News in Slow Spanish

I’ve been taking some time recently to investigate a few Spanish resources I’ve had written down on the backs of napkins, bubblegum wrappers, and random scraps of paper. This morning I finally looked into the podcast News in Slow Spanish, and I transferred a couple of episodes onto my mp3 player and took a walk with them in the park. Boy, I’ve been missing out on something good.

The title of the program pretty much tells you what it is: world news read in relatively slow, well-enunciated Spanish. Each program lasts about 45 minutes and usually includes a couple of main stories, some chitchat between the hosts, a review of an essential point of grammar, and a discussion of at least one idiom in the language. The podcast is free, whether you listen to it directly on their website or download it from iTunes or a similar service. There are also a few pay elements on the site if you’re interested in some extras like quizzes, transcripts, bonus lessons, and access to their entire archives.

The program assumes a decent grasp of basic Spanish grammar, as well as a pretty good vocabulary. So it’s generally aimed at the intermediate learner. But there are some parts of each episode that would even be understandable to higher-level beginning students of the language—especially because the words are so clearly said and at such a moderate pace. The one drawback for some folks—especially those learning standard Latin American Spanish—is that the dialect spoken in the podcast is castellano, so expect to hear the vosotros form, a few unusual vocabulary words, and the Spanish “th.” But that’s no big deal, right? All of us Spanish learners should at least be familiar with the way the language is spoken in its mother country, no?

Easy Spanish Reader/¡Así leemos!

A nice break in homework this week allowed me to finally finish ¡Así leemos!, which I first wrote about back in November (!). By the way, McGraw-Hill has updated the book since my copy was purchased, and it is now called Easy Spanish Reader—not really a title that inspires much passion from this dilettante, but as I said recently, publishers don’t always make the most interesting choices in life.

Whatever name you want to call it by, the book is a three-part graded Spanish reader that is pretty good for exercising your reading skills. Though I should probably say again that the first section of the book, “Enrique y María,” is rather dreadful unless you’re a preteen, a very low-level beginner, or someone with a preternatural interest in teenagers and high-school Spanish clubs. The second section, which is a short history of Mexico, and the third section, an abridged version of Lazarillo de Tormes, are much more worth your time.

One of the nice things about the book for a self-learner or someone using the text as a compliment to coursework is that it is broken up into very digestible chunks of text—usually only one page with a large font—and each chunk has a series of questions that do a decent job of testing comprehension. While the ¡Así leemos! version of the book that I have doesn’t contain any kind of answer key, McGraw-Hill promises that Easy Spanish Reader does. I also see that the edition sold on Amazon contains some kind of CD-ROM. Either way, it’s a nice addition to your language library if you fall somewhere between beginning Spanish speaker and lower intermediate learner. It gets you reading and introduces some good vocabulary into your lexicon. But if you have a decent grasp of core Spanish grammar, the book will probably bore you a bit.

¡Conjuguemos!

It’s been a full couple of weeks in the life of this Spanish language dilettante. Our teacher has used them to pour as much grammar as possible into our little brains. A typical day has gone something like this: 90 minutes covering/practicing the pluperfect indicative tense, followed by a break, 90 minutes on the pluperfect subjunctive, another break, an hour of computer work, and then for homework…maybe ten workbook activities, an essay, and an oral recording submitted over email. Yikes! But because of that pace, we’ve finished all the major grammar points of the Spanish language as of today. Next week is just review and a series of short readings. Oh, and then we have a little old final exam to finish things off. Bring it on, profesor!

One of the sources I’ve been using to try to digest all the various verb forms that we’ve been going over in class the last six weeks is the website Conjuguemos. While it is not fancy and is by no means comprehensive, the site allows you to take timed (or untimed if you want) quizzes that are all about conjugating verb forms correctly and nothing else. You can choose to work in any tense in any of the four moods, or you can use the “comprehensive conjugator” to work in all the forms of the subjunctive and indicative moods simultaneously. You can also select to work specifically on one pronoun, or add/eliminate vosotros from the quizzes.

The site also has quiz work for vocabulary and other parts of grammar, in addition to verbs, but I’ve mostly stuck to the conjugation tests so far. Taking a five-minute quiz just before doing homework or heading off to class has been a good warm-up for me and can help anyone get into that Spanish frame of mind.

Spanish adverbial clause practice

It’s not surprising to find out that as grammar gets more difficult, it becomes harder to find free web resources on the topic. Such is the case with my new favorite point of grammar…the dreaded adverbial clause. Now if I had heard about this nasty little animal from the grammatical zoo before last week, I sure as heck didn’t remember it. I suppose one of my high school English teachers covered it while I was doodling pictures of skulls and snakes in the back row of class (I was lamentably a heavy metal kid who aspired to be a album cover artist in those days).

Boringly stated, they’re clauses with a subject and predicate that act like an adverb by modifying the verb in a sentence. Thus they answer why, when, where, and how. Examples: I cried when I saw Bambi’s mother die. We all went to the tapas bar to celebrate after we finished our Spanish test. But like seemingly everything else in Spanish (preterite vs. imperfect, conocer vs. saber, estar vs. ser, etc.), you often have a choice to make when you use adverbial clauses: subjunctive or indicative mood. As native St. Louisan Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.” Here are some resources to help you with that decision.

*A quick breakdown of the subjunctive in adverbial clauses by Fred F. Jehle. But don’t forget though that some adverbial clauses (desde que, porque, ya que, ahora que) always take the indicative mood!

*Barbara Kuczun Nelson’s two-part quiz with explanations: part 1, part 2.

*Bowdoin College’s quiz designed by Enrique Yepes.

*Trinity’s two-parter: part 1, part 2.

But that’s about it for decent practice quizzes on the topic. ¡Buena suerte!

Destinos : The Prehistory of Sol y viento

Well before author and teacher Bill VanPatten helped to develop the Sol y viento series, he was the major force behind a much larger Spanish-language-learning project known as Destinos.

Destinos was a language program that, like Sol y viento, combined traditional textbook work with a film—or rather a telenovela in this case—that was broken down into episodes corresponding with the work done in the text. The filmed segments of the course were produced by Boston’s PBS station WGBH, and the series was first broadcast on PBS in 1992. It initially ran for two years, but you can still catch it on some public television stations today (usually late at night) and many high schools and colleges used the course well into the last decade. As you can guess, the film segments of Destinos combine to form a much longer story than Sol y viento‘s. In fact, there are 52 segments in the series, and they each last about half an hour. Thankfully, you can watch all the episodes of Destinos at your leisure if you go to Annenberg Media’s website.

Destinos follows the quest of a Latina lawyer from California, Raquel Rodríguez. Rodríguez has been hired by a family in Mexico whose patriarch, don Fernando Castillo, has recently received a mysterious letter from Spain. It says that Rosario, don Fernando’s first wife, didn’t perish during the Spanish Civil War as he had always thought, and that she bore him a child after the war. This is all a bit much for the Spanish ex-patriot, who left Spain to make a life for himself in Mexico with a new wife and family after the war. So Rodríguez is sent to investigate the claims. That mission takes her to Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico in an attempt to put together the real story behind Rosario and the life she may or may not have led after the Civil War.

So why am I bringing all of this up? Well, I started to work episodes of Destinos into my weekly routine recently, and I have to say that it is really, really enjoyable. Now yes, it is dated. But if you can get over the hair, clothing, electronics, and film techniques of the late 80s/early 90s, there is a lot of good Spanish practice to be had by working your way through the episodes. And although the storyline can be a bit cheesy at times, it’s certainly captivating enough to keep you going.

The show hits the ground running. The characters speak to each other in real Spanish, and the Spanish spoken by each character exposes the viewer to very different versions of the language. In Spain Rodríguez interacts with characters who speak castellano, in Argentina she hears vos, and in Puerto Rico she gets a taste for Caribbean Spanish. The idea of the whole thing is that the viewer should understand pretty much everything the narrator says (he speaks in a clear, relatively slow Spanish with simple vocabulary) while trying to get the gist of what the characters are saying in conversation. After episode one, English is mostly dropped from the series.

I’m over a quarter of the way through it, and I’ve enjoyed watching the program so far. There’s even a closed caption option for each episode, which is a nice addition. So check it out.

Breaking Gender : “A” masculine nouns, “O” feminine nouns

Even though I know that the rule for nouns ending in “ma” is that they are almost always masculine and almost always from a Greek root, I find that I have to keep reminding myself that problema is a masculine noun. “¡Tengo una problema..(damn!) un problema!”

This issue led me to put together a list of common masculine and feminine nouns that break the most basic rule of gender in Spanish: ends in “o” = masculine, ends in “a” = feminine. I thought I would share with the wide world of Spanish learners.

“A” Masculine Nouns

el aroma : aroma :: el clima : climate
el cólera : cholera :: el cometa : comet
el cura : priest :: el día : day

el diagrama : diagram :: el dilema : dilemma
el diploma : diploma :: el drama : drama
el enigma : enigma :: el esquema : outline, diagram

el gorila : gorilla :: el guardia : policeman or guard
el guía : male guide :: el idioma : language
el idiota : male idiot :: el indígena : indigenous male

el mapa : map :: el panorama : panorama
el papa : the pope :: el pijama : pajamas
el poema : poem

el policía : policeman :: el planeta : planet
el problema : problem :: el programa : program
el síntoma : symptom, sign :: el sistema : system

el sofá : sofá :: el teorema : theorem
el telegrama : telegram :: el tema : theme, subject
el tranvía : streetcar :: el yoga :  yoga

“O” FEMININE NOUNS

la disco : disco (short for la discoteca)
la foto : photo (short for la fotografía)
la mano : hand :: la modelo : female model

la moto : motorcycle (short for la motocicleta)
la radio : radio (short for la radiodifusión)
la reo : female criminal :: la soprano : female soprano

la tele : television (short for la televisión)
la testigo : female witness

UTA’s Spanish Proficiency Exercises are my new favorite toy

I was looking for some resources to help a classmate of mine with listening skills this weekend when I came across a great site run by the University of Texas at Austin’s Spanish and Portuguese language department. The site, which is labeled “Spanish Proficiency Exercises,” is clearly meant as a resource for the students at the school, but it can help anyone learning Spanish at any level.

The site is a collection of tons of short videos, each featuring a native speaker talking on a particular topic. They range from things as basic as counting and listing the contents of your backpack to describing a desert mirage or talking about stereotypes. The videos are grouped by topic and arranged by difficultly. For each topic, there is a scripted video in which the speaker uses clear annunciation and no slang. But then that video is followed by several off-the-cuff pieces in which the speakers use slang and show off their dialects. Each topic has about five or six speakers, and they come from all over the Spanish-speaking world: Mexico, Spain, South America, and so on.

Spanish transcription, English translation, and vocab and phrase help are available for each video as well.

Links:

*University of Texas at Austin Department of Spanish and Portuguese

*Spanish Proficiency Exercises Welcome Page

Quiero que me quieras : Spanish Present Subjunctive Help

Mis compañeros y yo started a long battle with the subjunctive mood yesterday. Luckily, the conjugation of the first form we’re using (present subjective) is pretty easy…even if its usage can boggle the mind of a native English speaker. During class, I couldn’t get Gael García Bernal’s cover of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” (“Quiero que me quieras”) from Rudo y Cursi out of my head. The chorus is filled with the present subjunctive.

Quiero que me quieras.
Quiero que me adores.
Quiero que me sientas.
Me urge que me ames.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of good resources on the internet to help the Spanish student with the present subjunctive, relative to all sites providing help with basic vocabulary and the indicative mood. But Jason Jolley does have a couple of great videos explaining its conjugation and use. The first video here is on the form; the second is on the usage.

There are also a couple of good sites that let you practice conjugating the form…

*Trinity’s test on conjugating verbs without a stem change.

*Trinity’s test on verbs with a stem change.

*Mix of both.

*This present subjunctive quiz allows you to pick which verbs and pronouns you want to use.

*Barbara Kuczun Nelson’s site has extensive resources, quizzes, and practice opportunities.

Stories from Mexico/Historias de México : Genevieve Barlow and William N. Stivers

McGraw-Hill’s three collections of Spanish-language folk readings for beginning and intermediate learners have been around for a while: Stories from Mexico, Stories from Latin America, and Stories from Spain. I’ve had my eye on all of them for a couple of months now, but I didn’t actually sit down with any of them until this week…because I received the collection of Mexican tales as a present! I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for short, interesting writings that entertain while boosting your vocabulary.

The collection has sixteen Mexican legends that span almost 1,500 years of that country’s history. Included are stories from the pre-Columbian era through Spanish colonialism and beyond. Most are written using the present, preterite, and imperfect tenses, though an occasional subjunctive mood or complex tense sneaks in here and there. But I don’t think any of them are too difficult or will trip up a beginning reader that much. And like many of this type of book, the English translation is given on the facing page.

There are two things that I particularly like about the collection, which has me excited to read the other two volumes in the series. First off, more difficult or unusual vocabulary is generally mixed in with a load of common words. So instead of reaching for the dictionary every other sentence, I’ve found that I only need to look up about four per page. That leads to a much smoother reading experience, and it helps one more easily piece together meanings from context. The other thing I like is that the stories are all short; they usually run only about two or three pages. So I’ve been able to read a piece a night in bed just before going to sleep. It’s really nice to begin and end a story in one sitting. It makes me more willing to go back and reread again and again later. And the stories are certainly interesting and fun. The first selection, for instance, is about how the moon came to acquire its pockmark-like crater formations…they’re actually rabbit tracks!

Por vs. para quizzes

We’ve got a big test over por and para tomorrow. Who knew that two little words could cause so many frustrations for a group of English speakers? I’ve been doing my part by investigating the web for useful quizzes, tests, and the like. But if you need a little bit of a refresher over the grammar itself, I’d point you to Gerald Erichsen or Barbara Kuczun Nelson. Of course, nothing beats just doing a bunch of practice sentences on your own…

*McGraw-Hill’s relatively easy quiz for ¿Qué tal? will get your Spanish energies flowing.

*Trinity’s test is also a good starter.

*By the time you try StudySpanish.com’s quiz, you should be on a roll.

*Give Barbara Kuczun Nelson’s test a try.

*One last one, and you should be good to go.