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!

telenovas

Going back to my current theme... how can you get plenty of practice at listening to spoken Spanish, there's Spanish soap operas ( telenovelas) to watch and listen to.



Here's some of the commoner ones... though this first clip from Gitanas isn't overstuffed with words...



Here's the final episode of "Daniela".. a bit of a spoiler really!


This next one is chapter 21 part 3 of "El juego de la vida)... there's billions of episodes of this to watch...



This next one seems to be a compilation of " La Madrasta"



and here is bit of tempestuous lives in " La Usurpadora"..



When you search around for these Spanish/latin soaps, you've got to watch out for the zillions of "College Projects" done by American students.... this lot aren't actually trying to fool you though...



but this lot might think they have got away with it... NOT!!!



Hmmm... the way to avoid this is by searching for telenovas rather than , Spanish soaps.

Well, music time today is a song I meant to put on ages ago but mysteriously ( I think) didn't... it's Coti + Nena Daconte and Perdóname... and it features plenty of Mia Meneses and her dippy vertical dancing.. I love it!



These words are from the mamarrachi site....

Mi corazón no entiende más tu idioma,
si querías estar sola,
¿para que me abrís?

Creyéndote, presiento que me extrañas
me estaré alucinando, parece que no.

No te preocupes, la condena me empieza a caer,
yo que creía que sentías lo mismo que ayer.
Perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoqué.

Oí tu voz que susurraba algo,
yo entendía lo contrario de lo que hoy haces.
Siempre me haces equivocar,
siempre me llevas al mismo lugar,
si ya te ganaste mi pecho roto,
para que insistir mandando fotos.

No te preocupes,
la condena me empieza a caer,
yo que creía que sentías lo mismo que ayer.

Perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoqué,
perdóname, me equivoque

Vamos a hablar Español....

Yes, I know, I haven't written anything for ages.

Well, I have, but not on here.

My semi-joking post last time went down like a bucket of sick, maybe I was sulking!

So, a quick post to let you all know I am still here...

It's about an odd old-fashioned Spanish book for beginners...



Yes, it's Vamos a hablar Español.[1963]

Rather an old-fashioned and incredibly stereotypical cover too.

However, for a beginner, it has its attractions. It's all done in double-page spreads, the Spanish is very simple and progresses very slowly... which is good for certain types of learners.

Each page has a weird woodcut ( ?)(see above)(click to enlarge) going back to the Spanish middle ages I would imagine, mostly street scenes... no mobile phones, bullet trains or laptops here.

Each picture has a dialogue to go with it, simple stuff, useful conversation, a handy vocabulary, lists of phrases.

You could make a good lesson with each double page, a good target for beginners.

The learners who worked with this book must have had a bit of a shock when they went to resorts in Spain though... here's couple more pics to show you what I mean.....






You will be dissapointed to hear that Amazon hasn't got any copies, though I bet there are 1000s in dusty cupboards in schools all over the UK.


I've just noticed, by the way, that this is my 64th post on here, without a single reply.

Not one, even nasty ones.

Nobody has answered any of my questions (!).... even a bit of criticism would be nice. Come on folks, I keep playing you (mostly) lovely music... do you agree? Any requests?

So, throwing another stone in the pond, here's Mabu and A Solas plus a quirky little video.

PLUS... she sings it really slowly for us learners out here in the tyrosphere!



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)

Yep, thanks.

A simple task...

Today I thought I would take a break from all this serious heavy stuff and give you a little "Use Your Spanish" -type task.. but have no fears, I will give you loads of help.

Here we go then...



It's the usual thing... you've got to use this picture as a starting point for a little story.... keep it in the present tense if you like... but to help you, here is a list of useful words and phrases.... try to get most of them in..

agüero mal ..... a bad omen
aceite ..........olive oil
aparejador ...... quantity surveyor
airar ........... to get angry
acrillar a balazos ... to riddle with bullets
alardear .......... to boast
avicola ........... poultry
avios.............. gear, kit
azafata ............ air hostess
ni un ápice ....... not a whit
agredir............. to attack
aserradero........... a sawmill
aguarrás ............. turpentine
arroparse..............to wrap up warm
aplastar ................ to squash flat, to crush
apabullar................ to crush
achatar...................to flatten
altivez................... haughtiness, arrogance
caballero andante......... a knight errant
añoranza...................nostalgia
ambiente ..................atmosphere, surroundings
estar aviado .............. to be in a mess
amilanar ...................to scare
aplacarse .................to calm down
alunizar .................. to land on the moon.

I hope that all helped, and that you will send me your lovely stories. Perhaps, next time we could try some words beginning with b as a more advanced task.

Anyhow..

To round things off, here's Vetusta Morla woth Nuevo Año...



Isn't that good folks.

and the beautiful poetic words.....


No podré contar
qué ocurrió ayer,
fue hace tanto tiempo
que el sol se ha vuelto a poner.

Embobado, insomne,
acaricio la piedra que encontré.
Todos duermen pero ella,
con el ruido, no la pudo ver.

Con vivos, muertos, brindando juntos
por un año más, un año menos
que dolerse de esta herida y de esta luz.

Ella llegó tarde, no vio a nadie,
fue directa a dormir.
En vez de su piedra
encontró una fiesta en su salón.

Con vivos, muertos, brindando juntos
por un año más, un año menos
que dolerse de esta herida y de esta luz.

Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...
Con vivos, con muertos ...

Con vivos, muertos, brindando juntos
por un año más, un año menos
que dolerse de esta herida y de esta luz.

Con vivos, muertos, brindando juntos,
un año menos que dolerse de esta herida y de esta luz.

Interview time...

Here's Nelly Furtado getting in a bit of Semaphore practice in her ( limited) spare time.



This is H actually... I wonder how they do alll those accents in semaphore ....

Of course. you need to learn to listen to and understand spoken, genuine Spanish as well... and of course there's loads of ways to do this...watching cartoons, soaps, news items, listening to songs, interviews etc...

The big plus with listening this way is that you can play the talk over and over... picking up more and more each time, getting the hang of all the word-merging that goes on, programming rapid unravelment of standard phrases...

Let's pick the last option for now, and watch a few interviews...

Here's one of Vetusta Morla talking to the camera...



Here's La Mala Rodriguez talking nineteen to the dozen...



Here she is talking more slowly, plus the English translation, which you can easily cover up if you want...



Here's Nelly Furtado chatting away...




Next up is Kim Fanlo and Nena Daconte.. this one is pretty hard I think..



My regular music spot is another, pleasurable, chance to listen to Spanish...

Here's the excellent Pol 3.14 and " lo que no ves"...



Here's the words from fuente:musica.com

Antes de que amaneciera,
salí huyendo de tu cama.
En tu espejo un testamento:
“No nos queda nada”.

Deje tu barra de labios,
y con ella un par de años.
De quererte por las tardes,
de mañanas sin llamarte.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

Tropezamos de repente,
como en un nuevo 11S.
Sonreíste a quema ropa,
contra el filo de mi boca.

Y susurraste que el pasado,
solo es como un día malo.
Y la lluvia abrió las puertas,
de mi vida en tu Ford Fiesta.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

No consigo recordar,
porque motivo me fui,
pero en tu cuarto de baño,
sigue tu rojo de labios.

No consigo recordar,
como he llegado hasta aquí,
solo sé que estoy borrando,
lo que un día te hizo daño.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

Siempre fui poniendo parches,
negando segundas partes.
Hasta que me demostraste,
que no quiero olvidarte.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

No consigo recordar,
porque motivo me fui,
pero en tu cuarto de baño.
sigue tu rojo de labios.

No consigo recordar,
como he llegado hasta aquí,
solo sé que estoy borrando,
lo que un día te hizo daño.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

No consigo recordar,
porque motivo me fui,
pero en tu cuarto de baño.
sigue tu rojo de labios.

No consigo recordar,
como he llegado hasta aquí,
solo sé que estoy borrando,
lo que un día te hizo daño.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

Tú me enseñas que,
se puede querer,
lo que no ves.

Tú me enseñas que,
Se puede querer.

Fuente: musica.com

Talking the talk...

To be honest, I never really get a chance to talk any Spanish... except to myself, or when I'm ( quietly) singing the odd Spanish song, or answering Mr. Thomas' questions .

And being even more honest, I'm probably never going to go to Spain either.

SO... how do you get to speak more Spanish?

[a] Well, as above, you can sing along to Spanish songs....this is really good because it's enjoyable, you can copy the exact pronunciation of the singer, and you can get confident at saying all those words and sentence patterns.

Here's a song specially designed for you to sing along to...



[b] You can read Spanish out loud from a book... this is a good way to start when you haven't the confidence to think up any Spanish... it's quite a challenge to actually get your gob around those lovely pure vowels, the tricky consonants and so on...
So, you can just read out loud, or even better you can read into a tape and play it back.

Over time you should hear yourself improve.Excellent.

[c] You can read plays.. you can even take the different parts. Plays are good, as I might have mentioned before, becasue they are ALL SPEAKING... so you are using real sentences which you can use.Again, you can tape your efforts.

[d] There are books with ready-made speech/dialogues in them, such as Spanish Among Amigos... dreadful title, rubbish cover.. but it is pretty good, with 21 little playlets/chats between the two characters, Pepa and Pili.



The book is really a guide to colloquial usage, but the dialogues are very good, pretty short.. plus there are translations at the end of the book.

[e] When you get more confident you can try to think up your own Spanish by talking about what you can see around you, what you are thinking about, your plans for the day, what you did yesterday etc. you can argue with the TV news in spanish, you can translate little bits of Corry while you watch it ....

[f] I do sometimes hear people talking Spanish when I am out and about. I haven't actually spoken to any of them yet, but I will do.I do know that some Russians have a little badge they can wear to show they speak Russian... and they get into a lot of conversations that way. Is there a Spanish signal as well? I've tried to find it on the net with no luck.

[g] To help you with speaking there is a book designed for people doing their GCSE oral exam called Bravo... it has loads of ideas, vocabulary, sentence frames and grammar help for students needing to speak simple Spanish and answer simple questions... it's cheap as well....





[h] Some places have informal Spanish-speaking sessions... for example, in Kendal , at the Brewery cafe, one evening there is an informal Spanish session where people just turn up and they speak Spanish for an hour or so in the cafe. Every evening a different language. You could find out if there is anything like that round your way.

Here's some people speaking Spanish in a simple way....



That's enough for now... here's some music...

This lovely song is Zahara with Funeral.... again, lots of smashing performancesof this song on the net.... this is one of the best.



These words are from Que de letras.com....

Trato de alcanzarlos,
pero corren mucho más deprisa.
Tiemblan mis cimientos rotos tras el terremoto,
y está todo echo trizas.
Con la sensación de haber echo demasiado
y sin embargo, sentir que todo en vano.

Me pilló de imprevisto no supe decir lo que quería hablar.
Ahora que sé como hacerlo tú no quieres escuchar.
De haberlo sabido habría sido distinto, lo dudo.
Quizás esto no tiene remedio,
ha empezado el funeral.

Trato de arrancarlos,
pero siguen mucho más adentro.
Con la sensación de estar haciendo lo incorrecto,
y sin embargo, no poder dejar de hacerlo.

Me pilló de imprevisto no supe decir lo que quería hablar.
Ahora que sé como hacerlo tú no quieres escuchar.
De haberlo sabido habría sido distinto, lo dudo.
Quizás esto no tiene remedio,
ha empezado el funeral.

Sólo me arrepiento de haberme dormido.
Sólo me arrepiento de haberme perdido.

Me pilló de imprevisto no supe decir lo que quería hablar.
Ahora que sé como hacerlo tú no quieres escuchar.
De haberlo sabido habría sido distinto, lo dudo.
Quizás esto no tiene remedio...

Ha empezado el funeral (x2).
Funeral (x3).

en la habitación...

It's got to the stage where I need to get to grips with gender....



Because it matters! And there are quite a few Spanish nouns which are exceptions to the -o male and -a female rules, plus there are still more which don't end -a or -o and which don't fit all the other arbitrary and very forgettable other rules which all the grammar books list.

So what do you do ?

As a neat sort of coincidence, there was a fascinating program on R4 this morning about word games, and one of the games was to try putting "Mr." or "Mrs" in front of all your nouns.

It proved remarkably tricky for an English speaker... because it's not at all obvious which it should be for most nouns.

However, as Mr. Fry ( for it was he) pointed out, to speakers of gender-nouned languages this thought is absolutely natural, and gives each noun an extra quality, or shade of meaning, almost in the same way that some people assign colours to nouns.

They went on to discuss how this might/does affect, for example, poetry where ( for example) Baudelaire is known to have used the gender-properties of the nouns he used to emphasise the meaning/symbolism in his poetry.

I have often wondered how native speakers of such languages manage to learn and remember the gender of obscure nouns that they rarely use. Some books tell us that native speakers develop a "feel" for the correct gender.

Personally I doubt this....but in another bizarre coincidence , in that same programme they played another game which touched on this idea of innate "feel."

They called it " Cheese or Font." Players were given a word and had to decide whether it was a cheese or a font! It was not a test of their knowledge... they were meant to do this by "feeling" which was right for a cheese-name, and which was right for a "font-name."

For example, one of the words was "dauphin". After a fair bit of thinking, one decided it was a cheese, the other decided it was a font... in fact this one was both.

[I've just found out that you can play this game online.. just type Cheese or Font into google! ]

It would be interesting to try this on native speakers where they had to decide on the gender of the obscure noun to see how well they did.


There were plenty of other interesting ideas in that program which I will bring up sooner or later.

Anyway, one way of remembering the gender for any noun is to make a mental picture of the noun with either a man or a woman.

An example would be thimble,,,, el dedal in Spanish...but inconvenently masculine so the the obvious woman-thimble link is no good.

You could simply remember that it comes from el dedo = finger.

Or, for example, you could picture Wayne Rooney running round the pitch almost totally covered with a giant thimble.
Or Jeremy Clarkson having trouble changing gear because all ten fingers have thimbles on them...

Let's try another... how about the mink... el visón.. again masculine.
Imagine something really incongruous like Vin Diesel strolling down the road wearing a mink coat.

How about el afán ... ambition/effort... this type is trickier because this is not an actual object... it's again masculine so you can picture thet survivalist Ray Mears making an immense effort to build a fan to keep cool in the desert!

You desperately need to remember that a Partridge... la perdiz... is feminine!
Well, you could simply think of a woman seaching for her lost Partridge( to lose = perder) all over the place...

Or think of all the women in the Partridge Family ( remember them). That'll do!

You get the general idea I'm sure. Remember to make your images strange, weird, rude,scary or whatever so they sink in.

Well, it's music time, and I thought we could have a look at more by that nice Zahara who was with Santi Balmas

....this is she playing live... a lovely, intimate version of En la Habitación... a feminine noun there, obeying the -iôn usually feminine rule!

There's lots of versions of this lovely quiet song to watch...



That is just beautiful! Great audience too.

Thanks to the musicstar site for these words..

Video y Letra de la Cancion En La Habitación – Zahara

Fumo sola en la terraza del hotel
recuerdo el humo
y la cerveza en tus manos.

Anoche las niñas paseaban sus zapatos
y no teníamos nada que perder.
No teníamos nada…

En este cuarto hay demasiado por hacer
y no tengo a nadie con quien echar un rato.
Todos queríamos ser extraordinarios
Podrías hacer algo por volver
podrías hacer algo…

El tiempo en esta habitación me sabe a vino
dedico demasiado a imaginar que estas conmigo
apuro la copa de un trago
dejo el cuerpo en el pasillo
Hoy todo lo demás es lo de menos
Hoy todo lo demás…

Yo confiaba que subieras a mi habitación
y no que te marcharas como hiciste
Las escaleras son interminables
si no hay quien te espere después
si no hay quien te espere…

No hay manera de que vuelve ese miércoles
tengo la sal entre los ojos mojados
Quiero que sepas que eres el culpable
de que hoy me sienta extrañamente bien
de que hoy me sienta extraña…

El tiempo en esta habitación me sabe a vino
dedico demasiado a imaginar que estas conmigo
apuro la copa de un trago
dejo el cuerpo en el pasillo
Hoy todo lo demás es lo de menos
Hoy todo lo demás…
--------------
Fuente: MusicstarX.Net

I can't forget that ridiculous image of Wayne bloody Rooney covered with a giant thimble! Good!