Posted in 2019, 3 Day Projects, Spanish on 9 October, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Interpret 5 episodes of Perdidos en la Tribu into English for my wife: 5 hours.
Considering I only ever studied Spanish for a month back in 2010, I was delighted to be able to interpret the gist of this Chilean reality tv show for my wife. I felt like a UN interpreter sitting on our sofa, and as there were Spanish subtitles provided, I learnt several new words and phrases along the way (including some racy Chilean slang).
Posted in 2010, Language Learning, Spanish, Weekly Logs on 19 July, 2010| Leave a Comment »
SUMMARY
A week in Spain and Catalan cuisine. 😛
WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX
Wandering…I wish! Just lots of sitting in front of a computer and proof-reading/editing right now…
TEANGO’S WORD/PHRASE OF THE WEEK
“zwo, fuffzig!” – whilst out shopping in Frankfurt last week, a burly middle-aged woman with short purple hair barked this at me from behind the counter. At first I thought she said “zwölf, fünfzig” in Hessisch and was asking for €12.50 (which would have been a little expensive for a pair of shoelaces), but was relieved to discover that she actually meant €2.50 in the end.
A message downstairs on the general noticeboard led to another confusion in German last week. It read as follows:
“Für Donnerstag, den 29.07.2010, habe ich die Spermüllabholung bestellt. Wer etwas dazu stellen möchte, kann dies am 28.07.2010 tun.”
You can imagine my shock when I read “Spermüllabholung” (which I think may be unfortunately misspelt with one “r” in this particular message), and how I was equally relieved, after looking up the word in my German dictionary later, that I didn’t have to donate any sperm to satisfy some unusual local government requirement (and that it was just a notice for a “kerbside collection” instead). Phew – a scary moment there!
And finally one more phrase…something you’ll find on the menu in most cafés in Barcelona: “Pa amb tomàquet” (lit. “bread with tomato” in Catalan) – a large slice of toast, rubbed with a fresh tomato, some garlic, and drizzled with olive oil). Muy rico! 😛
NOTES
I’m back from beautiful sunny Barcelona, and looking forward to a new challenge already. It was amazing to swim in the sea both night and day, escape to the palmy beaches of Sitges, and indulge in the finest seafood establishments around (although the menu proved to be a little too fresh and scary at times). I also managed to speak a fair bit of Spanish during my stay, crack some jokes with the locals, and learn a few words of Catalan too.
Barcelona is a great place for culture and fashion, and a veritable shopper’s paradise. Lots of colour and creativity all around. My girlfriend and I salsa’d in Cuban bars and Catalan restaurants, tangoed on the beach, and met some wonderful people along the way. I also played guitar and sang with a bona-fide mariachi whilst waiting together for a night-bus back to Barcelona.
The coolest thing however was to be right at the centre of everything when Spain won the World Cup for the first time. You can just imagine the pandemonium and jubilation, being surrounded in the Plaza de España by thousands of people watching the big screen, waving or wearing Spanish flags, smoking joints and climbing monuments, and singing and dancing throughout the night. I imagine the celebrations are still playing on as I speak, and I’m grateful to have been there at a truly historic moment in Spain’s history.
As you may have already gathered from the absence of logs recently, these last few weeks have been really quite hectic, with mountains of work and a holiday abroad into the bargain too. But does the roller-coaster ride stop here…well…not exactly. I have however managed to reduce this workload to part-time hours for the next month. And this is good, because I’ll need it for my next challenge…
Posted in 2010, Language Learning, Spanish, Weekly Logs on 4 July, 2010| Leave a Comment »
SUMMARY
No significant changes since last week.
WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX
Sadly desk-bound and hands full.
TEANGO’S WORD/PHRASE OF THE WEEK
“Exterminieren!” – well, ok, probably not a real German word, but it did make me laugh out loud when I heard this in Doctor Who (Season 4, Episode 13) last week. 🙂
NOTES
Just a really busy week in the sweltering heat, so all I managed to fit in was a microscopic amount of Spanish radio in the background and a couple of “paletas” (fresh fruit ice lollies)…
Posted in 2010, Language Learning, Spanish, Weekly Logs on 27 June, 2010| 3 Comments »
SUMMARY
Active study this week: 5 hours (written exercises, newspaper, magazines, one tutorial)
Additional immersion this week: 1.5 hours (music)
————————————————————
Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 185 hours
Additional light immersion with music and TV: 46 hours
Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 231 hours
WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX
Just keeping up with basic kanji reviews for the 180 cards studied so far this year.
TEANGO’S WORD/PHRASE OF THE WEEK
With England sadly now out of the World Cup, Germany go on to play the winners of the match tonight between Argentina and Mexico. Whatever the results, I thought it might be handy to have a few football terms in both Spanish and German at the ready for the quarterfinals next week.
NOTES
This has been a really busy week, so I was lucky to get any language study done at all. I had a tutorial on Monday evening, which was good fun, but my Tuesday meet-up was canceled (which turned out to be a blessing, as I had a a full schedule of development work to get through that day, and therefore no time to prepare for the class).
Next week will be much the same workwise, although it’ll be spent on mountains of editing and proof-reading for another project this time round. All the same, I hope to squeeze in several hours more of listening and reading wherever possible. It would be great if I could devour all my Spanish books with accompanying audio between now and my holiday to Spain next month.
Posted in 2010, Language Learning, Spanish, Weekly Logs on 20 June, 2010| Leave a Comment »
SUMMARY
Active study for this week: 30 hours (film analysis, reading books and articles, exercises, one-to-one tuition)
Additional immersion for this week: 3.5 hours (music and TV)
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Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 180 hours
Additional light immersion with music and TV: 47.5 hours
Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 224.5 hours [35 days]
WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX
I’ve reviewed my kanji for the week and added a few more for good measure. I’ve also ordered Assimil’s “L’Égyptien hiéroglyphique” for a little wanderlust experiment I have in mind for later… 😉
TEANGO’S WORD/PHRASE OF THE WEEK
“de uvas a peras” (once in a blue moon; lit. from grapes to pears) – a cool little phrase that came up whilst eating grapes yesterday, and as an additional tidbit, my Spanish tutor found it quite funny that “uvas” also sounds like UVAs (i.e. those little ultraviolet rays from the sun that can give us wrinkles after too much exposure).
NOTES
Despite my computer being down for a day and requiring a complete reinstall, extra contract work, and a bad neck injury early on in the week, I’ve still managed to haul in 30 hours of Spanish this week. This included 6.5 hours of fast-paced discussion in Spanish with my tutor, alongside analysing a short Oscar-winning film and reading the accompanying book (“Quiero ser”) in preparation for discussions, as well as completing a couple of dozen written assignments and articles for extra homework.
On the recommendation of my tutor, I’ve started reading the Spanish newspaper “El País”, and found some excellent Spanish magazines in the local library called “ECOS”, which indicate the reading level required for each section as well as offering some very interesting articles about Spanish-speaking culture and life.
As regards working with a tutor, I’ve made veritable quantum leaps across the board, especially in speaking. When I started on Monday, the words came out very haphazardly and my grammar was all over the place; now I’m far more fluent and have a much better handle on grammar. I’ve been paying particular attention to using the correct past tenses (e.g. imperfecto vs indefinido) and been careful over the differences between “ser” and “estar” in my written work. I also managed to fit in snippets of conditional and subjunctive usage from time to time, as well as a few idiomatic phrases in my more confident moments.
Next week I have a lot of work on my plate, so I’ll only be able to put in some short review sessions of Spanish in the evenings (perhaps just some L&R in Spanish). My tutor will also unfortunately be away for a couple of months from next week onwards, but I’ve still managed to squeeze in two further sessions on Monday and Tuesday before he leaves. This means I’ve spent this weekend on contract work instead of chilling out or studying so that I’ll be able to fit in these extra tutorials, but I think it’ll be worth it.
Having to take several days off where I couldn’t do any study, I’d say I’ve been studying for around a month now. Despite not putting in the more intensive hours I had hoped for, I’ve still been able to progress swiftly on from knowing little or nothing of Spanish at all originally. After consulting with my tutor and trying out some DELE past papers, I’d say my strongest skills are in listening and reading, which are most likey now a high B2 (which is a fantastic feeling!), whereas my speaking and writing probably still fall somewhere in the B1 – low B2 range (mainly because of grammar and having only practised for a week so far).
Although this update marks the end of my “1 month of Spanish” project, I still intend to continue learning Spanish amongst my lighter ongoing activities in the evenings. Spanish is a warm and friendly language, full of beauty and excitement, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the journey together so far. I hope that over the coming months I can read plenty more books, alongside watching telenovelas, perhaps start a Spanish log, and take my tutor up on that idea of a language exchange when he returns. It would be great to continue progressing and get everything up to C1 level eventually.
And best of all, I’m heading off to Barcelona next month and look forward to putting all this into real practice! 😀
Posted in El Mariachi, Language Learning, Projects, Spanish on 15 June, 2010| 2 Comments »
Forgive another update so soon, but I’m just so excited after these sessions with my tutor recently, and with the progress I’m currently making in Spanish, that I couldn’t help but jump straight on to Travels with Teango to share my experiences and joy and capture the moment.
My session today was really quite intense. Yesterday we discussed topics as diverse as as the Norman invasion and the Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl, but a lot of the time was also spent getting to know each other. Today the gloves came off, and I was immediately thrown into the deep end acting out role-plays as an orphan child living on the streets of Mexico and a whole variety of other in-depth scenarios and conversations.
Overall, my listening ability is streets ahead of my speaking skills, which is to be expected as I only started talking yesterday and spent the last month just focusing on listening and reading. It’s like I have most of the jigsaw pieces on the tip of my tongue, all passively acquired from listening and reading or studying videos, but every so often I’ll find that there’s a piece missing from the set and I just try to find another way to say it.
Saying that, I’m already taking big strides forward and am able to express myself in a variety of complicated tenses and moods I never thought I’d be able to do, without even having ever formally learned a single Spanish verb conjugation. I prefer to pick up grammar naturally via lots and lots of exposure, and practice the most useful phrases as set building blocks in my conversations. I imagine I’ll soon have to look up a table or two to check I’m doing it right, but in the meantime it’s refreshing not to have to wade through a grammar book or worry about memorising endings. I make loads and loads of grammatical mistakes of course, but my tutor is very very patient, and always ends up guiding me in the right direction. I’m already learning so much this way.
I don’t have a session with my tutor tomorrow, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as it’ll give me more time to finish up reading and translating this short book, as well as complete a whole folder full of written assignments and prepare to discuss it all on Thursday.
So back to work for me, and as the Calamity Jane song goes, “Whip crack-away, whip crack-away, whip crack-away!”. 🙂
Posted in El Mariachi, Language Learning, Projects, Spanish on 14 June, 2010| 2 Comments »
I’ve just finished the first 2 hour session today with my native Spanish tutor, and am absolutely thrilled to learn that my level in speaking is already around B1/B2. He was completely taken aback and just sat there laughing when I told him I’d never spoken Spanish before and had only studied reading and listening over the last few weeks.
I could understand pretty much every word he said, could get across the bulk of what I wanted to say, and my writing assignment, which I finished quickly beforehand without a dictionary, didn’t end up in too much red ink either.
He’s an excellent teacher and a very nice guy too – so I think I really struck it lucky this time. He’s also not too shy in giving me lots of homework. 😉 So I now have a whole book “Quiero ser”, and its accompanying short film, to get through by this time tomorrow. Fantástico!
Posted in 2010, Language Learning, Spanish, Weekly Logs on 13 June, 2010| Leave a Comment »
SUMMARY
Active study for this week: 28 hours (Yabla, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar)
Additional immersion for this week: 5.5 hours (music and TV)
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Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 150 hours
Additional light immersion with music and TV: 41 hours
Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 191 hours [28 days]
WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX
No new sins to divulge this week.
TEANGO’S WORD/PHRASE OF THE WEEK
I have an idiomatic expression for you all this week: “Hijo de tigre, sale pintado” (like father, like son).
I also love the way the opposite of amigos is “enemigos” – what a great language! 🙂
NOTES
I’ve tried to prepare a little over the last fortnight and begin laying down some Spanish steel to bridge the gap between passive and active knowledge. With other commitments popping up, and no real tried and tested plan in my pocket, this proved to be more challenging than anticipated.
I tried out a variety of techniques, and covered a relatively broad area. This included some mini-adventures with pronunciation training, singing songs off by heart, studying videos, and learning more about Spanish-speaking cultures. In this respect, Yabla has turned out to be a fantastic companion in my journey, and I’d thoroughly recommend LoMásTv to anyone interested in beginning or improving their Spanish.
The most useful technique I re-discovered was “phrase picking”. This seems very similar to Khatzumoto’s idea of taking new sentences directly from a target language environment (e.g. words/phrases I can clearly hear and repeat in Yabla videos), and then putting these into flashcards (e.g. Anki), to review later at spaced intervals over time.
Similar to Khatz learning the meanings of the kanji first, I refrain from phrase picking until I’ve built up a basic passive vocabulary through listening and reading first (the “study-and-click” method works best for me here). This is the first initial phase of my study. With a comprehensible base in the language after two intensive weeks of study, I find those handy phrases pop up much more frequently earlier on.
With my focus on “activating” passive knowledge and conversing with speakers as quickly as possible in the second stage, my approach slightly differs when it comes to Anki reviews, where I prefer to translate aloud from English to Spanish. I also try to keep a special lookout for “linking phrases” and common expressions that I think might be useful in conversation. Regretfully, I started this all far too late in the experiment, but will consider using it as a key approach in future.
So how far down the road am I so far? Well, I can read through and get the gist of most texts now, with the aid of a dictionary for some of the finer details. I’ve also tried to listen to a wide variety of spoken Spanish, and this has helped me attune my ear to picking up far more words and phrases than I ever did a couple of weeks ago.
As for other areas, I’m still very much fumbling around in the dark as a beginner. So I’d like to spend next week focusing on speaking and writing with a tutor each day to bring these skills up to a better level. I was initially worried about looking like a complete blockhead on Monday, as I’ve never actually spoken with anyone in Spanish yet, but now I’m quite looking forward to meeting my tutor and making this week really work out for me.
Posted in El Mariachi, Language Learning, Projects, Spanish on 13 June, 2010| Leave a Comment »
“El Mariachi”, Day 14/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más)
Yabla LoMásTv: 2 hours
Translation: 0.5 hours
TV: 0.5 hours (“El Internado”)
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Total time today actively studying Spanish: 2.5 hours
Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 59 hours
Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 150 hours
Additional light immersion with music and TV: 41 hours
Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 191 hours [28 days]
NOTES
Its already time for this little experiment to bid farewell and for our hopeful mariachi to start having real conversations with a native Spanish speaker next week. Please see my summary on my weekly log.
Posted in El Mariachi, Language Learning, Projects, Spanish on 12 June, 2010| Leave a Comment »
“El Mariachi”, Day 13/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más)
Just a day of chilling out with friends and football frenzy later this evening. So no language study for me today, I’m afraid. USA put in a good solid performance, whereas England seemed a little bit sluggish and not very together on the whole. I’m also not so confident in the current line-up, and miss Beckham’s reassuring presence to be honest. And what a performance from Green, I need that extra drink now!
Travels with Teango 