Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Spanish

  Tags: Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
32 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>
xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 9 of 32
18 October 2008 at 6:45pm | IP Logged 
ajparker wrote:
Depending on your OS and software setup you may be able to find an applet that can switch keyboard character mappings for you to get those accents. I know I would be pulling hair out if I had to copy paste from the character map all the time. With the keyboard layout switcher I use, I can click on it once to switch to Spanish and then the accents are keystroke combinations like typing 'o (apostrophe and then o) get's you ó etc. For the ñ itś a single key (same key as the US keyboard semicolon (;)

I'm using Ubuntu linux - but I'm pretty sure Windows XP has keyboard mapping capabilities (and I've set it up for someone on Mac OS X before). It will make your typing a LOT easier.


Thanks for the advice! I'll have to look into it... using the character map is indeed getting annoying.
1 person has voted this message useful



xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 10 of 32
19 October 2008 at 6:09pm | IP Logged 
Chapter 24 - Schaum's Outline of Spanish Vocabulary

"El camping"

40 minutes

1)el botiquín- first aid kit (as well as medicine chest, like in a bathroom)
2)el camping - campsite
3)atar - to tie
4)armar- to pitch (a tent)
5)amarrar- to tie
6)la estaca- spike
7)la fogata- bonfire
8)la hornilla-burner
8)la lintera (eléctrica)- flashlight
9)plegable- folding
10)la mochila- backpack
11)el saco para dormir- sleeping bag/sack
12)el termo- thermos
13)el palo- pole

4 hours 20 minutes for the week
1 person has voted this message useful



xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 11 of 32
21 October 2008 at 11:59pm | IP Logged 
Chapter 25 - Schaum's Outline of Spanish Vocabulary

"El Tiempo"

50 minutes

1)el aguacero- shower
2)despejado- clear
3)despejarse- to clear up
4)disperso- scattered
5)granizar- to hail
6)lloviznar- to drizzle
7)la nevada- snowfall
8)la niebla- fog/mist
9)lluvioso- rainy
10)la nubosidad- cloudiness
11)el pronóstico meteorológico- weather forecast
12)relámpagos- lightning
13)tempestuoso- stormy
13)tronar (ue)- to thunder

Chapter 26 - Schaum's Outline of Spanish Vocabulary

"Delitos y Crímenes"

20 minutes

1)la arma de fuego - firearm
2)el arma blanca- weapon with a blade
3)el asalta- assault
4)el asesino- murderer
5)el asesinato- victim or person killed
6)el carterista- pickpocket
7)la comisaría- police station
8)el consentimiento- consent
9)el delito- crime
10)denunciar um crimen- to report a crime
11)el escalamiento- breaking and entering
12)físico- physical
13)el homicidio- homicide
14)el latrocinio - armed robbery
15)la violación sexual- rape

1 hour 10 minutes for today,
Goal: 3 more hours of study before the end of Sunday
1 person has voted this message useful



xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 12 of 32
22 October 2008 at 4:51pm | IP Logged 
Chapter 27 - Schaum's Outline of Spanish Vocabulary

"La educación"

1 hour

1)la apertura de curso- beginning of class/opening of school
2)la cartera- book bag
3)la conferencia- lecture
4)los derechos de matrícula- tuition
5)desaprobado- failing
6)el (la) director/a- principal/headmaster/director
7)el doctorado- doctorate
8)escuela primaria/secondaria
9)inscribirse- to enroll
10)la lectura- reading
11)licenciarse- to get a master's degree
12)la licenciatura- master's degree
13)la materia- subject (in school)
14)notable- very good (mark)
15)el requísito- requirement
16)salir bien/mal - to pass/fail
17)sobresaliente- outstanding/excellent grade
18)tomar apuntes- to take notes

2 hours 10 minutes so far for the week, about 2 hours to go.

I don't even know if I will have time today for a Pimsleur lesson in Portuguese. I have to study for a midterm exam that I have in a few hours and I will not get back until late after a class! So maybe I'll have to do 2 lessons tomorrow.
1 person has voted this message useful



SlickAs
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5658 days ago
185 posts - 287 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish
Studies: Thai, Vietnamese

 
 Message 13 of 32
22 October 2008 at 8:46pm | IP Logged 
Hi Andrea.

Just browsing what you are working on there, and it looks like you are putting in a lot of work. Well done.

I have some concerns about the vocab you are working on, though, and feel that maybe I might be able to help you move faster in your language aquisition.

Some of the words from your flash card from the Tres Mujeres poem, even I don't know and I can pass myself off as Argentinian in a 5 minute conversation. I think you may be able to move faster if you concentrate on different vocab to what you are doing.

Here is what I have found regarding learning nouns: even in your native language you often forget the names of nouns. Which side of a boat is starboard again, for example? What is the tool that we call a shifter in Australia called in Canada? A monkey wrench? Is that the same thing? No matter, I can explain what I mean.

It is the same in Spanish. For example, there is a special word for a "finger-nail cutter" in Spanish that completely slips my mind, but does not contain the word finger-nail (uña), like it is completely its own word, the same as spanner is its own word and does not contain "tighten" or "nut". But it does not matter what that word is, and it is not worth me (or you) remembering it, because you can say "Pass me the watcha-ma-callit ... what's it called? The thing for cutting nails. Yeah fingernail cutter, give it to me ..." (la como se llama. La cosita para cortar las uñas ... Si, esa, dime lo!) and it sounds perfectly fluent and just looks like the word slipped your mind. No one will know that you never knew what the word was. "Cosita" (little thing) is a good word. You can use it for tonsils ("the little things in your throat ... what are they called again?") and a lot of those on your lists.

So all your words here like tonsils, etc are certainly not the nouns you should be working on. The abstract nouns are more important such as "way" (as in "that is not the WAY you should do it" ... manera). That is an important noun because you use it every day in all sorts of situations, whereas I probably have not used the word tonsil in English in the last 5 years, and certainly never in Spanish.

They say that 90% of Spanish is 1000 words. A childrens Dr.Zeuss book has writen on the cover "For children with vocabularies of less than 500 words". A 5 year old, you would say, speaks the language fluently, right? They have the right 500 words. When I look at the words in your lists, I can see that these words are not part of the important 1000.

IMO, what would be a better way of choosing what vocab to learn would to turn on a voice recorder (if you have one), while you are chatting to your boyfriend in English. Dont make it the centre of conversation, and perhaps dont even tell him it is on. And just leave it on without modifying your conversation and go on with your general chat about your day, gossip about friends, where ever the conversation takes you. This is the type of natural conversation that you would want to have in Spanish and is the vocabulary you need.

Then you can sit down later or the next day, and listen to it, trying in your head (no need to write it down), to put together that conversation in Spanish rather than English. To explain those things you said in Spanish will probably need you reaching for a flash card for new vocab to learn. I think that you will find that what you need to do is to learn your basic verbs really well so you can say phrases like "what you need to do ..." in Spanish without thinking "Que necesitas hacer..."

If you can get your hands on it, there is an excellent little book called "Cassels Colloquial Spanish" that greatly helps in moving from Intermediate Spanish to advanced. That has many of the really important little words in it that make your Spanish sound guenuinely native. It is a bit hard to get ... have a look around your local libraries. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I hope that helps you. With the amount of work you are doing, I am sure you will put together the language quickly.

Edited by SlickAs on 22 October 2008 at 9:01pm
2 persons have voted this message useful



xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 14 of 32
23 October 2008 at 1:57am | IP Logged 
SlickAs wrote:
Hi Andrea.

Just browsing what you are working on there, and it looks like you are putting in a lot of work. Well done.

I have some concerns about the vocab you are working on, though, and feel that maybe I might be able to help you move faster in your language aquisition.

Some of the words from your flash card from the Tres Mujeres poem, even I don't know and I can pass myself off as Argentinian in a 5 minute conversation. I think you may be able to move faster if you concentrate on different vocab to what you are doing.

Here is what I have found regarding learning nouns: even in your native language you often forget the names of nouns. Which side of a boat is starboard again, for example? What is the tool that we call a shifter in Australia called in Canada? A monkey wrench? Is that the same thing? No matter, I can explain what I mean.

It is the same in Spanish. For example, there is a special word for a "finger-nail cutter" in Spanish that completely slips my mind, but does not contain the word finger-nail (uña), like it is completely its own word, the same as spanner is its own word and does not contain "tighten" or "nut". But it does not matter what that word is, and it is not worth me (or you) remembering it, because you can say "Pass me the watcha-ma-callit ... what's it called? The thing for cutting nails. Yeah fingernail cutter, give it to me ..." (la como se llama. La cosita para cortar las uñas ... Si, esa, dime lo!) and it sounds perfectly fluent and just looks like the word slipped your mind. No one will know that you never knew what the word was. "Cosita" (little thing) is a good word. You can use it for tonsils ("the little things in your throat ... what are they called again?") and a lot of those on your lists.

So all your words here like tonsils, etc are certainly not the nouns you should be working on. The abstract nouns are more important such as "way" (as in "that is not the WAY you should do it" ... manera). That is an important noun because you use it every day in all sorts of situations, whereas I probably have not used the word tonsil in English in the last 5 years, and certainly never in Spanish.

They say that 90% of Spanish is 1000 words. A childrens Dr.Zeuss book has writen on the cover "For children with vocabularies of less than 500 words". A 5 year old, you would say, speaks the language fluently, right? They have the right 500 words. When I look at the words in your lists, I can see that these words are not part of the important 1000.

IMO, what would be a better way of choosing what vocab to learn would to turn on a voice recorder (if you have one), while you are chatting to your boyfriend in English. Dont make it the centre of conversation, and perhaps dont even tell him it is on. And just leave it on without modifying your conversation and go on with your general chat about your day, gossip about friends, where ever the conversation takes you. This is the type of natural conversation that you would want to have in Spanish and is the vocabulary you need.

Then you can sit down later or the next day, and listen to it, trying in your head (no need to write it down), to put together that conversation in Spanish rather than English. To explain those things you said in Spanish will probably need you reaching for a flash card for new vocab to learn. I think that you will find that what you need to do is to learn your basic verbs really well so you can say phrases like "what you need to do ..." in Spanish without thinking "Que necesitas hacer..."

If you can get your hands on it, there is an excellent little book called "Cassels Colloquial Spanish" that greatly helps in moving from Intermediate Spanish to advanced. That has many of the really important little words in it that make your Spanish sound guenuinely native. It is a bit hard to get ... have a look around your local libraries. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I hope that helps you. With the amount of work you are doing, I am sure you will put together the language quickly.


Gracias! Me gusta la idea de usar un whatcha-ma-callit para grabar las voces de mi novio y yo cuando conversamos... nunca he pensado en eso! En realidad yo se muchas palabras basicas y mas usadas. Creo que tu has underestimated mi sabiduria;) Pero lo entiendo porque nunca trato de escribir in los forums aqui o aun en mi "logbook". No hago mucho en este website. Lo que quiero hacer es aprender mas leyendo poemas y libros, porque los quiero entender... quiero "explorar" la literatura del idioma espanol. Cada dia escribo en mi diario... escribo lo que escribiria en ingles, y si hago errores, mi novio los corrige. (ayer estuve contenta porque no hice errores por primera vez) Esto me ayuda mucho. En esa manera aprendo vocabulario que yo usaria mas a menudo que "tonsils" (si, que no es muy util!) No he hecho flashcards todavia. Exigire las palabras en esas listas wisely =)... cuando o si decido hacer esos flashcards, lol.
Sin duda, yo se de muchos de los verbos y puedo conjugarlos en casi todas de las formas. Sin embargo, necesito practicar un poco mas para estar muy comoda con ellos =) Y tambien lo que tengo problemas con es entender la gente cuando habla espanol rapido!

Hay algo que escribiste que me confunde:

"I think that you will find that what you need to do is to learn your basic verbs really well so you can say phrases like "what you need to do ..." in Spanish without thinking "Que necesitas hacer..."

Creo que "what you need to do" es "Lo que necesitas hacer" porque lo que=what, pero que significa eso, esa parte en quotes? lol

Anyway, tal vez comprare algo para grabar mi voz, que buena idea

Si hice errores, (ademas de no incluir acentos), perdoname lol, no puedo be arsed hacerlo porque solo tengo el character map! Y tambien mi novio no esta aqui y por eso no puede corregir nada.

Si quieres responder, deberias responder en espanol. Asi podemos practicar lol

Ohh.. tambien... aprendi las cositas "nitty gritty" (=D) con un libro: "Practice Makes Perfect: Advanced Spanish Grammar" si el espanol no es tu lenguaje nativo, tal vez esto puede ayudarte! es awesome =D puedes ver los.. reviews en amazon.com si quieres.

que tenga un buen dia:)















Edited by xandreax on 23 October 2008 at 2:04am
1 person has voted this message useful



SlickAs
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5658 days ago
185 posts - 287 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish
Studies: Thai, Vietnamese

 
 Message 15 of 32
23 October 2008 at 8:52am | IP Logged 
He tomado un poco esta noche. Sos impresiónente! Si yo hablara castellano como vos quando estuve un "intermedio" hablaria mucho mejor ahora. Dices que no puedas entender todo, pero puedes escribir casi perfectamente! Tengo celos.

Para mi, con mis idiomas que hablo, estudié de los libros hasta podía hablar con las habitantes en conversación sin problemas. Pude entonces aprender el vocabulario del contexto. La misma cosa de diarios, libros, etc.

Con el castellano que hablas, en mi opinion, no necesitas estudiar mas. Puedes hablar y aprender el vocabulario en conversación del contexto. Tenés un novio quien habla espanol. Mi novia es quebecoise, y no necesito estudiar el vocabulario francés mas. Porque hablo bastante para aprender el vocabulario de ella (o de libros, etc). Por ejemplo, tu lista del vocabulario "crimen" es es común si leas los diarios.

No tengo nada mas para decir. Tu castellano es impresiónente. Tal vez, tu novio puede explicar la diferencia entre "en absoluto" y "por completo" por ejemplo para ayuder, pero no veo la necesidad a aprender el vocabulario de "Shaums Outline Series". No es para ti. Hablas castellano casi perfectamente en mi opinión.

[edit] hablas el subjunctivo? Como "Si yo fuera ...", if not that is your next step.


Edited by SlickAs on 23 October 2008 at 11:31am
1 person has voted this message useful



xandreax
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5681 days ago
142 posts - 160 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 16 of 32
24 October 2008 at 4:06am | IP Logged 
SlickAs wrote:
He tomado un poco esta noche. Sos impresiónente! Si yo hablara castellano como vos quando estuve un "intermedio" hablaria mucho mejor ahora. Dices que no puedas entender todo, pero puedes escribir casi perfectamente! Tengo celos.

Para mi, con mis idiomas que hablo, estudié de los libros hasta podía hablar con las habitantes en conversación sin problemas. Pude entonces aprender el vocabulario del contexto. La misma cosa de diarios, libros, etc.

Con el castellano que hablas, en mi opinion, no necesitas estudiar mas. Puedes hablar y aprender el vocabulario en conversación del contexto. Tenés un novio quien habla espanol. Mi novia es quebecoise, y no necesito estudiar el vocabulario francés mas. Porque hablo bastante para aprender el vocabulario de ella (o de libros, etc). Por ejemplo, tu lista del vocabulario "crimen" es es común si leas los diarios.

No tengo nada mas para decir. Tu castellano es impresiónente. Tal vez, tu novio puede explicar la diferencia entre "en absoluto" y "por completo" por ejemplo para ayuder, pero no veo la necesidad a aprender el vocabulario de "Shaums Outline Series". No es para ti. Hablas castellano casi perfectamente en mi opinión.

[edit] hablas el subjunctivo? Como "Si yo fuera ...", if not that is your next step.


   El subjunctivo es algo que necesito practicar más. Lo he estudiado pero no fue suficiente... realmente, compré un libro "Practice Makes Perfect: The Subjunctive Up Close" y creo que eso puede ayudarme. Hay muchos ejercicios y las reglas de la gramática son explicadas... Según un par de reviews, son explicadas muy bien! Espero que eso sea verdad.
   Y si, mi novio me continua ayudando y cada dia lo molesto con preguntas! Usualmente, es, "Como se dice ______?" Y por alguna razon, el tiene dificultad al explicarme algunas reglas del idioma.. cuando usar algo o otro. Pregunté que era la diferencia entre "en absoluto" y "por completo" y no me puede dar una respuesta detallada. lol
Por eso, uso muchos libros. Tengo 25 libros, más o menos... con ejercicios, "workbooks", libros de consulta, novelas, etc.
   Y en mi opinión, si, hay palabras que no son muy útiles en el libro de Schaum's pero por los ejercicios, he recordado mucho y por eso puedo conversar más y saber más de algunos temas. En esos temas tengo más confianza. (sin usar flashcards después) Creo que esto ya es una experiencia de aprendizaje.. también estoy en el capitulo 27/30, casi terminado y me gusta poder "review" las cosas de espanol que compro, para ayudar a otra gente que quiere aprender el idioma y quiere saber lo que es bueno y malo sobre el producto... no creo que tengo the right hacer eso hasta que termine el libro/programa/whatever. No creo que es una perdida de mi tiempo ;) Todo lo que hago cuando aprendo idiomas es divertido!

De curiosidad,
Como empezaste a aprender el español?











1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 32 messages over 4 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.