sillylucy

J.D. Salinger, John Irving, John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath and Zora Neale Hurston are my favorite American authors. I was reading an interesting article the other day on how men only read books written by men. That made me think of my own favorite authors list and felt I should include one of my favorite female authors.

The cat idiom and the peach one made me laugh. I love idioms and how weird they sound with their literal translation. My favorite is "Ah, la vache!" (literally means "Oh, my cow!") but is used to say "Good God!"

I think a practice thread would help out our conversation skills. My vocabulary is pretty limited as of now. All I can say are some introductions and things that tourists say according to my text books, but I would love to find new ways to hold a conversation. :wacky:

For me, the hardest part of learning Spanish would have to be conjugating verbs. I don't really think about conjugating verbs when speaking English so it is difficult for me to have to think of a word and then try to conjugate it. My brain always stops when speaking because I know the words I want to say, but forget how to say it and trip over my words.

A friend of mine has this on his Facebook cover photo and I can't find a translation for it. Well, I have found that it means "what is it that it is" but that doesn't really make any sense to me. Can someone please explain it? Thank you!

I know where to get a lot of e-books in English, but have yet to find a place on the web other than my local library. I have the Kindle app for my PC and can read them that way, but don't have an e-reader. Any suggestions? I'm sure Amazon has some, but am looking for free books. Thanks!

I have signed up for both French lessons from About.com and the BBC learning section. So far I am liking the videos on BBC a whole lot more than About.com. Has anyone had any luck with either of the two? If so, which was most beneficial to your understanding of the language? I am hoping to be fluent within 3 years. Going to Europe with my boyfriend then and would love to be able to get around without feeling like too much of a tourist.

Where did the "Mi Vida Loca" saying come from? I have seen it a lot in chicano culture and on cholas, but not much anywhere else outside of Southern California. I know it was made famous in the 90s from the movie of the same name, but was just trying to find out more background information on the saying.

Does anyone have a good chart or example of using vosotros? It is taught in high school and we have to learn it, but Mexican speakers don't really use it. I know a lot of my friends from Spain, Argentina and Chile use it, but I forgot how to since high school. Thanks! :grin:

:vampire: This happened to me as a child. My grandmother would always speak to me in Spanish, but once I got to elementary school and was only speaking English with friends and my teacher then I had forgotten the language. Now I sometimes dream in Spanish and had to take classes to learn it again. It was pretty sad when I realized that I had forgotten a lot of words that I knew as a child. She would speak to me in Spanish when I was 12 and would get upset that I didn't understand her.