Zikkled

You really would think movie producers would be willing to spend some budget on accurate translations... Translating is pretty hard and all, but there's a lot of people that are willing to do it, not to mention it's really not hard to find someone whose native languages is something other than English who also has good English, and such a person is very capable of translating something with the meaning that was intended.

No conozco mucha comida española, pero me encanta la paella. Tampoco conozco comida latina aparte de la mexicana. La comida del estado de Oaxaca me gusta mucho! Las tlayudas son de mis platillos favoritos.

Jeez, I had the problem backwards when I was younger, since I learned Spanish first... I saw the word "embarrassed" in a video game and thought it meant pregnant! It wasn't until I repeated the same scene a few times that I understood what it really meant. For a few other important ones, there's Asistencia - not assistance, but attendance. Billón - not billion, but trillion. A billion is "un millon de millones" - literally "a million million." Chocar / choque - not choke, but crash (verb) / crash (noun), respectively. Copa - not cup, but a glass (usually wine - "una copa de vino") or a trophy (think of the World Cup!) Cup is "taza." Lastly, and one I see a lot, is "sensible," which isn't, well... sensible, as in prudent, but "sensitive."

金曜日 (Friday) 私は金曜日が大好き！ (I love Fridays!) しりとりは楽しいです。頑張って、みんな！

This is a bit of a tricky one, actually! I had to do a little bit of research to confirm this one myself, but I knew for sure "peko peko" referred to being hungry, since I remember my Japanese teacher would often say, "お腹がペコペコ" - "My stomach is peko-peko" before we went on break. Now, my source may not be terribly credible (http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/159/3/8/japanese_onomatopoeia_for_manga_artists_by_ireal70-d52pjrp.pdf), but it looks like the sound for a bow is a single "peko." I seemed to recall this from reading manga, but I wanted to be sure. A search for "pekopeko" by itself will give you food-related results, or sources saying it's related to hunger, so I think it's safe to say it doesn't signify bowing.

I keep most of the languages I know! I haven't really been studying Japanese that much this summer other than watching shows in Japanese. I guess that may be considered good practice, but when you're watching something I don't think people usually focus on every thing that's being said. I was able to have a good conversation with my cousin who just came back from a year abroad in Japan, and it felt pretty good!

Most children's classics are translated into Spanish, and should be good for a beginner to read because the don't tend to have complex vocabulary. El Principito is a great read for any child, and still one of my favorites.

Don Quixote really isn't appropriate if you're beginner. It has a lot of old words that are no longer in use, so you'll be spending a good deal with a dictionary. Since the words aren't really used these days, I'm not sure that's the vocabulary you should be interested in.

French is my absolute favorite language. I took a semester of it, bu the pronunciation was pretty hard for me because I only know Spanish and English.

I'd been hearing great things about this author, and I read two of his books in English. My favorite was South of the Border, West of the Sun, which I purchased a Japanese copy of recently. It's really good practice. It's a lot different reading it in the actual language... I think it's much better like this.

I've always thought this was a really charming thing about the language! I can't help but think that it's really cute. One of my favorites is "fuwa-fuwa," which describes something fluffy.