semantik

I found the website livemocha very useful for this. You can use it for free and take short lessons and do exercises that also involve writing short texts or speaking. You get feedback from native speakers (you have to assess the exercises done by people learning your native language in the free version, I think) and you can chat with native speakers, too.

Yo me mudaría a Barcelona o a un pueblo pequeño de Cataluña, porque es una ciudad / un país muy bonit@ y allí se habla catalán. Estoy aprendiendo catalán (de hecho, normalmente parlo una mica catañol, eh) ahora mismo y me gusta muchísimo la lengua.

You can distinguish three kinds of phrasal verbs with prefixes / particles in German. The first is called Präfixverb, which are prefix + verb. The characteristic of a prefix is that it cannot stand alone (ge-, er-, ver-, be-, ent-,...) and therefore you can't split them up syntactically. Like, you can't say "Ich lebte es er" (from "erleben"), but have to say "Ich erlebte es". In pronunciation, the stress is on the root verb (erLEBEN). The second is called Partikelverb; particle + verb. A particle can stand alone (an-, mit-, nach-, unter-,...) and you split them up: "Ich gebe das Buch ab" (from "abgeben"). The stress is on the particle (ABgeben). Now the third kind are called Partikelpräfixverben, and as one would expect, they are a mix of the two. They are also particle + verb, but they behave like Präfixverben: you cannot split them up and the stress is on the root verb. This would be "übersetzen" in the sense of "to translate" (überSETZEN) -- "ich übersetze den Text", not "ich setze den Text über". "übersetzen" in the meaning of "to cross over" would be a Partikelverb -- it's said "ÜBERsetzen" and you split it up syntactically -- "das Boot setzte über", not "das Boot übersetzte" (that would mean that the boat translated something!!). Another fun example is "umfahren" which has contrary meanings depending on how you stress it: umFAHREN as a Partikelpräfixverb means "to drive around", UMfahren as a Partikelverb is "to run over" Moral of the story -- to find out if you can separate a verb, you have to check two things: a) can the first part stand alone, as a preposition for example? --> if it can't, then you can never split it up. if the first part can stand alone, how do you stress the word? --> if the stress is on the root verb, then you cannot split them up. --> if the stress is on the first part, then you split them up.

So, my Spanish has gotten very rusty thanks to not using it in a while and learning a language that is very similar to it I'm looking for a Spanish (or Catalan?) speaker to write with -- I don't do voice chat much! -- on Skype or via emails. I'm a native speaker of German, so I can offer that (and English!). If you're interested, please write me a message on here or reply to the thread and I will give you my information!

I live near Frankfurt! Why are you going there? Relevant words for tourists visiting Frankfurt are: "Ebbelwoi / Äppler" is the hard cider that is our 'national beverage'; it comes in a "Bembel" (traditional type of grey pitcher with blue decor) and is poured into a "Geripptes" (special kind of glass). Instead of "Guten Tag" you might hear "Gude", which is an abbreviation and commonly used to say hi. ("Ei Gude, wie?" - Hello, how are you?)

Someone already suggested the Almodóvar movies, which I love -- they're great, but a little, well... let's call it strange! You will get what I mean once you've seen one My favorite movie of his probably is 'Todo Sobre Mi Madre'. If you're just getting started learning the language and want to get a feel on what it sounds like or if you want to try something without subtitles, I recommend getting the Spanish dub of a movie you know very well! That way, you already kind of know what they are going to say and just have to listen for the words.

I'm a linguist and one of my main interests is regional variation in the English language. That does not only mean differences like "who says 'soda', who says 'pop'?" or differences in pronunciation (for example, in some American dialects, 'pin' and 'pen' or 'cot' and 'caught' sound the same), but also differences in syntax. Some dialects allow multiple negation ("ain't nobody ..."), which is generally not considered 'correct' in Standard English. There is a book called 'Accents: A Manual for Actors' -- it comes with a CD -- and it does not only talk about foreign accents, like "what does a Spanish accent in English sound like and why?" but also about the dialects in one country. It's super interesting, and the CD is fun to listen to, as it's just the author imitating all the different accents.