It turns out that el Spanish is proper hard, innit. Crafty Spaniards. As with most European languages you get male and female words, something which has always irritated me; a bathroom isn't male or female is it?! More annoyingly the words' "gender" changes the words around it. I often mix genders throughout the sentence ending in some orgy of hermaphroditic vagueness. The worst being the equivalent of the verb to be which can be es/este/esta/estoy/estamos etc etc etc.
Verbs generally are just awkward bastards. In English it would be - I run, you run, she runs, he runs, they run. The only change is the possible addition of an s. In Spanish, like Romanian, the verb itself changes rather than the I, you, she, it or whatever.
For example:
The Spanish verb to eat is comer. But:
Como demaciado - I eat too much
Comay demaciado - You eat too much (an upward inflection makes it a question)
Comemos demaciado - We eat too much
Compran demaciado - They eat too much.
So when you learn a verb, you actually have to remember loads. This is their vengeance for the long list of irregular verbs that they have to learn in English. Also you tend not to add words like I/you/we as if you hear como you know that the person is talking about themselves.
Other select words that I can remember of the top of my head are
dinero - money
enfermo - ill
tarde - late
temprano - early
rapido - quickly
despacio - slowly
direccion - address
tambien - also
grande - big
perqueno - small
You will have to excuse the spelling. In theory I can also count to 999, though I haven't actually tried as yet. Add in some directions, ordering stuff, general niceties and explaining that my wife is in Bolivia things are coming along nicely. The next plan is to find long lists of vocabulary of things like food and the names of buildings. Hopefully I can find a website for kids with pictures and bright colours. It has crossed my mind that maybe Nickelodeon's resident Spanish teacher Dora the Explorer could help but its too colourful and cheerful for me; its the sort of thing that only children and drug users could sit through.
The CD's cheerful and conversational tone is being slowly withdrawn. Smith and Gomes are a thing of the past, now a Spaniard demands to know how to say "Is the restaurant near or far?" when he clearly already knows.
So far I'm still not sure how much of it is Mexican Spanish but it seems to correspond so I'm not too worried. Mexico (sort of) is a fair part of my life at the moment, thanks to my favourite band deciding that they can out mariachi any Mexican you care to mention.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRzsAXdJE_0
In Spain proper ETA have reared their ugly heads: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/26/basque-eta-independence-female-fighters
Otherwise life remains quiet. Sport wise theres been good news. Despair at Charlton was lifted after we VANQUISHED the tractor boys at the Valley. Kent OBLITERATED Durham to reach finals day in the twenty twenty. Huzzah! I need to get a life. The good Dr. John has injected some danger by driving down country lanes at 90 and then informing us that his exhust was in danger of falling out, the engine is questionable and the breaks work "most of the time".
love love love x
2 comments:
While I've been back this month I've been having lessons with someone who speaks Mexican Spanish. There's lots of little differences, but the main one to watch out for is that they don't really use the vosotros form of verbs.
If you've studied, say, 'estar' and they covered estais, estuvisteis and estareis then it's good, homely European Spanish like mother used to make. If not, it's nasty forrun muck and you should probably look into the vosotros forms a bit.
Not that you often use the second person plural to be honest, but you might need it if you have to address a class in Spanish or something.
I caught myself discussing Spanish verbs in the pub last night. Life will be sweet when I don't have to think about them anymore.
There has been no mention of of any of those words but I think that will be a little ahead of where I am, so I'll wait and see. Thanks for the warning.
I know what you mean. Grammar generally is becoming far too large a part of my life. I got annoyed when I saw someone write 'aloud' when they meant 'allowed'. Cretins.
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