Are you prancing around in semi-states of undress, quaffing Pimms and rose and playing frisbee? For 5 minutes? Until it pisses down? Then you must be in the (y)UK – and yes, that’s what we do – we quaff.
Are you moaning about it being cold even though it’s 15 degrees and blue skies? Staying in? Hibernating? Then you’re probably somewhere down south in Latin America – and can be smug in the knowledge that shortly England’s summer will be gone again for another 10 months. (This keeps me going if I get homesick).
So, even though it’s the weekend in Argentina, I’m staying in and watching TV. I wish I could fully understand the Spanish-dubbed version of ‘Taxi Driver’ playing. Hey, even another ‘Friends’ repeat would do.
Nothing.
Nada.
Its ‘Two and a Half Men’ or nothing. A new low.
Unless I indulge my new pastime – watching my favourite comedies dubbed in Spanish.
Who doesn’t want to know how to say “There’s too many mutha’uckas uckin’ with my shi-” in Spanish?
PS. You don’t need to exclaim “Que frio!” and look at me like I’m a mental slut just because my gloves are fingerless and my neck un-be-scarfed (yes, am aware that isn’t a word, but hey, language works through repetition). It’s 15 frigging degrees!
Warm up your cojones by staying in and learning Spanish watching the very more-ish ‘Bueno, entonces…’ http://bit.ly/LearnSpanishToday
Well, today’s been emotional and educational. I learned more from your comments than I might have wanted to. I’ve been called a misogynist and sophomoric (twice) which at my age I think is awesome (although its awesomeness was diluted by the fact I had to google it).
Anyways, thanks to you lot this is what we’ve learned (and you’ve only yourselves to blame).
Palabras aprendidas en el día de hoy:
sleazy = sórdido
retard = mogólico
creepy misogynist = misógeno repulsivo
ball-gagged = amordazada (not to be confused with ball-bagged or tea-bagged)
silly rabbit = conejo tarado
superficial bullshit = bosta superficial
she has floppy cheeks = tiene culo flácido
Avatar is shit = Avatar es una mierda
I volunteered at an Andino restaurant = trabajé de voluntario en un restaurante andino
Oh – and… I’m not a misogynist – I’m actually a chica – so there! And look at all the effort you all spent thinking about learning languages today. Woohoo I win! (Yes, I’m being ‘sophomoric’).
Actually, does anyone know what that is in Spanish?
I’ve somehow blagged my way into taking over as Guest Editor for ‘Bueno, entonces…’, so let me introduce myself. I like to think of myself as a Puriri moth – a creature which survives in a cocoon for decades until it finally burrows out to explore the world.
It only lives for 24 hours.
And it spends that day mating.
(It doesn’t even have a mouth, one-track-mind-ed little f***** that it is).
So… my name’s Lisa and I recently left a badly-behaved TV job in London on a one-way ticket to Argentina – tempted by the fact that the last time I was here I was greeted by a cyclist wanking at me whilst riding and heckling. Impressed by the ambidexterity of the men here, I just had to return!
Back in the day I got my TV producer’s role through a big fat ‘mentira piadosa’ (white lie). In the interview they told me they were about to film a week-long rave in a quarry in Ibiza. Cue bullshit: “I’m fluent in Spanish!”… What a screw up – in Week 1 they gave me some Spanish football shorts to translate for subtitling. I had to pay a Columbian girl in the legal department to do it.
Now I’m here to actually learn the lingo and make my name as a bigshot director (altho’ the nearest I’ve got is voicing porn at the moment – that’s a whole other story). This time I must remember not to ‘screw the crew’ (easier said than done). There’s obviously something in the water out here that means they can’t help themselves but say things like “I like to fuck-ah! It is good to fuck-ah? We should fuck-ah, no?”… er, when you put it like that, yes!
Right, I’m off to chomp on chorizo, but am leaving you what happened last time I tried to leave Argentina smuggling far too much Duty Free vino tinto. Cue mucho Spanish shouting.
Beat my caption (in Spanish if you can): Finding tampons in Argentina can be really tricky…
Finding tampons in Argentina can be really tricky...
More mañana.
Beso,
Fluencia Manzanita
(my South American drunken alter-ego)
Don’t forget that if you really want to learn to speak Spanish, ‘Bueno, entonces…’ is awesome.
Rejection. It’s just a fact of life. For some, it is more common than others, but at one point or another, everyone gets rejected. That is why we have dedicated a clip of Bueno, entonces… to the art of Spanish rejection.
And, aside from David being all-too-familiar with rejections from Jimena, we brought in another pair of experts to help you out– Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World!
No Way!
Way!
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hurl. Check it out!
Man, you gotta love them. The colors and symbols used on the Pizarra Mí¡gica (Magic Whiteboard) are the key to our subliminal teaching method– your brain picks up on what these colors and symbols represent, and voilí¡! You’re learning without even knowing it! However, to speed up that process a bit, go ahead and take a look at the Color & Symbol Key.
Take a look at a review of this class as well as the rest of the posts in the series by going to http://juniperenbsas.blogspot.com If you like this way of learning and want to look at a few more demos, visit the Bueno, entonces… website– the whole series of over 18 hours of fun, quirky Spanish lessons is available for download on your ipod, iphone, Blackberry, etc…! Now how convenient is that?
To acquire a new language is difficult. I waver between casually enjoying the process and declaring proclamations such as “I will NOT speak English in this country any more! Only Spanish, I must learn this language”. And then I carry my little dictionarrio around and try to be all studious and eventually realize this approach is not for me. I am on the look out for a new Spanish teacher to supplement my lessons through Bueno, entonces…learn Spanish for as great as the program is, I still need guided practice. I had an excellent teacher in theory until he tried to go through a lesson on the names of the body parts in Spanish by touching me…not that that hasn’t been one of my most dreamt of fantasies, it is just that it always features a drop dead gorgeous Spanish teacher followed by a lesson of the names of all the places in the house “mesa”, “cama”, “douche”. Well, I am done with male teachers, getting a female and sidestepping the whole problem.
I thought my handle on the verb “to be” had gotten pretty good, but the reality is that it is still confusing. I realized this when lesson 19 went back and addressed “ser” and “estar”. I completely get the concept but these words are used so much in conversation I don’t even realize I am using them incorrectly. It is great to see the color coding the way they do it on the program because you see it in context and then it locks that image into your head for later use. This is also true for all of the masculine and feminine adjectives, the color coding is helping me to access it for later use in my vocabulary.
Want to view some clips of our Spanish classes? Head on over to the Youtube channel and see why people are raving about the hilarious new language learning software!
So…I haven’t taken a break. I think Bueno, entonces...episodes #28, #29, and #30 need to be watched one after the other. I mean, honestly, after the Jimena jealousy and rant about Martín, how could I stop?
Well, I was right, something DID happen between Jimena and Martín. Se rompieron! The palta left her. Of course, David is shocked, stunned, almost speechless—almost. In they end they agree that it is una buena cosa para Jimena, un paso importante en su vida.
I think something is going to haaaaapppeeeennnnn (!!!!)
So, that’s exciting. Screw True Blood Season finale, I’m all about the Bueno, entonces…big shabang.
We’ve finally reached the end of week four, therefore, class 24 was the standard end-of-the-week review. Don’t be lulled to sleep though – Bueno, entonces…learn Spanish worked its usual magic by introducing many new concepts, even more than they generally do. In addition to reviewing por vs para and ser vs estar, we also learned how to express opinions. I learned some of the subtleties between creer (to believe) and paracer (to seem/opinion), and also learned how to say that I am in agreement with someone/something more formally.
Another thing that was particularly apparent today was that the speed of conversation has increased drastically. Jimena seems to be talking at the speed of the native speaker she is, and David’s Spanish is improving enough for him to be holding his own. I found myself needing to read more of the dialogue as I was missing small details when only listening. It’s nice to see the class kicked into another gear with one week left – they’re kicking us out of the nest and telling us to fly.
Despite the abundance of teaching, Bueno, entonces… Learn Spanish still found time to provide comic relief. The class started with Jimena telling David she was following her boyfriend through the mall to see if he was cheating on her. This was followed by David confessing to Jimena that he was trailing his mother in Mendoza to see how she was behaving with her new adolescent boyfriend. There were several times I actually found myself laughing out loud at the dialogue – kind of embarrassing, but I think this says a lot about how fun Bueno, entonces… Learn Spanish makes learning a new language.
I’m super-excited for tomorrow’s class where we will supposedly be covering “hard-core verb tenses.” I’m not sure what to expect judging from prior topics, but I hope we delve into the past and future.
Want to view some clips of our Spanish classes? Head on over to the Youtube channel and see why people are raving about the hilarious new language learning software!
The title – a reference to class 14′s discussion about double negatives and their acceptance and requirement in Spanish as opposed to English where they are reserved for characters in Deliverance.
One of my favorite parts of class 14 was learning the word for “to get (conseguir).” I never realized how much I used this word until I arrived here and I found myself constantly trying to translate it into Spanish. I feel like a thesaurus, constantly trying to thing of a good synonym for it that I know how to say in Spanish. For instance, I would translate “I got the food you asked for from the store” into “I bought the food” or “I have the food you wanted.” I won’t bore you with more examples, but there are millions. Finally, another word I can stop talking around. Thank god.
The other big concept that class 14 covered was sentence structure – particularly when to use “a” to signify the object of a verb, and when you need to proceed a verb with an indirect pronoun (when using a verb signifying something being sent or given to someone else). I know for sure that I have made this mistake when telling people about emails I have sent or making a trip to the post office. Just another example of not picking up on word usage patterns that Bueno, entonces…learn Spanish has illuminated for me.
Edgy, unrelenting, and borderline inappropriate at times: ways I would describe class 20, and ways many of my friends would describe my sense of humor. So it was a perfect match.
Another class and another helpful Spanish phrase, or so I thought. Class 20 introduced the phrase “acabarde” meaning to just have done. For example, “acabodellegar” means I just arrived. Sounds useful enough until they give the caveat that using acabarwithout the de means to have an orgasm. That one seems a little too easy to screw up (insert joke here about men screwing up orgasms) so I don’t think I’ll be trying it out just yet.
As Bueno entonces…learn Spanish has a knack of doing, it expertly used a raunchy topic, sex hotels, as a jumping-off point to discuss basic concepts of the Spanish language. In today’s class it was the use of “por vs para (two words meaning for).” Again, like “ser vs estar” this is a complicated discussion that doesn’t necessarily follow hard and fast rules, however, Bueno, entonces… Learn Spanish did a nice job of hitting and reinforcing the most common uses.
Well, for the time being it looks like Jimena won’t be sex-iled for David’s sex-capade (sorry, I ran out of clever words to describe sex I learned freshman year in college) – it looks like he’ll have to settle for the Motel Ocho.
Bueno, entonces… In today’s lesson, I continued to learn the remaining numbers from 11-100. Simple. I was also taught about trabajo and different types of empleados and their significa. The lesson also covered some more formal greetings and responses.
Example:
“Hola, que tal?”
“Bien, y usted?”
(Formal) “Bien, es un placer/gusto”
(Informal) “Bien, encantado!”
I think I’ve got this greeting thing down. I’ve noticed though that every time I ask “Que tal?” everyone responds with the same answer. Maybe that is a wonderful thing because I would not understand anything other wise.
The lesson began to introduce conjugaciones distinas de los verbos regulares and irregulares. So so complex. I can already tell that Ser (to be) and Ir (to go) will be giving me a lot of trouble. They are both irregular so the spelling changes completely, making it really difficult to pick up, even with context clues.
The lessons are so simple, everything it set up in a very basic manner, making it really easy to follow along. New words and phrases are repeated over and over with each lessons instead of being stashed in the back of your memory. Repetition is the key! Before leaving the states, Gates and I took some lessons from the Rosetta Stone, very simple. Almost too simple, but it kind of went all over the place. There was a lot of repetition, but I could not imagine being able to hold a conversation even after 10 lessons. I could however tell you that the lady’s hair is long and brown. Or that 5 kids are on top of the table and three are under.
In the video, David mentioned botellas de cervezas. Yes! It’s true! In Buenos Aires, you get a refund for bringing the glass bottle back for recycling! Amazing! People drink anywhere and everywhere, but not as much as you would see them making out! Owww!
If you are one of the thousands of people who bought a boring software program or antique audiobook that is gathering dust in your closet, we hope you give Bueno, entonces... a try. We are positive it will be the last learn Spanish program you'll ever need.
