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petesede

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Everything posted by petesede

  1. I was rich It was done Life was easy he was mine. The correct conjugation for I and he/she/it is ´was´. The correct conjugation for you, we and they is ´were´ ( none of your examples) I was You were he/she/it was We were You were They were
  2. It isn´t just polite, it is correct grammar. Whenever you use the pronoun ´I´ it must come last in any list ( and, or). I and my best friend is just as incorrect as me and my best friend, but for different reasons.
  3. No entiendo - I do not understand no hablo español - I do not speak spanish. no tengo dinero - I do not have any money.
  4. I would say I am fluent in spanish, but I still have to sometimes take the back door when talking because I don´t know the exact word I want to use, so I kinda talk around that missing word to get my point across. I also still occassionally get blown away in some conversations when I miss a verb conjugation and totally misunderstand what the person was trying to say. Usually happens when the skip pronouns and speed through the verb endings.
  5. They are actually useful because for the most part, they speaks slowly and the camara is right in their face so you can see the lip movements which, to me, is very helpful in understanding certain words. For instance, I have a much harder time understanding people on the phone. I was surprised when I moved her to learn that Ugly Betty was actually a very famous latin american telenovela before it went to the USA.
  6. I´ve used both of these sites and think duoloingo is better. My reason is mainly based on the way they test you. Spanishdict uses a system where you earn 10 points for a correct answer, but you lose possible points very quickly based on the time it takes you to answer. My typing is pretty good, and I even have a few of the special spanish characters memorize for typing. But when taking the tests, I always feel like it is a speed typing exercise more than a spanish lesson, especially since spelling errors result in a wrong answer. There are times when I know the answer right away, but still earn 7 of 10 points based solely on having to correct a typing mistake before I submit my answer. duolingo doesn´t time your answer, and also gives partial credit if you closely mispell a word. With this site, I definitely feel like I am being tested on my spanish, not my typing speed. Duolingo is also more streamlined.. which is good and bad. Spanishdict has videos of an actress practicing a bunch of stuff, then you move to the drills and testing. Duoling, you go straight to the drills and testing and there isn´t a lot of fluff. It depends on your own personal scheduling, but I would prefer to just get to the meat of it.
  7. A lot of it is just based on you as an individual. I am a bit the opposite. I am a very structured learner.. I would much rather have a long list of words to memorize and have that basic vocabulary in place before I get immersed in conversation. The problem for me is that so much of conversation, especially among friends, is basically slang or shortcuts and while you can learn a phrase that way like ´what´s up´ it dosn´t really translate well into branching off to learn other things based on that phrase. For instance, if a foreigner learns ´what´s up´.. as a greeting to a friend, they aren´t going to know that ´up´ is ´up´.. But if they learn ´how are you today' .. those words are all transferable into future learning.
  8. Should you get advice from native speakers who are not teachers? not to be rude, but I would pay attention to their education level. I am probably a very intermediate spanish speaker living in a spanish-speaking country and I can already tell that a good portion of the population here does not speak proper grammar. Not only that, but the spelling is atrocious here. Things liks ´b´ and ´v´ are often mixed up.. and certainly ´ll´ is many times written as ´y´. Again, not to be rude, but think about it.. isn´t there a good portion of the US population that you wouldn´t want teaching english grammar. As far as pronunciation of individual words. much more useful.
  9. In Nicaragaua where I currently am... Gallo Pinto... haha.. it is rice mixed with beans. It is a very poor country so they just combine two very cheap foods and give it a new name ( it is not ´rice and beans´) and is served with basically all meals. One thing I really enjoy here is nacatamoles. Hard to describe but basically it is like cornflour, with some pork and a few other things wrapped in banana leaves and then boiled. Another thing I really enjoy here that I never had in the USA are friend platinos with cinnamon. It is strange because you let the platino (similar to a large banana) get to the point where it is black and looks terrible, then you peel it, slice it and fry it in a little oil. It ends up very sweet tasting. Nicaragua really does not have that many interesting dishes. Even when I visit well-off families for meals it is just typical chicken, rice, steamed vegetable type meals.
  10. To the OP, you are correct, in many cities you can receive a bonus to your pay, or at least have a higher chance of getting hired if you speak spanish. This trend is likely to continue as the hispanic population continues to grow in the USA. It won´t just be healthcare, there is a potential many job positions will be favored to someone who can speak spanish, especially in things like construction and agricultural management.
  11. For me it is conjugating verbs, and especially hearing those verbs said and being able to tell what form they are using because they sound so similar. In most situations it is a single vowel that is changed near the end of the word that can totally change the meaning of the sentence.
  12. Una pera y una tomate eren en el fila de bus. El tomate dices ´cuanto tiempo espera´? y la pera dices ´todo mi vida´... jaja, Do you understand what is the joke?
  13. yeah.. it is never good to flirt with someone in spanish and say ´ I have 33 anos´.. I created a few tongue twisters that I used to help with certain pronunciations.. when you say the words together, it makes it easier for your to learn to pronounce them differently. The kids I work with also laugh at them. One for your example un plato de pato para el gato, pero el perro esperas para una pera ( I plate of duck for the cat, but the dogs waits for a pear)
  14. My take on it. con permiso - Is when you want to perform an action yourself that might bother someone. Like passing them to enter a door. it is literally asking for permission. disculpe - is when you want someone to do something for you, or you have already done an action that might have bothered someone (like bumped into them in a crowded room). It is more interchangeable with perdon or ´excuse me´.
  15. Part of the problem is just the word ´kiss´. In english, it is both a verb and a noun. This is compounded in your example because there already is a verb ´want´ Google translator actually uses ´advice´ that it has received in the past regarding the correct translation. . It could be that two previous users both ´offered´ slightly different translations as being better depending on if there was an ! or not.
  16. I use google translate all the time. I think it is really useful for short sentences because it does fairly decent job of putting meaning to weird sounding phrases. Like if you know two words, but you see them together and it makes no sense, Google usually gives you the real meaning of that phrase. One thing I did notice is Google is sometimes HORRIBLE about negative sentences. I´ve translated my own articles and noticed Google either added or deleted a ´no´ or ´not´ which obviously completely changes the meaning of the sentence. I have no idea why they do it, but it occurs frequently enough that I now look for it.
  17. In english. It is raining cats and dogs. In spanish It is raining lizards and frogs. In english A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. in spanish they say ´ 100 that are flying´. in english You can´t teach an old dog new tricks. In spanish Old parrots do not learn to talk The one that really threw me off was You are pulling my leg. In spanish they say ´ you are pulling my hair´. When you tell someone something and they tell you that you are pulling their hair, it is really hard to understand the meaning. Funny, slightly off-topic story. Be very careful about trying to translate english idioms into spanish or any other language. Not only will the person be confused, but you may really insult someone. I was in a public place and a little boy was playing nearby and started climbing all over the bench me and my friend were sitting on. he ended up jumping on us, all in fun. In his language, I said something like ´aren´t you just a little monkey´ just to be playful. Well, that expression in that language is the slang way they refer to people who are mentally challenged. I was slapped by the boys mother and my friend wasn´t all that happy with me either. :speechless:
  18. I have lived in Central America for 2 years now and came here knowing only a handful of Spanish words. Local children always seem to want to learn English, and will bring you just about any object and ask you how to say it in English. On a couple of occasions, I have had the opportunity to have semi-formal classes with some of the kids.. and I found that my preparation for those classes was an excellent way to improve my vocabulary. Not only do you have to learn how the word is written in Spanish beforehand, but during your actual class, you will get to hear the kids say the word many times in Spanish. Has anyone else had any success at this? any advice you can offer?
  19. It is easy to know how close languages are. Imagine if you start in Rome and you take a trip to Span, then Portugal, then up to France, then England, then Germany and Russia. That is basically the pathway of the modern languages. The further along you get on your trip, the more likely the native country was to have already invented words and grammar of their own.
  20. One of the biggest differences you will quickly notice is the different forms of the word ´you´ and the way verbs are conjugated around that form. It is one of the first ways that a person from central america will know that a speaker is from Spain. In central america, we use Tu, Usted and Ustedes... in Spain they use Vos more. The other major differences are words that were ´invented´ after Central America was colonized, mainly technological advances and verbs associated with them. Words like car, television, computer have different versions because they were not brought to Central American from Spain directly. But even though the same word is not commonly used in both places, it would be recognized if someone from Spain was talking about their television.
  21. I have great success with learning by trying to translate songs. Repetition is necessary for learning, and songs often repeat the same phrases over and over. I learned a lot of Korean by translating songs I heard at clubs into english. But for spanish, since I live in a spanish-speaking country, I am having a lot of fun translating english songs into spanish for my friends who don´t speak english. It is almost funny that many people who cannot speak english, can sing most of the óldies´ and have no clue what the song is about. In some cases, I have friends with very specific favorite songs where I have sit down with them and do an accurate translation. With other songs, I try to translate for them on the fly, which is often comical when you do Guns and Rose´s Paradise City. Another really good tool for this is Youtube Especially for spanish, almost every song you can think of will have a version where the song has subtitles in spanish.
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