Entries tagged with "spanish"
Language Week is spreading!
posted by srah on June 27, 2007 12:14 PM
Tags: comics, language week, memes, pearls before swine, spanish
Even the crockydiles are in on it! [Pearls Before Swine, 6/27/2007] Well, sort of....
Good Morning Internet!
posted by srah on June 24, 2007 5:51 PM
Tags: in spanish, language, language week, memes, ship, spanish, travel
Or rather, good evening. But I've been so lazy today it might as well be the morning for all that I've gotten done. Anyway, I'm back in the USSR. Photos from my voyage can be found here and videos of fascinating things like whales spouting and cliff divers cliff-diving can be found here. Now I must go and prepare for Language Week! All this time in Mexico and in on-ship Spanish classes has inspired me not to devote the entire week to Arabic. Soy hispanohablante, yo! Por el momento. Hasta que yo olvido todo mi español¹. Ha! What I love...
¡Allabunto allaquento!
posted by srah on July 7, 2005 12:20 PM
Tags: spanish
In honor of Language Week, I bring you the web-archived version of my absolutely favorite Onion article ever: I Bet I Can Speak Spanish...
Miércoles
posted by srah on July 6, 2005 5:52 PM
Tags: in spanish, language, language week, memes, spanish
Bueno. ¡Mi español es aun peor que mi francés, entonces perdonenme, por favor! Hoy día fui a la biblioteca para buscar un diccionario español-inglés. Hace dos años que perdí mi mismo diccionario. ¡Es difícil, escribir en español con diccionario, porque no sé buscar las palabras! Empezé a aprender el español cuando estaba en Francia por primera vez y compré un libro para "Apprendre l'espagnol en 30 leçons" o algo como eso. Así, aprendí un poco de español en Francia. Después, regresé en los Estados Unidos y estudié el español en la universidad durante un año. ¡Después, regresé en Francia y...
Primero mensaje
posted by srah on August 30, 2004 10:53 AM
Tags: in spanish, language, language week, memes, spanish
Bueno. Es de nuevo La Semana de los Idiomas y hace dos años desde la última vez que aprendí el castellano. No hay mucho necesidad para el español en Michigan o en Francia. El padre del Pato es en los Estados Unidos por el momento para visitar su hijo y no habla mucho inglés, entonces quizás voy a necessitar hablarlo este fin de semana. Si no necessito el español solamente para entender el Jezito, que me habla tal vez en el español Canario, lo que no entendería incluso si había estudiado el español recientemente. (All words and phrases in italics...
Drie scheuren in het fudament der Gereformeerde waarheid
posted by srah on July 1, 2003 11:35 AM
Tags: accents, dutch, french, language, spanish
I read a Dutch card-catalogue card out loud to my mother, who told me I sounded like I was speaking French. I realized my mistake and changed my Rs from the voiced uvular fricative to flapped ones (language nerd! language nerd!), and felt like I was speaking Spanish. I read Spanish with a French accent, Dutch with a Spanish one, and French with a strange one that no one can identify, but definitely sounds foreign. I strive to be a mutant in all languages....
Quiero mas hispanophones
posted by srah on May 15, 2003 4:25 PM
Tags: assistantship, language, spanish
I guess I was mentally prepared from last time for people not to understand me in French. My problem now is that no one understands me in French or in Spanish. It's frustrating when I say "Quiero una zanahoria" and Cheryl doesn't understand that I want a carrot. I am a mutant to come back from France speaking Spanish, but everyone in Vichy spoke some Spanish or could be taught....
Quiero té
posted by srah on April 26, 2003 1:12 PM
Tags: in spanish, language, spanish
It throws me off that in Spanish, the verb querer can mean either want (as in Yo quiero Taco Bell... sorry I couldn't come up with a better example) or love (as in Te quiero), two ideas that are very different to me in English. I can see how in cases of romantic love the two could overlap, but it shocks me sometimes when I translate into English in my head and find someone saying that he wants his mother a lot. Goes to show you you shouldn't translate things into English in your head, I guess....
¡La hora de la siesta!
posted by srah on April 18, 2003 11:11 AM
Tags: assistantship, classwork, in spanish, spanish
And now for the resumé of today's Spanish lessons, just because the THOTs seem to be amused by it. I will talk about my lesson with the 1ASMS, because the mendigo cartoon wasn't very interesting and de toutes les façons, Rémy has already read all of the notes I took during the first hour. En mi segunda clase de español del dia, vemos un comic que habla de una familia que ve demasiado television. Una noche, la mujer se despierta a las dos y veinte de la mañana. Mira a su marido, que sigue durmiendo. Se levanta y pone una...
En la clase de español
posted by srah on April 11, 2003 11:16 AM
Tags: assistantship, david sedaris, in spanish, language, me talk pretty one day, spanish
Hoy, estudiamos la grammatica de francés. Para aprender lenguas, es muy importante conocer bien su misma lengua, entonces revisamos el subjunctivo y el condicional de francés antes de estudiar esos tiempos en español. Correct me, lurking Spanish speakers. I know you're there. If you let me prattle along in bad Spanish, I will always sound like an evil baby. Please help me learn to talk like a hillbilly instead....
Beurk!
posted by srah on April 4, 2003 9:30 AM
Tags: assistantship, classwork, food, in french, in spanish, mcdonalds, spanish
Hoy día en la clase de español hablamos de McDonald's. Mis estudiantes, que son estudiantes de hoteleria, y que deben tener standards, van al McDonald's dos veces por semana. Might as well use my Spanish, or I'm going to keep forgetting it. When Sonia asked the students who enjoyed going to McDonald's, the hand of the petite ricaine was one of the few that wasn't raised. I was afraid during the whole class period that I was going to be asked for the American opinion on McDonald's. In Spanish. I wouldn't say that I don't like fast food - because...
Bamos en Bichy
posted by srah on March 28, 2003 1:58 PM
Tags: assistantship, classwork, in spanish, spanish
I suck at Spanish. Random irregular conjugations pop up in my head from time to time, but I can't conjugate a regular -ir verb to save my life. What's more, I am constantly confused by Bs and Vs, which usually sound the same in Spanish. So when Sonia turned to me today and asked me to conjugate the regular verb bibir, I was instantly confused. I didn't need to know the meaning of the verb in order to conjugate it, but it threw me off that she had thrown this odd, unfamiliar word at me. "To drink"? No, that's beber....
Siempre quieren hablar el idioma que no debe se hablar
posted by srah on January 25, 2003 4:57 AM
Tags: assistantship, spanish
In order to make it to the Scrabble tournament on time, I went to the Spanish class at 3pm instead of my usual 4-5 one. This meant I was with the famed THOTs, who were rather fascinated to see me there. They all started speaking English as they settled into their seats, and Sonia replied in kind. I think I heard more English in that Spanish class than I usually hear when I have the THOTs. Maybe if Sonia spoke English to them all hour and I spoke Spanish in English class, we would both accomplish more. Bueno. ¿Que vamos...
¿Hay alguien aquí que hable inglés?
posted by srah on December 1, 2002 2:20 AM
Tags: assistantship, classwork, spanish
It came up in conversation that I might like to sit in on a class while I am here, as I have nothing better to do. I chose Spanish and sat in on Friday. I learned a lot and I think it would be good for me, but it was frustrating because a) They constructed sentences much better than I can and b) They were interested and participating. There is nothing more frustrating than working with students for hours and getting nothing out of them, then seeing them working well and happily in another subject. This is the lot of...
Je ne sais pas que idioma wo am speaking de temps en temps
posted by srah on September 22, 2002 1:15 PM
Tags: assistantship, chinese, english, french, language, spanish
With 22 years of English, 10 years of French, 1 year of Spanish, and 1 semester of Mandarin Chinese, my mind is a big linguistic muddle sometimes. I was showing my Chile pictures to Françoise last night and would switch to Spanish whenever I said a Spanish place-name, although I pronounced the Spanish place-name à la française. When I was talking to the other Srah and other Morins would enter the room, I would try to speak to them in English. When I took Chinese and didn't know the Chinese word, it would come out in English. When I'm on...
Yo no soy el chupacabra
posted by srah on September 20, 2002 8:26 AM
Tags: spanish
While waiting for my train at the airport train station, a woman came up to me and started speaking Spanish. Am I sending out Spanish vibes? Maybe it was because I was wearing the outfit Alexandra says I stole from her, so the woman thought I was Ecuadorian. I understood (almost) everything the woman was saying, but I was afflicted with dumbness. I nodded and nodded, but when she stopped and looked at me expectantly, all I could offer was "Hablo solamente un poco español". She eventually found what she was looking for and left. Which was too bad, because...
Por ejemplo, Citrón
posted by srah on September 3, 2002 1:21 PM
Tags: assistantship, driving, french, imagination, singing, spanish
One of the things I miss when I'm away from the United States is driving. Not the driving itself, mind you, because I hate that. But the being locked up in an enclosed space all alone. The freedom to talk or sing to yourself without inflicting it on others or being judged by them. I love to turn a song waaaaaaay up and sing along in the car. You're enclosed with the music, you don't have to worry about bothering family members or neighbors, and you can really get into it... unless you're stopped at a light and people are...
srah and her words, part deux
posted by srah on August 7, 2002 2:08 PM
Tags: english, french, language, spanish
In French (feuilles) and Spanish (hojas), a piece of paper is a "leaf". In English (in the U.S. at least), we have loose-leaf paper, but for the most part, we call individual pieces of paper "sheets". Which is the same word we use for bed-coverings. We're funny like that. I wonder why we don't call them leaves....
Day 12: 21 June 2002 - "What says the voices in the sky?"
posted by srah on June 21, 2002 10:43 PM
Tags: chile, david sedaris, language, spanish, travel
We started off the day with heaping bowls of Chocapic, just the way a day should begin. Mine were plain, in cold milk, like a normal Unitedstatesian. Pato's were in warm milk with sugar poured over the top, like Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes. Gotta find that cartoon... Pato, tía Amada and I would be going south that evening, to pick up the car. Apparently it was a problem with the clutch and not the brakes, as I had previously believed. Anyway, the car was in Rancagua and it was time to go pick it up. The idea was that...
Spanish lesson du jour
posted by srah on March 1, 2002 11:39 AM
Tags: in spanish, spanish
la papa: the potato El Papa: the Pope el papá: the dad...
The French and Spanish words for peanut
posted by srah on December 21, 2001 1:54 PM
Tags: arabic, french, language, spanish
The French and Spanish words for peanut are both "cacahuete" but pronounced differently. In Cuba, they also say "mani", which comes from Arabic. Stephanie says that in Spanish, the sounds "al" (as in Alvarez) and "guad" (as in Guadalajara) originally come from Arabic, too. Historically, it makes sense that Arabic would have affected Spanish, but it never would have occurred to me. I love words....
Phew!
posted by srah on December 10, 2001 10:44 AM
Tags: spanish
Phew! I thought I was going to have to study for the Spanish test I have at 3pm today. But I Bet I Can Speak Spanish anyway, so I just won't worry about it. (via Mr Enlow)...
No tengo ganas
posted by srah on December 9, 2001 3:57 PM
Tags: english, french, language, spanish
No tengo ganas de estudiar. Spanish (and French in some cases) words often tend to have es- where we only have s-, like in España (you know how long it took me to find the ñ on the Chilean-keyboard-setup? too long.) vs. Spain and estudiar vs. study. Alex overcompensates for this and comes up with words like skimo. Veddy cute. As I was saying, no tengo ganas de estudiar. Je n'ai pas envie d'étudier. I don't feel like studying....
Late night chez srah!
posted by srah on December 3, 2001 1:59 AM
Tags: chile, classwork, in spanish, roommate, spanish
Late night chez srah! Alex and I are doing all of the work we (read: I) put off all weekend. "Chile es un país de variedades. Es largo, angosto y se tiende de encima del Tropico de Capricornio a la región antártica." My hedgehog-of-a-roommate is evidently not sleepy either, and is burning the Amélie soundtrack and trying to stump the new version of WinAmp....
I tried to say numbers
posted by srah on November 28, 2001 4:19 PM
Tags: classwork, french, language, spanish
I tried to say numbers in French today but they tried to come out in Spanish. Things are all confused in my head. I think I'm aging backwards and my attention span is getting shorter as I get older. Maybe i's just early-onset senility. I don't think it's a good sign that the one class I'm taking in my major this semester is the one class where I watch the clock from beginning to end and whimper in my head about how painfully bored I am. I hate literature classes....
I hate studying for my Spanish tests with Alex
posted by srah on November 19, 2001 7:59 AM
Tags: classwork, in spanish, pato, spanish
I hate studying for my Spanish tests with Alex. Either I am lying and I actually do like it, or I am just really dumb and forget every single time that I hate it and go back to doing it again the next time. Somehow it always results in Alex doubled over in laughter with tears streaming down his face. Is that conducive to learning? No. Alex is a chuleta de cerdo....
One of the finest poets of the day
posted by srah on November 5, 2001 12:37 PM
Tags: in spanish, my favorite posts, poetry, spanish, vampires
One of the finest poets of the day has brought into the world yet another masterpiece. First, we will share an earlier example of her Spanish-language oeuvre, then her latest work on the theme of "Autumn". Sit back, because you are in for a treat. La Sangre Yo no soy un café. [I am not a café.] Sin embargo hay personas que me persiguen a todas partes [However, there are people following me everywhere] Buscando algo de beber. [Looking for something to drink.] Este líquido en mis venas [This liquid in my veins] No es expresso, [Is not espresso,] ¡Malditos...
