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Bolio’s Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 217 of 344 06 August 2014 at 10:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, I have to say that I am impressed with all the progress that you have been able to make so far this year! I noticed that your first entries were dated in February and you claimed to have only known a couple hundred words. Great job!
I have trouble with lo, le, etc. myself. I guess I should spend more time trying to learn grammar, but I'm having a good time reading my Spanish book at the moment. Perhaps as I read I should pay more attention to how those clitic pronouns (I didn't even know that's what they were called before now) are used. Have a great time in Mexico! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4088 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 218 of 344 06 August 2014 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
You really have improved a lot, though! And we're all part of the forever club. It's a good thing Spanish is so much fun to learn, right? ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5206 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 219 of 344 06 August 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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The learning never stops, even after 20 or so years. What does stop, or at least drastically diminish is the frustration and desperation in the beginning and intermediate stages only to be replaced by consternation at not being able to find just the right word and/or turn of phrase. When it flows, it's magic and I love it. When I screw up, I accept it, laugh at myself and try to do better the next time. To paraphrase MLK "I ain't where I want to be. I ain't where I'm going to be, but thank God I'm not we're I used to be." You'll reach this stage soon enough. In the meantime, keep up the good work. You are doing more than well. ¡Buen viaje! Espero que todo vaya bien. ¡Viva México! Edited by iguanamon on 06 August 2014 at 4:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4602 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 220 of 344 06 August 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the compliments and the well wishes. This board and the members are as much a part of my language learning as Assimil, FSI, etc. Thank you all for your help.
On a side note, if you are reading this and are just starting your journey with Spanish, please check out the link that Crush provided a few posts back. The best way I can describe it is... Michel Thomas without the terrible accent and the male student who makes you want to reach through the audio program and choke the ever loving crap out of him. It really is all the good parts of MT without the negatives, IMO. All the best, BOLIO 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4602 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 221 of 344 12 August 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, the trip was wonderful. My family and another family went to Querétaro, mexico. We were hosted by friends of ours who live in The States 9 months out of the year but are from Querétaro. My friend mentioned our first day in country that my Spanish was better than when they left us 2.5 months ago. That was nice to hear. The trip was a real language experience in that Spanish was the primary language spoken in our group. I was able to help translate for our friends who spoke no Spanish, and I was able to avoid speaking English to anyone outside of our car group. We started by traveling to a place I had never heard of called Tolantongo in the state of Hidalgo. It was a very nice place with a nice Hotel on site. It was on the side of a mountain and overlooked a river that started just a few meters from the property (google image- it is nice). The cave( origin of the river), river and pools were excellent and I would want to go again. There were NO Americans there...none. Next we went back to Querétaro and saw the city. It was very nice and if the journey would have ended there I would have been very pleased. However, we also travelled to San Miguel de Allende. I travelled around the city with our friends who showed us some of their favorite places to eat and see. I could see why many people like the area. Then... I fell in love. I fell in love with the city of Guanajuato. We stayed in that beautiful city several days and I could have stayed longer. We traveled around and took in the views, the architecture, The Iquisition Museum (creepy), some artistic places such as El Teatro Juárez, visited a 400 year old silver mine, and of course the mummies. The age of everything was really interesting (Coming from the states, this is a big deal to me). I was able to hold limited conversations with waiters, the Jefe de maseros, and various staff members of the hotel about a few subjects other than ordering food. Our hotel had these huge paintings in it that described different stories about the area. They told stories of the large Cathedral's grand opening in 1765. Another told the story of the arrival of a higher up within the Catholic church in 1565. I may have the date wrong by a year or two but it was less than 75 years after Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas. Anyway, the point was that I was able to make myself understood to complete strangers and for right now I am very happy with that. I know I did not sound like a native speaker or even a well educated foreigner, but I was thrilled that I was understood and I could understand them. My real learning from the trip was from my friend who returns to the states in a couple of days. I sat up front with him as we drove from place to place and I would ask him anything and everything I saw written from the road that I did not understand. He graciously answered my questions in both Spanish and English. Last night we had our best conversation yet in Spanish. I asked him why he chose Houston as a place to live when he could have chosen anywhere. He explained to me that it had direct flights from Querétaro that would take only 1.5 hours and that housing was inexpensive vs other parts of the country. Also, they really liked their visits except for the hot weather. He asked me about other parts of the country and had a real conversation in only Spanish. I had to have my wife and him help me with some vocabulary words like "impuestos", "jubilación", "soporte de impuesto" and other terms that I had no idea. One of the wives on the trip looks at my wife and says, "When you said your husband was working on learning Spanish, we had no idea that he could speak so much. He has been speaking almost nothing but Spanish for a week now." I loved it. During the trip, my friend from Mexico helped me with structuring sentences, pronouns and tenses. One day he asked me to tell him in Spanish how to say "We have been eating very well". I messed it up but not too bad. I said "Hemos estaNdo comiendo muy bien." He made it very clear to me on how to use tense correctly with HE HA HAS HEMOS HAN + Estado + _____ando or ____iendo. He had me create new sentences using this structure and he said that it will help me in my conversations and my comfort level. I agree. One last thing. During our trip we went to this big rock called Peña de Bernal. It is one of the larger rock structures in the world. One of my friends in the vehicle who does not speak Spanish mentioned that from where we were (several miles off) that the rock looked like a woman's breast off in the distance. My friend from Mexico looks at me and says, " In Mexico we have a saying, 'Quien hambre tiene en pan piensa'. I told my friend who had made the comment about the "breast" what it meant and he looks at his wife and says, "well I guess it is true because I am thinking about it right now." We cracked up laughing at him. This morning before leaving on the plane, my friend from Mexico looks at me and tells me that my skills are growing right before his eyes and he is looking forward to having very long and interesting conversations ONLY in Spanish. Yo también. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5510 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 222 of 344 14 August 2014 at 5:49am | IP Logged | ||
Bolio -
Sí, lo será. Y eso es donde radica la belleza de aprender algo como un idioma: no tiene un final. Tú creces, el idioma crece, y tú vuelves a crecer a tu vez, es como una relación entre dos seres. Sin final, pero siempre con sorpresas a lo largo del camino. ¡Felicidades con todo el progreso que ya has logrado durante los últimos meses! ¡Sigue así! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 223 of 344 15 August 2014 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Glad that you had a good time in Mexico, and were able to speak so much Spanish!
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5319 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 224 of 344 15 August 2014 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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yes, I must say, I really enjoy reading your blog... especially about your trip. congratulations on your progress. Those trips are the most rewarding part of learning the language.
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