Capsule tasks.......

When you are learning a language, you can liven things up a bit by setting yourself short-term projects... I call them " Capsule Tasks."

Here's a few examples...

[a] Translate a paragraph of Spanish into English, then put the original away and translate back into Spanish again... then compare.

[b] Learn the set of words you need to describle somebody's face or their clothes, or a building or a car... then as you stroll into town use what you have learned on everyone or everything you see.

[c] Buy a cheap children's book ( Noddy stories are good) and transalte it into Spanish

[d] Learn the words of one of your favourite Spanish songs.

[e] Pick up a handfull of Scrabble tiles and try to make as many Spanish words as you can... and find out what they mean.

[f] Read a small section of an English-language book, and decide which tense all the verbs should be in.... even better, actually translate the verbs.

[g] Read a page of Spanish nito a tape-recorder, then play it back. does it sound OK ? Try reading the same passage month later... are you improving your accent?

Well, that's enough for starters... these little projects are very motivational... they're short, and different to the usual ploughing-through-the-book tasks.

The music today is a song I've featured before, but this is a lovely "unplugged" version... it's Mäbu and " Tanta Química"... I love it!



Here's the words...

A Solas :
A solas hablo contigo y te cuento que la luna es roja
Te cuento que a veces me espanta
Ahora acabo convertida en pluma
como una más entre tu almohada pero muy cerca de tu cara
No puedo no tocarte si tú no me dejas
besarte si tú no me lo pides
Instinto animal hay de sobra
Y tengo clavada aquí una condena de años
y de preferencias que dicta que a mí no me tocas
Tanta química, tanta física
tantas ganas de morderte
tanto y tanto para los demás
con ganas d volver a verte…x2
La marca que deja un beso no es tan mala
te puede dar todo por nada
y te quiere dar, te puede dar
Que puedo yo darte si no tengo historia
algunos años de poca memoria
Soy para ti lo que me digas, me da igual
Tanta química, tanta física
tantas ganas de morderte
tanto y tanto para los demás
con ganas d volver a verte…x2
Tanta química
Tanta física
Por qué es con otro y no contigo
Por qué es con otra y no conmigo


(Gracias a Pimientorojo por esta letra)

The imperfect world...

Yes, we live in an imperfect world all right, and as this imperfect world chunders on, things happen. And things happen in the preterite.

The preterite seems to bob about in a sea of imperfection.



Which is a common feature of Spanish sentences.

Things happen ( in the Preterite) against a background of happenings in the Imperfect.

Y mientras andaban, Tigle le contó a Ruh todo sobre las cosas que peuden hacer los Tigles.

andaban is in the imperfect.... it's the background to the action, we don't know when the andabanning started or when it will finish.

contó is in the preterite... it's time is clearly defined as "while they were walking."

Y ahora que yo pensaba, empezó a acordarse de que no había visto mucho a Christopher robin últimamente.

The "empezó/preterite" takes place against the background "pensaba/imperfect."

When you are reading, you come across this pattern all the time, but unless you are actively watching the grammar, and asking yourself WHY each verb is the way it is, you will simply let it all flood past you and not learn anything.

I know we all want to get on with the story... so I recommend ( and I've mentioned this before) that AFTER you have read a page or so, go back and read it carefully... noting down all the stuff you whizzed through the first time.

Y cuanto más se alejaban, más espesa era la bruma, así que Tigle empezó a desaparecer....

The background happenings ( alejaban, era) are in the imperfect, and the thing that happens ( empezó) is in the preterite.



Dual-language books are really good for this type of grammar-spotting. All sorts of patterns like this can be picked up/reinforced when you have the English and Spanish side by side.

Reading the English side, you can think... hang on, this is going to be an imperfect background/preterite happening thingy... and glance over to the Spanish to see. And so on.

Grammar-spotting is do-able using any old rubbish.... but it's nice if it's a text you really love... these examples I just picked up from El Rincón de Puh... who could have guessed that.

You don't just have to wait for these ideas to pop up in your reading... you should make up your own, and say them out loud, and use them.

Here's Mäbu again with a live version of Tierra.... there's 2 Mabu's... this lot have an umlaut over the a... Mäbu and the other ones have an acute accent over the u ... Mabú .



here's a cleaner studio version...



...and here's the words, from musica.com

Mäbu - Tierra

Hoy la tierra anuncia que ha visto morir
Miles de inocentes viviendo la paz
Y a la vez rezándole a un mismo dios
Estar con los suyos en calma

Que somos polvo de estrellas sin más
Nos dieron la vida, nos dieron de más
Nos encanta el aire y disfrutamos del mar

Y disfrutamos de todo lo que tengo
Desaparece y aparece
Todo lo que somos
Hoy le da el aire y desvanece
Todo lo que tengo
Desaparece y aparece
Todo lo que somos
Hoy le da el aire y desvanece

Emperatriz en esta habitación
Más allá de aquí no soy nada
Y en contra toda indicación
Le he contado a el quien sea el que manda

Tanto vives como cuanto quieras dar
Siempre depende el recuerdo de los demás
Quiero beber del aire y disfrutar del mar

Y disfrutar de todo lo que tengo
Desaparece y aparece
Todo lo que somos
Hoy le da el aire y desvanece
Todo lo que tengo
Desaparece y aparece
Todo lo que somos
Hoy le da el aire y desvanece

Todo lo que tengo
Todo lo que tengo
Todo lo que tengo
Todo lo que tengo

Todo lo que tengo
Desaparece y aparece
Todo lo que somos
Hoy le da el aire y desvanece

Musica.com - Letras, vídeos, wallpapers, foros, biografías...

Grammar-spotting... you know it makes sense!