This morning I was idly listening to Crossing Continents on Radio 4 when an item came up from Costa Rica... it was all about the terrible death toll on the roads and what is being done about it ( all words no action basically ).
Quite often we got local people and officials talking Spanish... as usual, however, getting faded out within seconds for the translator to kick in.
One man whose daughter had been killed by a drunk-driver was lamenting that there were words for widow [ viudo/a] and orphan [ huérfano/a] in Spanish, but no word for a father who had lost his daughter.
Later on an official was suggesting that " Los accidentes no existen"
Actually, I was quite encouraged to see that I could understand a good deal of what was said.
On the plus side, Costa Rica has successfully had a seatbelt campaign called "Por Amor" the theme being, put your seat belt on simply for love.. of yourself, your family, your life. There are loads of Spanish songs called Por Amor, and I was going to put one on here, but they are all crap!
They made special mention of the " Caldera bypass" which is beset by subsidence. Caldera = a cauldron in Spanish, and a "Caldera " in geology is a collapsed volcano.... so it finishes up like a big hollow shape... or cauldron. Here's one....
When this same official was asked if anything was being done about the problem, his "snappy answer" started off "Totalmente, cierto" before the Spanish faded away.
Anyhow... other ways to remember what words mean. There's always loads of pesky words you look up again and again because you just can't keep them in the increasingly clogged-up memory. One way is to link the word with a memorable image of some kind.. the sillier/ruder/mad the better...nk of
hallar .... well, it means " to find" So, think of hundreds of people searching a house for a valuable object, and you come in and find it straight way in the hall.
chubasco is a "heavy shower... so imagine being in a heavy shower when a chub lands on your head.Draw a picture! Here's someone with a Chub... the same thing has probably happened to him...
red = a net or network... imagine a dirty great red spider in the middle of a big web/net.... again, do a little drawing. let your mind linger on the image as you colour it in like in infant school. But... you learned a hell of a lot of language in infant school!
tenedor = a fork. Imagine each of your fingers turning into little forks at the tips... how convenient! Wave your fingers around and pretend they are little forks.
A key thing about all this is that you remember things much better the MORE SENSES YOU USE... so draw a picture,colour it in, sing a song ( 10 little forks all sitting in a row..), speak the words out loud, write them down... and make the image memorable by making it really strange\silly\outlandish\rude\funny.
OK then.. here's Nena Daconte with "No sé cómo decirle"... this is not the best version on the net but the other, better ones are not snatchable at the moment... you can find them easily enough. Lovely song though. There's a words video after it..which is a good job becasue on this video you only get 59 seconds-worth!
This one shows a very blurry Nena Daconte singing the song beautifully, but it's rather ruined by some nit in the audience singing along very very badly!!
words...
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