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Bolio’s Spanish Log

  Tags: Scriptorium | FSI | Assimil | Spanish
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BOLIO
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4656 days ago

253 posts - 366 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 177 of 344
03 July 2014 at 6:29pm | IP Logged 
Crush, gracias por ayudarme.

-Esta vez lo fue... Este es un ejemplo de mí pensando en Inglés y luego escribiendo en español. En este momento, no puedo pensar en español.

- "No tengo que dominarLO a la perfección.".... "lo, le, la, los, las" son pequeñas pero muy importante. Voy a continuar practicando.

I-mon, James and Stelle, thanks for the kind words and visiting with me.

I-mon, hand to God, before falling asleep last night, the last thing I looked at was Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish. I bought it months ago and saw it in my study last night. I picked it up and ran through a couple of pages before falling asleep...weird. I will spend time with it in the future and look for the Subjunctive chapter.

James, I have a couple of the Practice makes Perfect series but not the Subjunctive. I will pick one up soon. As far as the article, honestly, it is beyond my abilities. After spending 10 minutes reading it, there were too many unknown words and the level of my understanding was too low. One day I look forward to reading it. Thank you for it.

Stelle, your one comment is my language abilities in a nutshell;

"For me, there's a huge difference between intellectually understanding the __________ and being able to apply it in casual conversation". Understanding something in small pieces or having brief moments of clarity soon give way when I need to call upon them while in a conversation. It is nice that you have someone to help you via Skype. I wish you the best.

Again, thanks to you all for the kind words and help.
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Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5863 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 178 of 344
03 July 2014 at 9:30pm | IP Logged 
"son pequeñas pero muy importante."
No te olvides que TODOS los adjetivos tiene que acordar con su sujeto, aunque haya algunas palabras que los separan: son pequeñas, pero muy importantES.

Creo que tienes un buen ambiente para aprender el castellano, parece al menos que tienes muchas oportunidades de oír e incluso hablarlo en casa y estoy segurx que pronto te sentirás cómodo hablándolo y entendiéndolo.

Ah, e Iguanamon, "aprendizaje" es masculino ;)
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iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5260 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 179 of 344
03 July 2014 at 11:14pm | IP Logged 
Crush wrote:
...Ah, e Iguanamon, "aprendizaje" es masculino ;)

Blame Portuguese- "a aprendizagem" (feminine) yet another case of a slight difference between the two similar, but different languages- I've been speaking it a lot lately. I've corrected it as to not show a bad example.

Bolio: Yes, do have a look at the subjunctive chapter in "Breaking Out". After you've seen enough examples in the real world, it will make sense to you.

Edited by iguanamon on 04 July 2014 at 12:08am

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Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5863 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 180 of 344
04 July 2014 at 5:40pm | IP Logged 
Eso es interesante, también es femenino en gallego (a aprendizaxe) pero masculino en francés (l'apprentissage) y catalán (l'aprenentatge). En castellano, creo que todas las palabras que terminan en -aje son masculinas. Me gustaría mucho indagar un poco más en la historia y desarrollo de los idiomas romances, creo que son muy interesantes...

Todxs dicen que tienes un altísimo nivel de portugués, así que no me extrañaría que quedasen algunos vestigios del portugués en tu castellano (yo sigo luchando para quitar las construcciones inglesas de mi castellano). Espero algún día poder dominar un tercer idioma como tú :)

Y Bolio, una vez que hayas acabado FSI, el misterio del subjuntivo se habrá en gran parte disipado.
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BOLIO
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4656 days ago

253 posts - 366 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 181 of 344
08 July 2014 at 8:16pm | IP Logged 
Ok, I am working along. I am getting ready for my upcoming trip to Mexico. I am very excited about my studies.

I thought that I might post some specific examples of concepts or ideas that I struggle with. My thought process is that others in my position may benefit from these hurdles being overcome. As always, those of you who have actually conquered the language, please offer advice as to how you understood the concept or please SHARE concepts you struggled with and how you overcame them.

For example, I am starting to get the hang of this whole reflexive idea. If the subject and the object are the same...then you use the reflexive verb. Some of you are rolling your eyes wondering why BOLIO is bringing up this easy stuff. Well, I am the world's worst language student and this very simple concept bothered me for a while.

So, let's use Lavarse for example ( to wash oneself).

Again, if the subject and the action are the same = reflexive. It was really so simple but it escaped me. To conjugate the reflexive verb, all you do is drop the -SE off the end, then conjugate the verb (just like the non reflexive, in this case Lavar) and then place the reflexive pronoun (Me,Se, Te,Nos) in front of the conjugated verb. Thats it. "Yo me lavo. Tú te lavas. Nosotros nos lavamos. Ellos se lavan." Now when we start changing tenses...then I am in trouble. :)


I struggle with several concepts (Subjunctive as stated a few posts up). However, as I start knocking them down or as I come across things that make no sense to me, I will post example sentences here for those who are learning too.

Thank for the help and good studies!
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Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5863 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 182 of 344
09 July 2014 at 3:21am | IP Logged 
Reflexive verbs were tough for me, too, in the beginning. I'd seen them briefly in German but never really understood them because a lot of verbs didn't really have a reflexive meaning, for example in Spanish "sentirse". You aren't feeling yourself, it just means to feel (good, bad, happy, etc.). I don't mean to confuse things, but sometimes a verb is just reflexive without any particular reason, such as "irse" or "olvidarse". To go oneself? It just means to leave. Usually you can see why a verb is reflexive, but sometimes you just have to accept that it is and not ask why.

There are also some special uses of the reflexive, such as in comerse, beberse, creerse, etc. which essentially mean the same thing as the nonreflexive verb but sometimes have different collocations or give it a different shade of meaning. You'll often see comerse used more often than comer (it sounds kinda like the English "I could eat me a.."), for example:
"Voy a comer(me) un plátano" (I'm going to eat a banana)
"Cómetelo todo o llamo al hombre del saco" (Eat everything or I'll call the boogeyman)
but..
"¿Te gusta comer manzanas?" (not "comerte manzanas")

With creerse:
"¡No me lo puedo creer!" (I can't believe it!)
"Se cree muy listo, el capullo." (They think they're so clever, the jerk..)

In Spanish the reflexive/pronominal form is used quite a bit (more than in French, for example), and a nice side effect of it was that after learning it in Spanish the German reflexive verbs finally made sense to me :)
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James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5373 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 183 of 344
09 July 2014 at 3:33am | IP Logged 
Yes, reflexive verbs are quirky. They are definitely one of the things I continue to neglect and just seem to pick up slowly by "osmosis" over time. I certainly have not "mastered" the language by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll tell you my thoughts.

I am sure I regularly screw up numerous reflexive verbs when I speak. It is the type of thing that a native speaker will not likely correct you on because it does not seem to often impact being understood. You are generally thinking of the concept in the right way. There are also some verbs where the reflexive verb simply means something totally different that you should be aware of (sorry, but the only one that comes to mind is correr v. correrse). There are quite a few and they are tricky. Then, there are the ones where there are subtle distinctions (me voy versus voy, murio versus se murio, etc).

When I am reading I try to actively look for these and just make a mental note... "oh, that is a reflexive use." They are very easy to spot when reading.

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BOLIO
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4656 days ago

253 posts - 366 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 184 of 344
09 July 2014 at 8:13pm | IP Logged 
Ok Gents and Ladies, I am trying to find better ways to express myself. Here is an example. I want to tell my wife that we need batteries...simple.

Necesitamos baterías(or Pilas). However, in my reading, I find this phrase;

Nos hacen falta pilas.

Now, I understand the Nos, the hacen and the pilas. However, I am not really sure how to use this verb that I have seen before (faltaba - some form of past tens. I don't know which).

The sentence seems to be saying "We make the batteries missing."




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