People magazine while waiting for a stoplight to change...
There will be lots of pictures and relatively simple to read articles with lots of common words (good reinforcement of vocabulary), mostly information about celebrities and TV shows, which may or may not be of interest to you, and it's probably inexpensive enough that you won't feel very guilty if you end up just glancing through it then tossing it in the recycle bin or dropping it off at your local laundromat or dentist office. *And* your name will get on some Spanish-language mailing lists, which could be a double-edged sword.
I've looked through the magazine Latina and it's actually bilingual English-Spanish, so that would be a worse choice.
On the other hand, maybe you could just make a cash donation to your nieces' school and buy yourself something you have more interest in reading.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 229 of 319 02 March 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
I hadn't heard that joke nor have I really read 'People' magazine in English for reference
(partly since I don't particularly care about celebrity news), but short, simple articles
would definitely be a plus since I wouldn't find myself dreading lengthy articles (and thus
never reading them).
From what I've read 'People en español' is about 90% original content (with the
remaining 10% being translations of articles from the English edition) so perhaps that
will give me the insight into Spanish celebrities and media that I seem to lack at the
moment. As I noted above, I don't particularly care about celebrity news in general but
that hasn't stopped me from keeping up with news (somewhat) about Korean celebrities
(mostly those in the music world) so perhaps the same will be true with Spanish ones.
Another way to look at it is that worst case I'm out $15 (one year) or $20 (two years)
which won't exactly break my finances or anything. After all I just finished spending $108
on Spanish IV from Pimsleur about 20 minutes ago.
In fact, I just convinced myself. If I need a good "hook" for Spanish (which is my primary
goal for Team Lobo 2014) then I need to know more about the Spanish entertainment
world and this seems like as good a way as any to get started. Thanks for the feedback.
Edited by Warp3 on 02 March 2014 at 9:59pm
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5857 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 230 of 319 03 March 2014 at 2:59am | IP Logged |
¿Porqué no le echas un vistazo a su sitio web? Así tienes una idea más o menos de qué se tratará la revista.
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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 231 of 319 03 March 2014 at 4:09am | IP Logged |
Correction round:
Warp3 wrote:
¿Se parece una buena idea o no? |
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¿[Les] parece una buena idea o no?
I won't answer to that, btw. End of round.
Quote:
I think that may be one of the longest Spanish posts I've written yet. |
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Now, are you just good or just shy? I'm still not sure if you write so little to avoid making mistakes or if you don't really feel like writing more. For the same reason I'm not sure if I should give you my congratulations, or keep waiting ;)
OK, going into real nitpicking mode so I can say something else... unless you're watching Buffy in some American variant of Spanish, it's just "Buffy cazavampiros" (without "la"). End of round again. Good job :)
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 232 of 319 03 March 2014 at 4:12am | IP Logged |
Es una buena idea, Crush, pero ya la compré después de mi entrada anterior en este hilo.
A propósito, estaba equivocado: Sólo cuesta $19 por dos años o $14 por uno. Yo compré
dos años.
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