Learning in Reverse / Aprender al Reves
Personally I think if you have even a modicum of either language under your belt, a good idea would be to get a "learning book" that is NOT from your native to the target language, but rather from the target language back to your native language. For example, I recently picked up.a couple of "How to Learn English" audio tapes and I was quite amazed by how helpful they were.
Just an idea. Give it a try. And if you want, let me know if it helped.
Write to me in either language. It's OK!
VG
La Pareja Portuñol
Hace dos semanas estaba a la biblioteca cuando ví una pareja. Eran poco ancienos, pero no mucho - dicen en franc,ais "le moyen age." Pero hablaban una lengua que era familiar y estranjera.
Pues, I pretended to look through the DVDs for a little while, as I tried to make out if what they were speaking was trule Spanish or not. It seemed that there were several distinct words in Spanish, como "entonces" y "te gustaría" eran fraces muy claras.
Por fin, decidí a preguntarlos. Pues, con mucho humilde, los pidé de donde eran y que lenga hablaban.
Ella me respondió, "Soy de Brasil, y él es de Argentina."
Ahh, dijo yo.
"Ella no habla español," él me dijo, "y sho - no hablo portugués. Entonces, hablamos portuñol."
Una mezcla de los dos lenguas.
"Después de veinte-cinco años de cohabitación," ella me dijo, "y claro que sí que una paraje desarrollarán su propria lengua!"
y ¡qué lengua bonita era!
VG
La Guia
Recently discovered that there's a local paper (en español) floating around my little town, called La Guia.
The moment I saw the cover I thought to myself, "If they made an edition specifically for adolescents, would they call it
La Guia-Teen" ?
(I know, I know - hilarious, right?)
Maybe you don't think so . . . try saying it out loud. "Guia-TEEN."
Well, so much for cross-linguistic puns. Apparently I'm the only one who likes them.
Maybe I should have stated, "the edition for teens who are morbidly obsessed with gruesome artifacts of capital punishment."
Oh well.
VG
calumnia=calumny
(in keeping with the true impetus of this blog, I will state future posts here with the same standardised form of the above title, that of the Spanish word first, an equal sign, then the English word)
now, the definition from the Real Acedemia Española:
Calumbia. Del Lat. Calumnia
1 Acusacion falsa, hecha maliciosamente para causar daño.
2. Der. Imputacion de un delito hecha a sabiendas de su falsedad.
now, the definition from dictionary.com:
Calumny
1. A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation.
2. The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander.
etymology: Middle English calumnie, from Old French calomnie, from Latin calumnia, from calv, to deceive.
"calumnia" is the same word in Italian, and is the same in Latin. [interesting sidenote, I found a Chilean etymological website which states that the latin base word is actually "caloui" which is from the Greek "kaloi" which means "to cover" - but I would really like some sort of secondary verification]
Why I bring this to you personally is a from a conversation that my wife and I had the other day, in which she was describing some situation at her work, and said, "And the women from second shift were trying to
calumny half the people on third shift."
at this point she stopped and asked me if she had translated "calumnia" correctly. I told her I felt that it was firmly a noun, rather than a verb, as it, "utter a calumny," etc. She feels that the verb in Spanish is, "calumniar."
However, this is futher evidence [and don't worry, I'll post more] that Spanish is actually simply highly elevated English. "Calumny" is indeed an English word, but I doubt it you'll ever meet anybody outside the English Department of any university that knows it. Plus, if you'll look at the etymology above to see the circuitous route it took to get here (and to get forgotten!) and then see how it remained THE SAME directly into Spanish and across the sea into the New World, then you should realise that there is perhaps some opinionated truth to this theory.
Basically, for all you "Good Ol' Americans" out there, the truth is: your basic illituerate Mexican day labourer knows mroe elevated English that the majority of US!
VG
La Diferencia entre Indocumentados y Illegales
Otro día una amiga de mi esposa nos preguntó la pregunta, "Cual es la diferencía entre 'indocumentados' y 'illegales'"
Y la respondí, "Depends on whether you're pro or con."
And we paused. Good line. Just shot it off the top of my head, but it's the only one that makes sense. With this linguistic dichotomy, we have a good example of how our approach to language (the duality, and I would say, "all-encompassing expansiveness" of English) has tackled this subject . . .
simply put: If you like 'em, they're "undocumented."
If you don't like 'em, they're "illegals."
Of coures, either term, to me, seems to neglect the fact that "THEY" are still "HUMAN BEINGS," but that's probably just my own liberal arts education coming out.
Oh well.
VG
Bank of America
Went to a symposium on Hispanic owned businesses and they were awarding an annual fellowship award to the local Bank of America - apparently BofA has spent more than any other financial institution in promoting local hispanic populations throughout the United States.
Which, actually is very good business tactics - the hispanic population of the US has an estimated buying power of 420 billion, that's billion with a b, fellow babies!
Billions and billions, sayeth Señor Sagan.
Regardless of the selfish (i.e. monetary gain) motives of this particular financial institution, I do have to admit that I rather appreciate the symbolism . . .
the bank of
AMERICA
which means a fulfillment, at least IMHO, of the "American Dream."
Bank of America - all-inclusive.
Cool.
VG
Las diferencias
No quiero descutir las diferences entre ingles y hispano-hablantes, porqué creo que sea la hor a para "bring them both together" pero la más que cho research la más que empezo a pensar que hay gran diferencias entre grupos diferentes de hispanohablantes.
Quizá la diferencia la más obvia es entre los "chicanos" (los con parentage de Texas al California) y los de Nueva York/Jersey, etc . . . Mexicano y los de las islas (Cuba, PR, DR, etc) -
[note to self - more research needed. - specific examples, etc]
