31 Enero 2005 (lunes)

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Lo Siento

No asistí a nuestra clase de espñol hoy. Mi carro no funcionaba. :-(

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Examenes

Our next quiz is this Wednesday, on February 2.
Our next test is a week from Friday, on February 11.

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Notas

I didn't attend class today because my car wouldn't start when I tried to leave this morning. Based on the homework, though, I am guessing that we studied ordinal numbers. Unlike cardinal numbers (one, two, three, etc.), ordinal numbers indicate relative position or place (first, second, third, etc.). Just when you though you were done learning Spanish numbers!

Hopefully it's pretty straight-forward, though. Unlike the first time you had to learn the numbers, you only have to learn ten this time.

Since I missed class today, if anyone could post a comment here and let me know what Wednesday's homework is, I would appreciate it, and I will update the post.

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Friday's homework (was?) (was not?) collected at the end of class.

Información: Resources

While I've been studying Spanish, I've run across a lot of useful resources. I thought it might be helpful to you if I posted some of them here.

Web Sites

First of all, there are TONS of resources on the Web that provide way too much information for one person to absorb. Some of my favorites are:

• Reference sites. My favorite dictionary site is the wordreference.com site because it will translate almost anything, even conjugated verbs. It also has some great forums where you can post questions or read interesting thread about translation.
• Some of the Spanish-language media portals, such as univision.com and telemundo.com. Each of these has sub-sites that you find interesting. For example, at Univision, there are sites on news, sports, entertainment, and so on. Check them out!
• Shopping sites. Amazon.com has amazing selection of Spanish-language books called Libros en español. VERY highly recommended! (I've got some book recommendations below.)
• Translation sites. There are several of these. One of the most geeky popular ones is called Babel Fish after the wonderful imaginary creature created by Douglas Adams. Another is Google's language tools site.

Books

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of interesting books out there, too. I own all of these and can personally vouch that they are very cool. They can all be found on Amazon.com, and I have included links to make them easy to find.

• Webster's New World Spanish Dictionary: Every halfway serious student of Spanish needs a good dictionary, and this one is very excellent and very reasonably priced. It's the one I personally use while doing my homework. There's also a very inexpensive but highly reviewed dictionary published by Merriam-Webster (not the same Webster as the first).
• Breaking out of Beginner's Spanish: If you're serious about learning Spanish fluently, get this book. This guy is a native English speaker and has invaluable tips on speaking good "street" Spanish instead of the classroom Buenos días, señor type of Spanish. If for no other reason, buy this book because it's got the cuss words that you won't learn at Georgia State. :-)
• El Principito: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fantastic tale of The Little Prince is a foreign language standard for intro level readers. It's written in simple language, it's interesting, it's cheap, and will familiarize you with Spanish grammar and vocabulary. Keep your dictionary handy, though, because at our level, it's not easy yet.
• First Spanish Reader: This is a nifty book that contains short stories, proverbs, and other miscellany. It has the Spanish version on the left side, and the English version on the facing right side, so you can look across for reference. Don't be fooled, it's not a kiddie book, it's just aimed at beginners learning the language. Some of them are quite cute and clever!
• Spanish Verb Tenses and Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions: These are two VERY good workbooks. I cannot emphasize how useful these books are! Now I know the last thing in the world that you want to do is more homework, and I'm not suggesting that you do every single exercise in these books. But personally, I don't like the exercises in ¡Arriba! because they're not thorough enough, and they don't get me to the level of fluency that I'm pursuing. These workbooks hammer home critical lessons to learn the stuff we study in class.

Television and Radio

Living in a major media market, we are lucky to have a plethora (or as we say in Alabama, a passel) of Spanish language television and radio stations.

• We have an Atlanta Univision affiliate. The broadcast channel is 34. Look it up in your television listings and watch it sometimes. I particularly like watching the news. Although they speak very fast, they enunciate very clearly. I hate soap operas, but if you're learning Spanish, they are useful to watch also because they enunciate and speak more slowly. The hardest people to understand are the people on the Jerry Springer-like shows. If you're a straight guy like I am, you'll also likely appreciate the game shows and the variety shows. (We straight guys are so easily amused in any language...)
• We have several Spanish language radio stations here in Atlanta. Some of them include FM 102.3, FM 105.3, AM 610, AM 1100, AM 1420, AM 1460, and AM 1600.
• If you have cable or satellite television, you have many more Spanish language channels and music stations available. I personally have DirecTV, and they offer a programming package called DirecTV Para Todos with LOTS of Spanish language channels.

Miscellaneous

• I have several Spanish-speaking friends from various and sundry walks of life. I talk to them a lot, and they all think it's very cool that I'm trying to learn Spanish. They have been very supportive, and we frequently have short conversations in Spanish. I try to learn something from them every day. (¿Cómo se dice "He got jacked up!" en español?) If you have friends who can speak Spanish, talk to them in Spanish! If not, get out and meet more!
• When you go to a Mexican restaurant, order in Spanish! One quick tip: use quisiera instead of quiero when asking for something. It's a verb tense we haven't learned yet and it means "I would like..." instead of "I want..." It's a bit more polite. Also use "¿Me trae... por favor?" which translates as "Would you please bring me...?"
• If you're really motivated (i.e. more than I am) and/or searching for adventure, then you may even want to try something like going to a site like meetup.com. They have a Spanish language group where people learning Spanish (or English) go and meet at various places just to talk and, well, do whatever I suppose.

Well, that should get you started. I may change or update information as I find it. Feel free to post your own comments to this message with suggestions or thoughts!

28 Enero 2005 (viernes)

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Tarea

Ejercicios 8-20, 8-23
Paginas 269 y 271

For exercise 8-23, List some (at least three) differences between shopping in the United States and shopping in Hispanic countries. (¡Claro en español!)

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Examenes

Our next quiz is this Wednesday, on February 2.
Our next test is a week from Friday, on February 11.

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Notas

Today, we studied a new verb tense: the past imperfect. This is a different tense than the one we have been studying recently, the preterit.

The preterit indicates an action that happened at or during a specific time. For example, Yo me senté (I sat down). It doesn't have to be a specefic named time, but it's a specific event that we can pinpoint. It doesn't have to be a once-only action, but it has to be specific. For example, Dije perdón tres veces (I said excuse me three times).

The past imperfect, on the other hand, applies to events that happened over the course of some undetermined period of time. For example, Conducía a la casa de mi novia cada sábado (I drove to my girlfriend's house every Saturday). Notice that we don't know when I started this habit, how many times I actually did it, or when she finally got a restraining order to make me stop; it's just something that happened over the course of some unspecific time period.

The imperfect is almost always the tense you use for states of being. For example, if I have been sick, I might say Estaba enferme. It is also used exclusively when you are talking about things that used to be. For example, Cuando vivía con mi madre, mirabamos la televisión mucho (When I lived with my mother, we used to watch a lot of television). Last but not least, it is the tense you use for an action that was going on when another action (in the preterit) interrupted it or while another action (in the imperfect) was going on. For example, Hablaba con mi ex-novia cuando la policía llegó (I was talking to my ex-girlfriend when the police came).

Take a look on page 266 of ¡Arriba! for more information, and the imperfect conjugations of verbs is on page 265 (regular verbs) and 266 (regular verbs).

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Wednesday's homework was not collected at the end of class.

Información: Escribiendo a Máquina en Español

In class, it was mentioned that there are several good ways to type Spanish language characters (such as á, é, ñ, etc.). A while back, I wrote a document that covers how to do this. Here it is in two different formats. Enjoy!

Typing in Spanish (PDF Document)
Typing in Spanish (Word Document)

26 Enero 2005 (miércoles)

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Tarea Ejercicios 8-16, 8-17 Pagina 268

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Notas

Today, we started off class with a listening exercise. The narrator read questions about the weather (see page 225), and we had to write down the answers. We also studied the vocabulary on page 261 about clothing and buying stuff (especially clothing) in stores.

In class, we read the reviewed the information at the start of chapter 8 on pages 258 and 259 and the "¡Así es la vida!" section on page 260. We also reviewed the homework exercise 8-5 and the non-homework exercise 8-7.

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Monday's homework was collected at the end of class.