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Language Virgin. Let’s Start With Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 17 of 26 14 August 2013 at 9:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've struggled really badly with structures involving "lo" "que" "te" etc since the start, when sentences are said
in a completely different order from English, it seems so alien my brain just can't figure it out, especially when I'm listening to audio and there's no time to work it out before the next sentence hits you! For example.. "A veces te dicen hoy no te lo lleves que no está tan fresco como siempre." When said at a slow speed I couldn't make sense of it at all, even when I read it it took me a while to get the gist (still not sure why llevar is used which confused me totally), I had to check the English translation to understand. Looking at it again, I'm still not sure what "no te lo lleves que" is supposed to mean here? "no está tan fresco como siempre." I think means "it isn't as fresh as it usually is." I guess they say "como siempre" (like always) as we use "as usual" in this context? Anyway these constructions where everything seems to be said in a jumbled up way for an English speaker's brain are really giving me headaches. It feels like a mathematical equation to be worked out. Do you just get used to it? Should I be hearing it but not piecing it together or something? Everytime I encounter these it just stops me dead in my tracks and I have little chance of understanding when listening to it being said. I always just forget it, and go back afterwards attempting to deconstruct it which I mostly fail at before looking at the English. Hopefully I'll just start understanding it one day, I'm not sure if I need to do extra work with it or if I just hope it starts to make sense. The worrying thing is that this is beginners material, I'm sure these structures get a LOT more complicated at higher levels since this is probably a simple sentence lol. Edit: After googling it, it appears to mean, in a direct translation, something along the lines of " today, no, to you, it, you take." Which is very alien to an English person. I know direct translations aren't always the best idea but I feel I need to see it to help me understand the patterns sometimes. It seems difficult to imagine getting used to word orders like this, I guess it becomes the norm after a lot of exposure though, at least I hope so anyway. As when things are ordered in the same way as English it makes it much easier for me to understand. I'm trying so hard not to resist a new way of saying things, like English is the correct way and this way isn't or something, I know that's wrong, but when I continue to hit a wall with alien word orders it's tough sometimes haha. Edited by Heliion on 14 August 2013 at 2:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 18 of 26 01 September 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just a quick update..
After exhausting Notes In Spanish Beginners worksheets I've started to listen to a few of the intermediate podcasts and can surprisingly understand a fair amount on repeated listening. There is one 10 minute intermediate conversation that I can now get about 90-95% after listening 20+ times over the last week. It's amazing how you start to understand more and more after repeat listening. I'm still nowhere near understanding most of the 5 or 6 I've listened to, I think that's mostly down to unknown vocab being used in certain episodes. I'm not sure about buying the transcripts just yet as I've ordered Assimil Spanish With Ease. I've also ordered Micheal Thomas Total Spanish to help me understand sentence structure better. That seems to be one of the things (other than vocab) that is stalling my listening progress, I'm still having real problems with "lo" "me" "le" "que" etc, especially when they're used 3 or 4 times in a single sentence. Things like "me das un libro" (you gave me a book) or "le he visto esta manaña" (I saw him this morning), or "lo que me gusta más" (the thing I like most) is just about ok for me but when there's a cluster of lo, que, se (I'm still not sure what "se" is used for exactly), me, le etc then I'm all over the place and I don't inderstand. It becomes like a mathematical equation to me, so I wonder if I missed out on something when I first started to learn the beginners stuff? I've heard Micheal Thomas is mostly about verb conjugations but although I'm no expert at those I have a much better grasp on them than structures with these pronouns (I think they're called pronouns?) scattered everywhere. I'm English and we don't learn grammer at school so I really struggle with it. I heard he covers that area too. Anyway, I'm going to go through MT as soon as it arrives, then hopefully I'll be better equipped to tackle Asimill, and perhaps I'll order those intermediate transcripts for next month when I'm well into Assimil. I plan to soak up as much as I possibly can from the Assiml book, I almost learned the Notes In Spanish conversations by heart to really try to internalize everything, I think that helped, I may have over learned it but I don't think that's all together a bad thing and I plan to spend perhaps a full year with Assimil to really get it in my brain. I learn slowly, I never pick up things quickly so it'll have to be this way. I've also been reading a bit on lingq over the last week or so which has possibly helped me learn a few new words if nothing much else. I'm still having some comprehension problems with some of those problem structures mentioned above. The audio for the texts on there is waaaaaay too fast for me too, I'm lucky to pick out much if I'm honest but that's something I have struggled with throughout, I'm just not hearing the Spanish, I'm still translating to English as I listen, this has gotten a little quicker but I still have to keep stopping and rewinding because I missed what was said as I was still trying to translate in my head what I just heard. I'm hoping eventually it'll just suddenly make sense without having to think about the English for every word, I'm not sure if there's anything I need to do to make this happen other than to keep listening as much as possible? Anyway, for now, I'll try to say something in Spanish since I haven't really done that yet.. Espero que puedo (pueda ?) aprender muchas nuevas palabras, y tambien, nuevos maneras poder pensar en otra idioma con mí nuevos cursos. En el futuro, a lo mejor, yo podrè hablar mucho más mejor que hago ahora. No puedo esperar para Assimil llegar asi que puedo empezar, aúnque yo sé que será mucho trabajo dura! Por lo menos voy a tratar subir un nivel o dos en mi español! No cuido si toma todo del año que viene, yo seguiré hasta alcanzo nivel B1 mas o menos. He hecho solo diez meses de estudio, quizas una hora por dia, empezando desde Noviembre el año pasado, soy demasiado despacio, lo sé jaja, pero estoy aprendiendo poco a poco. I'm sure I made countless mistakes both with words used and word order , and I'm pretty sure the subjunctive was supposed to be used after "espero que" but at least I tried haha. If anyone wants to correct me it'll be much appreciated. In case it made no sense at all, I wanted to say... "I hope that I can learn many new words, and as well, new ways to be able to think in another language with my new courses. In the future, I will probably be able to speak much better than I do now. I can't wait for Assimil to arrive so that I can start, although I know it will be hard work! At least I'm going to try to go up a level or 2 in my Spanish. I don't care if it takes the whole of next year, I will continue until I reach level B1 more or less. I have done only 10 months of study, perhaps 1 hour/day starting from November last year, I'm too slow, I know haha, but I'm learning bit by bit." I wish I could say I did that in a few minutes but the truth is it took me about 15 minutes lol. I looked up 2 or 3 verbs but I'd say I knew almost all of what I wanted to say aparte de "poco a poco" cual supe, pero tuve olvidado (sorry, couldn't resist another attempt, I often wonder how a sentence might be said in Spanish so I try it out now and then).. Unfortunately thinking out each word in English first makes it somewhat painful to write but I think I need to start trying more and more for practice. I hope at least some of it is correct anyway. :) Edited by Heliion on 01 September 2013 at 8:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5024 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 26 02 September 2013 at 1:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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A good book to help you get your head around that sort of thing is "Margarita Madrigals Magic Key to Spanish", which would be a superb book to work through alongside Assimil. Also FSI has tons of drills on those types of construction, and "Professor Jason" has some good videos on youtube which might help.
Also, you probably already know, but "lo que.." means "that which..". I can see that causing confusion if you don't know about it. Michel Thomas is great. His accent sucks, but its a really helpful course, and Assimil is great for understanding idiomatic constructions. There seems to be a real fashion of recommending that people skip a lot of the "beginners" courses and jumping into native materials, but there really is a lot to be said for doing Pimsleur, MT, Assimil and FSI, at some stage. They will each help build a really solid foundation that you can build on later. I would advise you to save your money and not buy the transcripts for notes in Spanish. They are so expensive, and you could use "Espanol podcast" and "ssl4you" which both have tons of audio with transcripts, which are read by native speakers, (and free!). Keep up the good work, looks like you've made good progress for 10 months! Edited by dbag on 02 September 2013 at 1:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4328 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 20 of 26 02 September 2013 at 2:13am | IP Logged | |||||
Don't worry, you don't need to do extra work. Just keep getting exposed to the language and it will come naturally. As you said, you'll gradually get used to it. Expressions with "lo", "me", "te", etc. are very common in this language, so I think you'll eventually understand them. I've had a similar problem when I was learning English, because in this language, unlike Spanish, the adjective goes before the noun. But now, I find it ridiculously easy. If you find an expression that you don't understand, you can use linguee.com. Search for the expression or word in that site, and you'll get a list of sentences with that expression and its translation in English. Keep up the good work :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 21 of 26 02 September 2013 at 7:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the advice, I'll look into those resources you've mentioned. I agree about Notes In Spanish transcripts being expensive but I can't yet understand those intermediate episodes, however, I really enjoy listening to those two chatting. Perhaps I'll work on the other resources to get to a point where I can enjoy NIS without needing the transcripts, it might take a while but you're right, they are too expensive for what they are, which is kind of why I purchased the other 2 courses first, hopefully I'll improve enough in the next few months to enable me to understand them. I did know about "lo que" meaning "that which" I translated it the way I did because as you know, in English we don't say it like that. Thanks for mentioning it anyway, there are lots of similar constructions that I don't understand so any help is appreciated. Edited by Heliion on 02 September 2013 at 8:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 22 of 26 02 September 2013 at 7:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks man! It's good to hear that it'll come naturally as I don't like "studying" very much. Thanks for the link too, I hadn't heard of that site. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 23 of 26 02 September 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Grrr the NIS transcripts have 25% off for this week only! I thought £40 was too much.. £30 is better but I
still think it might be too much to pay, I don't know. I know you can get free podcasts with transcripts but I love listening to NiS and there are 40+ episodes each lasting 10 minutes. I'm really tempted since I'm very motivated to learn from these. Still waiting for MT and Assmil. I bought Assimil off their website but got no confirmation email and no eta. I guess I'll be waiting a few weeks for that to come through. On another note, I almost arranged a Skype intercambio but it didn't happen in the end, I'm not sure if it's fair to speak with a native speaker when you've never attempted to speak and you can barely understand what they say. I'm thinking it's better to hold off until I can at least understand what they're saying a bit more. Edited by Heliion on 02 September 2013 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4318 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 24 of 26 08 September 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As I'm still a beginner I continue to struggle with what are probably basic constructions...
?Cómo es que se te ocurrió venir a españa? I think I get the gist of this.. "How is it that it occurred to you to come to Spain?" Or perhaps.. "How did it occur that you came to Spain" like.. "How did it come about" or "how did you end up coming to Spain?" My problem is I don't really understand the "se" part here. Is "se" a way of saying "it" here? Like saying "how is it that it to you occurred to come to Spain?" If translating it literally, is that close to what it's saying here? I'm very unsure about "se" and I only really understand it's use sometimes, like "en españa se bebe mucho vino" and where it perhaps means "they." I'm not quite sure of it's use in the aforementioned sentence though? On another point, I ran into "?queria que nos contases?" I understand what It means and I found out that contases is a subjunctive of "contar" or at least I think it is, however I couldn't find "contases" anywhere in the subjunctive section of the verb contar? There still are lots of things I don't "get" tbh, like "me quedé" I tried to learn what that meant but nothing really made sense, I'm hoping it'll become clearer as I read more and more and I get it from context. Grammer explanations just go over my head haha. I got the intermediate NIS transcripts in the end and although they're expensive I'm enjoying working through them. I think they'll keep me occupied for a good few months. I've already learned quite a few new words and it does stick much better just picking them up naturally through context. Being able to remember the sentence they appeared in definitely helps me remember the word. Both Asimill and MT arrived, I went through the first section of MT but it was a little easy for me since it was starting from scratch, but I must admit I couldn't bare the accents on there, and the way the male student can't get to grips with something I've already learned and know. I'm also not sure why MT is so intent on the students getting pronunciation correct since his own pronunciation is woeful to say the least. I'll probably work through the rest to get to constructions that I struggle with but I'm not overly enjoying it thus far. I figure I'll work through Asimill when I get tired of NIS, but for now I'm quite into that so it might be a month or so before I start working with Asimill. Edited by Heliion on 08 September 2013 at 5:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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