Chévere!

[osprey_archer]

I found the best Spanish dictionary ever yesterday. It’s not exactly a dictionary, it’s a book with lists of words grouped around a certain concept: these words mean “to run,” these words are types of shoes, these words describe different types of rivers…

Where has this book been all my life? I would have loved this book, and carried it around with me like a favorite blanket and petted it and called it Jorge.

My favorite word from this book is “serenarse,” which means “to calm yourself down; to regain your self-control.” I feel that “Me serené” is infinitely more graceful and affecting than “I regained my self-control.” It’s a pity I can’t unilaterally introduce it into the English language.

Just generally, Spanish reflexive verbs beat English reflexives into the dust. Myself, yourself, himself—all of these words are awkward and overlong, compared to the graceful simplicity of the Spanish me, te, se. If you ever want to inflict an action on yourself, Spanish is the language to use.

***

Also, a link to a hilarious and affectionate description of steampunk, via marycatelli:

People think of goths as weirdoes who take vampires too seriously, and therefore they can’t help being worried on some level that a crazy goth might, you know, want to make them bleed. Whereas steampunks are — what? Weirdoes who take pocket-watches too seriously? What are they gonna do, vehemently tell you what time it is?

I feel like I should mention that the article is not nearly as hard on Goths as that sounds.

Comments

[enemyfrigate.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm attempting to get my Spanish back and usable, though I have to admit I was always better at reading it than speaking it.

I find that the usual textbook teaching style doesn't work that well for me with languages, so any other resource is great. I've been thinking of getting the Rosetta Stone disks but they're kind of expensive for me right now.

My next project is to work my way through the Spanish translation of Harry Potter with a good Spanish dictionary.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter in Spanish? I bow before your ambition.

One thing I've found - I don't know how good your Spanish is, so it may not work for you - but if you need to work on your listening comprehension, Spanish movies without subtitles are very useful.

[enemyfrigate.livejournal.com]

I got the idea re: HP in Spanish from, I think, a Lifehacker post, about learning language. Since I have a fair amount of reading comprehension, the idea is to choose a familiar and straightforward book that you've already read, and go through it in Spanish with a good Sp. dictionary at your side. The post specifically suggested HP, actually, as it is available in a bajillion languages, and has been widely read.

Since I learn little to nothing from Spanish textbooks these days, it seemed like a good idea.

I've tried it with SPanish movies, and TV shows dubbed into Spanish; my success varies. It helps to view something you're already familiar with, so you can really listen and not be distracted with simply viewing for story etc. I'll have to try that again sometime soon.