Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 209 of 384 24 February 2014 at 2:42am | IP Logged |
nicozerpa wrote:
Gallego is indeed very similar to both Spanish and Portuguese, someone who is fluent in
those two languages can understand written and spoken Galician with very few problems.
Wow, just 20 days away from your departure! I hope you enjoy your trip to Camino de
Santiago.
¡Muchos éxitos! |
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Muchas gracias nicozerpa! My heart flutters just thinking about it!
Many thanks to you for following my Spanish journey for so long. I appreciate the encouragement.
Edited by Stelle on 24 February 2014 at 2:43am
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 210 of 384 24 February 2014 at 9:56pm | IP Logged |
Stelle, i also study Galego and Euskara, though my Galician is getting a bit rusty these days. As nicozerpa said, learning to read Galician isn't difficult at all for someone with a background in Spanish (or Portuguese, though spoken Galician to me sounds much closer to Spanish than to Portuguese), and if you ever want to learn Portuguese it will also help tremendously with that. There's a book called "Do Ñ para o NH" for speakers of Galician to make the switch to Portuguese. Anyway, i think it's really pretty and i hope you don't drop them when your trip's over! If you have any questions about Euskara or Galego feel free to ask. You can download the entire Aula de galego book and audio for free from the Xunta website, and a search for "Galego coloquial" will provide you with another great course for learning Galego. There's also e-galego :)
I'm not sure if you're actually interested in learning both of these languages, but i can share some more resources to learn them if you are (like the Ikasten course for Euskara). Anyway, enjoy your trip, i really wish i were headed that way!
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Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 211 of 384 25 February 2014 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
Thanks Crush! I don't think I'm going to study either Galego or Euskara - at least not now. I have my hands full with
improving my Spanish and learning Tagalog. In the meantime, I just want to learn some basic greetings so that I can
say hello and thank you to people in their own language. I'm fluent in French and semi-fluent in Spanish, so once I
get past the basic polite talk, I can switch to whichever language is most useful.
I think that Euskara is absolutely fascinating, though…I do hope to learn more someday!
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kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4848 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese
| Message 212 of 384 25 February 2014 at 5:42am | IP Logged |
Hey Stelle! Spain sounds awesome. I was in Madrid and Barcelona for a few days in December and January, and I had a good time.
Just a quick question, if you don't mind. You said you use FSI Spanish Basic as an audio-only course. I'm assuming the audio is all-Spanish, right? What do you do when you don't know a word or sentence?
I've thought about doing audio-only with DLI Portuguese Basic, which probably has a lot of similarities with FSI Spanish Basic, but I have no idea how to deal with words I don't know. At the very least, I would need to look up all the unknown words and phrases of a dialog before I work with only the audio.
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BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4623 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish
| Message 213 of 384 25 February 2014 at 7:32am | IP Logged |
Ooh, thank you for the inspiration! I need to follow your example and learn a few basics of Catalan. I've already been trying to get more exposure to the vosotros form of Castellano in preparation for my upcoming trip, but it didn't occur to me to expose myself to Catalan until I read your log. What was I thinking?... Thanks again,
...and I'm SO impressed that you are already packing, although it makes perfect sense since every gram will count as you walk the path.
What a fabulous adventure you'll soon be having! :)
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 214 of 384 25 February 2014 at 8:39am | IP Logged |
kujichagulia, the Spanish FSI course is really great. I think it is best used with the book, but only to read the grammar explanations and to catch any words you couldn't make out, whether from the fast speech of the speakers or the poor recording quality. You don't need the book for any of the drills, however, and you also don't need it for any vocabulary. The vocabulary is generally presented in a dialog at the start of the unit which includes an English translation (that you're supposed to translate into Spanish). I think that's the only actual English on the recordings, but it's been a while since i've gone through the course.
I've found that the DLI courses generally aren't as well organized (or at least not as clear/easy to follow) as the FSI ones, though the Portuguese one does looks pretty nice. However, you will probably need to go through the dialog once or twice with the book until you've learned the new vocabulary and grammar, then i imagine you can go through the rest of the drills without the book. The drills shouldn't use new vocabulary, at least not for production.
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kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4848 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese
| Message 215 of 384 26 February 2014 at 1:39am | IP Logged |
Crush wrote:
The vocabulary is generally presented in a dialog at the start of the unit which includes an English translation (that you're supposed to translate into Spanish). I think that's the only actual English on the recordings, but it's been a while since i've gone through the course. |
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Ah, I see. That is the main difference between that and my DLI Portuguese course. The DLI audio has no English at all on it, aside from instructions like "Pay attention to the cues. Number 1..." And the audio doesn't present any vocabulary. It has perception drills, dialog, dialog with pauses, and pattern drills... with no verbal translations.
I can see why FSI Spanish Basic can be used as an audio-only course now.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 216 of 384 26 February 2014 at 5:38am | IP Logged |
Yeah, though if you're using it as your main course and not as a way to activate what you already know, it really is much better reading through each unit once. I generally spent about 6-7 hours on the drills in each unit and maybe 10-15 minutes reading through grammar notes, clearing up words i couldn't make out, etc.
Perhaps someone could take the Portuguese dialogs and record a line-by-line English translation, but you'd still be missing out on the grammar notes.
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