ysobel | Entries tagged with lang: spanish

Duolingo sentence: "Ellos hacen las tareas domésticas. La ropa nos la lava Luis, y el baño nos lo limpia Alberto."

The first sentence was okay (they do the housework) but I couldn't parse the second. Even with the answer (Luis washes our clothes, and Alberto cleans out bathroom") I was confused, because "La ropa nos" for "our clothes" didn't seem right. "Nuestra ropa", sure. "La ropa de nosotros", sure. But id never seen "nos" as a possessive.

...Which in fact it isn't. The nos belongs to the verb. It's not [the clothes of ours] [Luis washes them], it's [the clothes] [Luis washes them for us].

Part of the confusion for me was figuring out the inverted sentence structure. "Luis nos lava la ropa" would have been clearer (to me). But I forget that Spanish can throw the subject at the end, and I forget that the object can be first. Somehow I don't have a problem with the gustar-type verbs that "flip" subj/obj from the English counterparts, but yoinking around the parts of "normal" verbs catches me every time.

And part was that I forget that you can tack on optional indirect object pronouns to indicate who benefits. Because English tends to explicitly use "for us", I tend to go for "[subject] [verbs] para nosotros" rather than "[subject] nos [verbs]".

So the two together was just ... bluescreen brain.

I think I did, for once, notice that the lack of personal a meant Luis and Alberto weren't the direct objects, although the thought of "La ropa lava a Luis" kinda cracks me up; and I could at least get the word-for-word translation ("the clothes us it washes Luis"); but I was just about to post asking for help when it clicked.

Languages are weird sometimes :)

...ok I'm kinda confused.

Duo gave me a sentence that included "we have to thank him" (tenemos que agradecerle) and my brain screeched to a halt over the indirect object (-le, not -lo). English doesn't have different indirect/direct pronouns, but "him" sure felt like a direct object. Subject thanks object. And I looked it up and agredecer is a transitive verb, so why the pronoun...

???

Note to self, look that up.

Incidentally, helpful note for Duo folk: for refrigerator-magnet questions, where you're assembling sentences from provided words, there seem to always be four items left over. This won't help you find the *right* words, but e.g. if you have five left you probably left a word out.

...now if only there were a word count on freeform entry, lol. I have a bad habit of dropping estar (to be) from sentences structured as "to-be verbing". Duo asked for "we are buying them a ticket" and I typed "comprándoles un boleto" instead of "estamos comprándoles un boleto". Oops.

Duo helpfully highlighted a new Spanish word: "a".

I have, mind you, been doing Spanish Duolingo for a while. I'm on Unit 13 of section 5, which is CEFR B1. Needless to say, "a" isn't new. It's, like, "unit 2 of section 1" at most ("un boleto a Santiago" [a ticket to Santiago] is a sample sentence from that).

The sentence tonight was "A ti te gusta mirar la tele menos que a mi" [you like watching TV less than I do; literally, to you to-you is-pleasing to-watch the TV less than to me]. The comparison structure of "a ti ... más/menos que a mi" with gustan might be new, but comparisons overall aren't, nor is the meaning of "a" anywhere close to new. The only new(ish) thing is that "a ti" before "te gusta(n)" is usually redundant and used only for emphasis, but in the comparative structure I think it's required; but Duo doesn't explicitly say these things.

(For those unfamiliar: Gustan and a few other verbs are flipped in Spanish from how they work in English. Instead of "I like dogs", it's "to me is-liking dogs". The thing being liked is the grammatical subject. There's an indirect object pronoun required, which always goes in front of the verb. For ambiguous pronouns, you can use "a (person)" -- "a Ricardo le gustan los perros" or "a mi hermana le gustan los perros" [Richard likes dogs; my sister likes dogs; in both cases "le" is the 3rd person singular pronoun]. 1st and 2nd person pronouns are way less ambiguous, so in simple statements you just say "me gusta(n) X". Saying "a mi me gusta(n) X" is equivalent to the English "Me, I like X". It's emphasis, often with contrast: well, *you* like mushrooms but me, *I* don't. Grammatically "a mi" adds no info that the required "me" doesn't.)

(...lol it's kinda weird flipping between English "me" and Spanish "me". They mean approximately the same, look identical, but are pronounced differently.)

Starting Monday I will have to start getting up early-- dog training starts at 9, and I have to be up and breakfasted and coffeed, which means probably 7:30.

You'd think I'd be adjusting my sleep schedule accordingly.

Instead, I am still awake at midnight-thirty, pondering the mystery of how in Spanish (per duolingo) peanuts are "mani" and butter is "mantequilla" and peanut butter is "mantequilla de mani" and not "mani-tequilla"...

I really wish I could just ... install languages into my brain.

I was talking to an aide today about stuff relating to when I was in undergrad, and mentioned the thing where I used to be near-fluent in German but then didn't practice it enough and basically have nothing left but residual pronunciation and a few random words and phrases. Also my last German class was in the 90s anyway so I have no internet terms.

I've tried resurrecting it with casual Duolingo use, but these days I can't remember new stuff easily, especially gender and cases. I'm managing Spanish ok, with two genders and four words for "the" (gender x plurality), but German has three genders (plus plural, though IIRC plural isn't gendered, so it's sort of a fourth gender) and at least four cases (nom gen dat acc) and therefore a fuckton of words for "the" (five unique ones, der die das den dem, but der is masc nom and also fem dat/gen, and den is masc acc and also plural dat) and while I can chant "der die das die, den die das die, dem der dem den, des der des der" all I want, I can't make it stick, and even more I can't make it stuck in practice because I can't remember the gender of nouns to save my life. And Duo treats all errors the same -- ich lese eine Buch [should be ein] is counted as wrong as ich lese ein Apfel -- which isn't fair because I'm pretty sure people would understand what I'm saying with the first one even if it sounds wrong!

But I miss German. And my Spanish is ... okay at understanding written, but weak at generating. Especially if I'm put on the spot; my mind goes blank. And I can't understand fast spoken. And I'm crap at tenses.

Plus I'm goofing off with both Yiddish and Ukrainian on duo, but at some point it will get too hard and I'll stop. And I used to do Japanese, at least able to read hirigana and was working on learning the kanji, but that's gone poof, and I didn't even get to the grammar. And I'd love to be able to learn Korean, but ... at least I had some familiarity with Yiddish alphabet (because Jewish stuff) and Cyrillic (because of the Russian I took in college). I don't need yet another completely different alphabet system.

I haven't done any serious language study in a while, either. One lesson per day on Duolingo, sure. But learning languages takes repetition, all the more so because I can't learn by (hand) writing any more. So I could maybe get my German back if a) I didn't let myself get distracted with other languages, b) I typed stuff up and made neat charts and whatnot, c) I wrote down Every Fucking Vocab Word with its greenery and referred back until it stuck, and ... basically treated it as A Job.

But I'm too lazy and too tired and too braindead for all that.

Sigh.

Part ichi is here

So, okay. Where was i?

Ah right:

I have a new not-a-job (!!!!]

( teal deer: online cat herder )

My mom thinks I'm crazy for doing this -- she worries that it's Too Much -- and I can't explain to her either why it isn't (and she has no idea how vicious my brainweasels can get or how deep my self-loathing can go) or why it matters to me that I'm doing something. Luckily, she's not the boss of me, so I don't have to.

#

Language updates:

Tomorrow's Duolingo will make a 750-day streak.

I don't know how. O.o

I'm mostly doing low key Spanish stuff, figuring that a little each day will keep that part of my brain happy even though I'm not devoting Lots Of Learning to it.

I'm also still doing WaniKani for learning Japanese kanji (though since the characters are borrowed from Chinese, there's some overlap, and I was very amused to recognize 牛肉 as "cow meat" on a beef menu item at a Chinese restaurant). The kanji are getting tricksier and more complicated looking, though I do have to say that WK's method is pretty effective.

The only down side is it doesn't teach grammar, and I haven't found a really good thing for grammar. Duo sucks (it's better with languages that are similarer to English, really). Memrise is awesome but horrible at accessibility (I think I did a rant on this but teal deer; on iOS the kanji are tiny and there's no way to zoom; on the computer, all reviews are timed, in that you have 15 seconds to think of the answer and type it out; and they don't have a "kana but no kanji" course, just an everything version where I can't read the kanji, or a "no Japanese characters" version that hurts my brain, partly because I have to transliterate it into hiragana in my head anyway to match up with the rest of my knowledge, partly because they do things like "arigatō" where I'm used to "arigatou"; it's pronounced as a long closed o vowel, but written as ありがとう and とう is (to)(u).) There are textbooks, but I can't use physical textbooks.

I do have one app that does give basic grammar, so I'm doing that in parallel with learning the kanji. And hopefully some of it will stick, lol.

Meanwhile, my roommate is taking beginning Japanese this quarter and so we're doing super bad Japanese at each other. Like, she's started saying tadaimas' when she comes home, and I say okaeri back at her. Today she learned about telling time, which I can sort of do, in the sense of "..........uhhh, roku ji, uh, san... jyuu... go... fun. Uh, desu," (六時三十五分です = it's 6:35) Basically long pauses between each syllable, and I am of course better with translating written Japanese into English than trying to get English into Japanese.

#

Part three of updateyness will come ... sometime not right now.

This entry amuses me because I'm "complaining" about 4K lingots being a lot ... and right now I have 9100.

Also a 525 day streak.

(Mostly just lazy-ass Spanish review because I have for no apparent reason decided to learn Japanese -- this four months after I culled my books and got rid of all my Japanese stuff because I was never going to learn it, lol -- but I want to get solid (or at least liquid) before anything. I have an app and am making progress (it groups them five at a time, a-i-u-e-o, and I have a/ka/ga/sa/za groups down, although I weirdly confuse ko and so a lot, and u and ku) but I'm not at the point where I am comfortable trying Duo's Japanese, *but* I also don't want to lose the streak, just because.)

(Still, always, want to type that as Duolinguo. Gah.)

So I am at the point with Spanish where I have gone through all of the Duo lessons and am mainly doing "practice weak skills" over and over again. Which is not unwarranted -- there is a lot I'm shaky on still, even of what duo gives me, and I am nowhere near ready for real world applications.

But I sort of want to use Duo to brush up on my German. And I can't decide how to do it.

Option one is to do both German and Spanish, one right after the other. Which is easy enough to get in the habit of (the biggest hurdle is remembering to do it; two lessons instead of one is not a problem) but seems like it would be the most confusing to my brain.

Option two is to alternate days. Spanish one day, German the next, etc. Less immediate switching between languages, but still involves some.

Option three is to alternate weekends/weekdays (so do one Monday-Friday and the other Sat-Sun). Has the advantage of making it easy to remember which I'm supposed to be doing on a given day.

Option four is to alternate weeks.

Option five is to just use duo for German and find a more immersive source for keeping Spanish practice.

...I can't decide. Halp?

Poll #16370 Decide for me

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

Which option should I do?

View Answers

Both every day
0 (0.0%)

Alternate days
1 (11.1%)

Weekday/weekend split
2 (22.2%)

Alternate weeks
0 (0.0%)

German only, find something else for Spanish
6 (66.7%)

Spanish only until you're fluent, you slacker
0 (0.0%)

Ticky?

View Answers

Ticky!
5 (55.6%)

Tea!
2 (22.2%)

Tea and ticky
5 (55.6%)

Ticky needs to go to sleep
5 (55.6%)

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1455904.html

Duo prompted me that I hadn't yet done a lesson for today; as I am tired and cannot brain at all, I eschewed either "lesson of new stuff" or "review of weakest words comprehensive of all I've done", both of which require brain and lead to frustration upon repeated failure, for "review of one of the early lessons", which doesn't so much.

At one point I got the sentence "I write a letter" to translate into Spanish via refrigerator magnet style selection from word pool. And they had "lee" and "leemos" and "lees" but I spent literally several minutes staring at the selection of words wondering why I couldn't find the first person form "leo".

...after which I realized that, oh yeah, leo isn't there because leo means I *read*, not I *write*.

Yeah.

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1437594.html

The good: I have officially been doing the Spanish thing for a year now. Bit over, actually. And yes, I do have the streak going (367, whee), though there were three days in there I technically missed. Well, two definite misses, and one day where I remembered at 11:50 but couldn't get the daily thing done in time. But you can "buy" (using virtual site currency that you get for doing lessons) a streak freeze, that will preserve your streak for one day of inactivity. Won't increment it of course, which is why I was on a 362-day streak on my one year anniversary, but ... yeah.

A year of doing something pretty much daily? Not trivial.

And I can sort of understand bits and pieces of actual real live Spanish, though not everything, and I'm lousy at verb tenses, and I am of course tons better at recall than at generating. Still, yay.

The bad: did I mention I'm lousy at verb tenses? The "unit" I just finished was on modal verbs, and it took me multiple tries to get through and I was doing a lot of guessing and a lot of flailing and a lot of looking at the hover hints for far too many words, and pretty much zero retention.

The remaining units, in sequence, are labeled thusly: V. Cond. 0/1, V. P. Imp. 0/5, V. Sub. P. 0/1, Abs. Ob. 3 0/10, Cond. Per. 0/2. Notice how four out of five are verb tenses.

It makes me want to run and hide, even though that would crash the nice pretty streak.

(That, or switch to relearning German, except a) it seems like a bad idea to lose momentum on practicing Spanish, and b) omg the cases. Even with Spanish, which has two genders and no inflections thereof, I trip up sometimes. German not only has three genders, but also nominative / accusative / dative / etc. wah.)

ETA: okay, so conditional is relatively straightforward -- infinitive + ía. But the rest still scares me :/

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1437157.html

So duolinguo has several different modes -- some is "listen to spoken phrase in $newlang and write what you hear" (or if you have microphone enabled, "speak the given phrase in $newlang") and the rest is variants of "translate between $newlang and $oldlang", but those have different mechanisms. Some is straight writing; some is choosing words refrigerator-magnet-style from a given selection; some is just "translate this word". The free-writing allows mouseover hints on individual words; the refrigerator magnet doesn't; and the individual word translation doesn't.

Right now I'm getting body parts. And I get individual word translation of "mouth". And I go completely and utterly blank.

But it won't let you skip, so I had to put something, no matter that I didn't have a clue. And I had a random phrase float into my head, boca del infierno, so I put in boca, and selected la rather than el because boca ends in a, and I waited for the wrong-answer noise.

And it gave the right-answer noise.

And I went wtf for a moment, and then started laughing, because I totally never thought random Buffy knowledge would help with Spanish.

Current Mood: amused
Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1428897.html

and I just figured out why I have a problem with the Spanish word for 9.

See, okay, one of the things that trips me up is the set of words for this/that/those. One aspect is just remembering which is this and which is that (current convoluted mnemonic is the inverse t factor: "that" ends in t, "eso" doesn't have a t; "this" doesn't end in t, "esto" has one). And then there's the third one (that-over-there), which is aquel but I had to look it up because I couldn't remember. I wanted to say allí but that is a different word.

But the other aspect is gender. Most of Spanish has two grammatical genders, but demonstratives have three: eso/ese/esa and esto/este/esta. Neuter, masculine, feminine. The masculine and feminine forms are used when there is a (gendered) noun associated with it: "this book is mine". Neuter is used (according to the site I just looked up again) for abstract ideas and unknown objects.

Which is fine escept for which is which. Masculine adjectives in Spanish end in -o for the most part, but eso/esto are the *neuter* forms, and ese/este are the masculine ones.

Which is where nine comes in.

The Spanish word for nine is nueve.

The Spanish word for new is nuevo.

I found tonight, not for the first time, that I keep wanting to read nueve as new. So, like, "otros nueve goles" -- another nine goals, a phrase I got in today's Duo lesson -- had me staring at it going "......uhhh, other new goals? What?". But I only just figured out *why*: overgeneralization of the esto/este thing.

Or something.

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1428109.html

Aaand I apparently crashed my Duolinguo streak.

Dangit.

(didn't quite make it to half a year, either, which would have been cool)

It's hardly surprising, because reasons, but seeing the "streak: 1 day" this morning made me sad

(and because my brain is my brain, it's more focused on "hi you fucked up this impressive thing you had going" than on "162 or whatever is a fucking impressive thing you accomplished, yay you")

...

ETA: *squints squintishly* So although the iPad app claimed it was Day 1 of New Streak, the website says I am still streaking. So... huh.

(Oh! Looks like I missed yesterday, but the website has a Streak Freeze option that covers a day of inactivity that you can "buy" with Duo currency in their store, which I'd gotten, but the app doesn't list that, so ... yeah. Technically I broke the streak, but whatever. I can live with the mismatch. And I blame Duo entirely for yesterday, because a) they didn't send me the "hey don't forget to do your stuff" reminder email that they are supposed to send daily if I haven't done a thing yet, and b) it is much more pleasant to blame a website than my own brain.)

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1409768.html

Spanish stats: 103 day streak (!!), 666 words (lolz)

I still can't really hold a conversation, mind you, nor do I know tenses other than simple present. But, yanno. It's still something.

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1395413.html

Doing a duolinguo Spanish lesson on adverbs.

Totalmente gets translated as totally.

Realmente gets translated as really.

So I get the sentence "Él es actualmente un actor". And even though this is the first time I've seen actualmente, I make the obvious assumption: "He is actually an actor."

...nope.

"He is currently an actor."

(sigh)

#

57 day streak and counting, woo!

I am fighting the perfectionist urge that says I shouldn't move on to new content when I can't reliably recall what I've learned so far. (Because I will make so very much progress if I just drill the same things over and over again, right?)

Logic tells me that a) there are times when I can't reliably *english*, despite it being native, so expecting reliable spanishing after all of two months is ridiculous, and b) earlier words that I wasn't able to remember for a while -- cerdo, desayuno, maleta, pared -- are now fairly solid, without my having waited.

But there is still a part of my brain that is convinced I should just keep drilling existing content until I'm better at it...

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1389212.html

So I keep wanting to duolinguify German as well as Spanish -- I mean, I know better, and yet I keep thinking "but surely I can handle it...!"

Then I get given "Eres una mujer y yo soy un hombre" as audio to transcribe, and so I start out: "Er ist una mujer--". I stop. This is Spanish, I tell myself, not German, and third person singular conjugation of to-be is es. So I go again: "Er es una mujer--". I play the turtle audio, which separates out individual words, and I can't figure out why "er es" runs together.

...at which point it occurs to me that a) "er" is also German, and b) "eres" in Spanish is the second person singular of to-be.

#

The distinction between pero and sino is one I do not have a handle on yet. They both translate in a general sense to "but", but have different uses.

Also, I cannot for the life of me remember pagar (pay), tocar (touch), or nadar (swim). The last is fine for translation to English, but I can't ever recall it; the other two are more or less hopeless. As are corbata (tie), calcetin (sock), abrigo (coat), and cinturón (belt).

For now. Then again, at varying points in the last week I was unable to remember cerdo (pig), desayuno (breakfast), cena (dinner), or falda (skirt). And now I can. So.

#

Sentence of the day: Por favor escribe tu libro. (please write your book)

...though it is rather unfair of them to throw an imperative at us as part of strengthening existing skills, when we have only had present tense normal. Bah.

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1381900.html

[15:26] <isabeau> sentence of the day, for today: we don't touch the chicken
[15:27] <Rainne_> ....
[15:27] <isabeau> Nosotros no tocamos el pollo!
[15:28] <Rainne_> looooooooooooooooooooool
[15:34] * Woggy toco el pollo
[15:35] <isabeau> no toco!
[15:35] <Woggy> ...yes, i know that's not technically right.
[15:36] * exor674 touches isabeau's chicken!
[15:36] <Rainne_> exor674 not without permission, I hope.
[15:39] <isabeau> yo no tengo un pollo
[15:40] <exor674> aw :)
[15:40] <isabeau> ...thereforos tu no puedes tener mi pollo

(ed. note: I haven't learned the translation of therefore, hence the spanglish butchering; and while I have learned poder, can/may, I haven't officially learned the construction for any sentences beyond "$SUBJECT can/can't", so was guessing that it took the infinitive. also I grabbed the wrong verb there)

[15:40] <exor674> I should go get a chicken for dinner
[15:41] <isabeau> (okay so I don't know therefore, and while I know "can" I don't know what verb form to use, but)
[15:41] <exor674> yeah, gtranslate doesn't know "thereforos"
[15:41] <Rainne_> speaking of chicken, that's what i made for dinner, and I need to go put some rice on.
[15:41] <Rainne_> bbs
[15:41] <exor674> but that comes out mostly intelegible barring autotranslate
[15:41] <exor674> "I have a chicken I thereforos you can not have my chicken"
[15:42] <isabeau> por la tanto!
[15:42] <exor674> er hrm, no, if I add a *comma* or something somewhere it's useful
[15:42] <exor674> "I have not a chicken, thereforos you can not have my chicken"
[15:42] <exor674> which I think is what you meant?
[15:42] <isabeau> yup.
[15:43] <isabeau> though I should have said por tanto tu no puedes tocar mi pollo (tocar, not tener, because I wanted touch and not have)

(ed. note: also tu should be tú throughout, but I was lazy)

[15:44] <isabeau> and why in frith's name is google translate defaulting to "translate into malay" >.<
[15:46] <exor674> because malay is fun?
[15:46] <exor674> ( also, touching chicken puts me dangerously close to being able to abscond with the chicken
[15:46] <exor674> so being unable to have it is also valid? :P
[15:47] <isabeau> tu no ... abscondes mit meine pollo *mixes languages with abandon*
[15:47] * Woggy giggles
[15:48] <Woggy> beware of poultry thief!

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1381173.html

So I got to the question unit

( for the record )

and AUGH SPANISH WHY are some of these q and some c? I mean, cómo I get, but why cuánto/cuándo and not quánto/quándo WHYYYYY

(Okay, so it's not the same sound, because cu is [kw] and qu is [k] and so it makes sense, *but* English qu is [kw] and so I keep writing quándo when they say cuándo, sob.)

ETA Another sob: Cuál es (which is it) and Cuáles (which-plural) sound the same wah.

#

In I-amuse-myself news, Duolinguo gave me "¿Cuándo bebes vino?" -- when do you drink wine -- as a question to translate, so of course I had to say aloud, in a super dramatic voice, "Yo no bebo ... *vino*..."

#

ETA Sentence of the day: Nosotros no tocamos el pollo! (We don't touch the chicken)

Previous sentences of the day (on other days) include Yo soy un oso (I am a bear) and Yo soy un pingüino (I am a penguin).

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1379717.html

Yesterday I chugged through two lessons of the animal unit -- relatively easy, since I sort of knew most of them already somehow. (cat, dog, elephant, turtle, horse ... the only one I hadn't known was duck, el pato, which I filed away as "sort of like pâté but with -o".

Today, I was all set to chug through more, and ... well ... one I knew (bear, el oso), and two were fairly straightforward (animals, los animales, and penguin, el pingüino). The others not so much. I can do Spanish-to-English translation somewhat readily for some (araña, spider, is sort of similar to arachnid, and cangrejo, crab, starts out similar to cancer), but I am hopeless for pájaro, bird, and can't really do E-to-S for those. (ara*mumble* and can*mumble* doesn't really cut it.)

Sigh.

ETA: cerdo, pig. ratón, mouse. mono, monkey. toro, bull, is ok. conejo, rabbit, sort of.

Also: palabras, words. las llaves, keys. How to remember, argh.

Crossposts: http://isabeau.livejournal.com/1378474.html

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i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Entries tagged with lang: spanish

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Duolinguo: 304 day streak \o/

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