Beginner Introductions/Conversations!

Hola! Me llamo Jo y soy de Inglaterra. Quiero hablar Español – estoy aprendiendo pero necesito ayudar! Hasta la proxima! Gracias. I have just started the Spanish Premium level and thought it would be nice for somewhere for beginners to start posting on the forum (it may already exists but most of what I have read so far is too far ahead for me!) More advanced learners please feel free to correct any of my language or grammar. Thanks!

Jo: Bienvenidos a Rocket Spanish. There is a thread here called Hola, where people often introduce themselves. But what you have done is fine too. My advice is to visit the forum often, and participate whenever the spirit moves you. There is a small but pretty active group of us who frequent the forum. Some of them are pretty advanced, others of us are working hard to get there. And some, like you, are just beginning. We are all here to help one another so don't be shy about asking questions or for help, regardless of how simple you think the question is. I know that for me, when I can help someone with a question, it makes me review what I have already learned, which helps me too. Saludos, Dan

Hola Jo! I recently started Spanish Premium as well. Me llamo Rena! Soy de los Estados Unidos. Tengo una amiga de Inglaterra.

¡Hola Jo et Rena! Welcome to Rocket Spanish. We enjoy responding to questions here at the forum so please ask. Saludos, Steven p.s. Jo - "necesito ayudar" would translate to "I need to help". To say "I need help", just drop the "r" off the last word - this changes it from a verb to a noun. ¡Buena suerte!

Hola Jo y Rena. Bienvenidos a rocket Spanish. My scores would think my Spanish is more advanced. I really am not there yet. Tell us about what you do or like. It does not have to be personal. I am from Southern California, Soy de California de sur. Mucho gusto en conocerle. Hi Rich! Can you translate this please. I like your translation. I spend a lot of time with Rocket Spanish only. Maybe I will start walking a lot just to listen to Spanish audio.

Hola a todos. Dan y Steven, gracias por su ayuda. Rena, donde de eres en los Estados Unidos? Aurora, me gusta hacer deporte, y tu? Saludos, Jo

The tutor speaks so fast I, sometimes, cannot catch the exact pronunciation. I wish the tutor would say it slower at first then say it normally as a spanish person would. That would help a lot.

Bienvenidos al foro de Rocket Spanish, Daryl. You will find a small but consistent group of us here. As I wrote to Jo earlier, you can get answers to a lot of questions here, as well as practice writing and reading Spanish. Please become a regular. I often wonder how some people pile up so many points each day. Maybe they really are doing nothing but studying their language all day long. I usually spend a couple of hours a day studying, but not all of it here. I use other resources as well. And in my opinion, being consistent, as you say, is important. Do something every day to get better at your new language.

What other resources do you use?

My goal daily is about a thousand points. It does not take that long especially when I just want to build vocabulary consistently. I usually get that score before I go to work at 9 am. A couple of input in the forum is already an easy 200 points. There's 365 days in a year, accumulating 365,000 is doable in one year. I do Rocket Spanish for my hour of study and the rest is try to talk to my co-workers. I am surrounded by people from Latin America mostly from Mexico. Also I attend a beginner's class in the senior center twice a week.

Rena: I believe in the importance of training all four aspects of language learning: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. So I try to practice each a little each day. I write things like my grocery or task list in Spanish. I read in Spanish...right now I am reading "Las Aventuras de Victor" by Gordon and Cynthia Duran-Smith (the Lightspeed Spanish couple.) I brought back a copy of Granma from Cuba that I read sometimes. I have an extensive list of verbs that I am compiling from Rocket Spanish lessons that I listen to and translate daily, alternately English>Spanish or Spanish<English. I listen to podcasts on Veintimundos, watch YouTube videos in Spanish, sometimes watch an episode of Destinos, and I love to watch Naturalmente Juliana, a cooking show on HITN. I meet once a week with a native Spanish-speaking tutor, and lately I have been talking with Spanish speakers on Skype.

Hola a todos. Thank you for sharing your ways of learning, such variety of methods! Hola Daryl. Me gusta San Francisco, he estado dos veces. How have you got up to module 7 within a month - how often do you listen to the audio lessons? Gracias, Jo

Hola Jo, I didn't think I was making exceptional progress but I just keep plowing ahead. I decided that I would try to do a module a week, 10 lessons in 7 days. For me, the grammar lessons take less time than the audio lessons so sometimes I can do 1 audio lesson and 1 grammar lesson a day. Sometimes, I only have time for 1 lesson. I've been thinking about how to do this program. Others have said how they do it and I've sort of figured how I'm doing it, so far at least. This is what I think: I took 4 years of Spanish is high school and at the end I could say, "donde esta..." and "como se dice..." and that's it. I took Berlitz about 10 years ago and learned quite a bit but not enough to be able to speak it. I feel that I've studied the language a lot but never got to a point where I could actually do it and I finally decided that I *would* learn this language. What I want to do is get to a 'critical mass' where I can actually communicate in the language. It sounds like Dan is doing a very thorough job and I've heard others say that they do each lesson twice or whatever. My thing is to plow ahead and gain as much as I can as fast as I can until it sort of gels. I don't remember everything I've learned, I've forgotten a lot of the words but I want to get to a point where I feel like I have a grounding in the language. I may go back and do the whole thing again to pick up what I missed. I don't know if it's the best way but it's what I'm going to do. y soy de San Jose, pero San Francisco es muy bien and I just learned today Mi equipo de baisball favorito is el major del mundo

Hi Jo. Me gusta futbol Americano y basketbol. Mis pasatiempos son jugar el ukulele , cantando en el coro de la iglesia y haciendo estudios bíblicos . También me gusta hacer ganchillo

Thanks for sharing Daryl, very interesting. I think I was spending too long on each lesson to begin with, trying to perfect the whole lesson and all the testing before moving on. So am trying to get through them a bit quicker and have just discovered the grammar lessons. Will be taking my first module test soon! Me gusta futbol y mi equipo favorito es Chelsea. Me gusta cantar tambien, pero yo no soy muy bueno. Tengo un hermano.

Hola Jo, Dan, Aurora , Daryl and Rena!

 

Soy Cristian, algunos de ustedes ya me conocen (Dan and Aurora), but for those who don't know me , I'm Cris, I live in Baja California (Mexico) and I'm here in rocket languages to learn some german...but! I'm always hanging around the Español forum, trying to help others with their spanish questions (since, I am a native speaker). So , feel free to ask!!! Yo intentaré ayudarlos!.

 

Saludos!

Hola a todos. Hola Cristian, gracias por su ayuda. Estoy aprendiendo a decir los números y el tiempo en el este momento. También, qué quiero hacer este fin de semana.

I am slowly working my way through but because I like to do all the tests for every lesson it is taking me a while and I am still only on module 2. But I have always been a perfectionist!

I wanted to ask, is there a pattern/rule for when an accent is added to a word? For instance, tu sometimes with and sometimes without? Also, tres without but veintitrés with?

Also how have you all found the best way to learn the grammar? I know I am only at a beginner level but I enjoy understanding the rules (infinite, conjugates etc) and I think it will help me learn setence structure. Do the lessons provide enough on grammar as you go or have you used other resources? I know there is a grammar section in this forum although that seems to often be quite advanced.

All thoughts and advice as always appreciated! Gracias!

Last night I attended a mandatory meeting in our parish which is 90% latinos, 10% English and 2% Filipinos. I remember about 20 years ago attending classes in the diocese and the spanish speaking only participants were wearing headsets . The lectures were in English. Last night is the exact opposite . Most of the talks were in Spanish and the English speaking people were wearing head sets. I did not wear the head set. I was surprised how nuch I understood. So, I figured I will just keep on going with RS until I exhaust all the lessons. Then see where I would be. I was encouraging my Filipino friends to start learning Spanish. Not interested. They said this is America. English only. But that what is happening. A lot of time I feel like I'm in Mexico with the music, the food etc etc. Most of the latinos are very nice. They are just more comfortable talking in their native language.

Jo: sometimes accents are added to indicate pronunciation when it does not follow the normal pattern. For example, take the word página. Without the accent on the first syllable the word would be pronounced with the accent on the second. They decided to pronounce it pAgina, not pagINa, so needed the accent mark.

Sometimes the presence of an accent indicates a completely different word. Tu use your example, tú means you and tu means your. Está means it is, esta means this.

Regarding studying grammar, I have found that, at least in the second course, there is usually a grammar lesson that corresponds with the language lesson, so I tend to study them concurrently. When something is not clear to me I search out other resources on the web, such as LightSpeed Spanish, and I have a great little grammar book; I am not at home right now so I can't go look up its title. I will later if you are interested.

Saludos,

Dan

Hola everyone!

 

Hola Phillip, ¿come te va?

Hola Aurora,
I'm not sure what you said to me...
I cannot find the definition of "come" nor "va"...
 

Philip: I think she misspelled cómo.

¿Cómo te va? is a common greeting, more or less like the English, how is it going?

Va is the third person singular conjugation of ir, a very irregular verb: he/she/it/usted goes.

Most print dictionaries will not give you the definition of a conjugated verb. My online dictionary returns ir when you ask for the definition of va.

Dan, Thanks, that makes some sense.  I am a total beginner so it was a bit confusing.

Ok so let me try this again...

Hola Aurora, muy bien, gracias..  ?y tu?
 

Philip: ¡Perfecto! Except the leading question mark needs to be inverted: ¿. There are several ways to add Spanish punctuation and accents. Which, by the way, I should have explained in more detail. You will learn that accents, or the lack thereof, make words mean different things. Certain words such as cómo are questions when used with an accent, as in:

¿Cómo te va?...How is it going?

When not accented the word may mean the same thing but not as a question, as in the famous Tito Puente song, Oye Como Va...Hear How it Goes.

Other times como means "like," or my favorite usage, ¿Cómo?...meaning, "What?" (I didn't understand what you said.)

Or look up the recent forum discussion on está, ésta, and esta.

¡Bienvenido a Rocket Spanish!
Dan

So how do I make accents and inverts on a MacBook ???
 

Phillip: Sorry about the wrong spelling. - My answer is "Perfecto. Como siempre. Estoy muy feliz.

Phillip: for me it is easiest to use a different keyboard. To do that, go to

SETTINGS>LANGUAGE AND TEXT>INPUT SOURCES. Uncheck whatever keyboard is checked. Probably US or US extended if you are in the US. Check US International PC. Go out of settings.

After having done this you can type accented vowels by first typing ' then the vowel. To get ¿ hold down OPTION, SHIFT, and ?. To get ¡ simply hold down OPTION !. For ñ hold down OPTION, type n, release option then type n again. I am really used to typing this way and it works great for me. Only trouble is when you want to use the ' in the normal fashion you get some wierd characters. Just get used to hitting the space key twice after ' and life is good.

Dan, gracias por su ayuda.  Estoy uso la option clave.
 

Hola Aurora, Gracias por hablar que me.  Estoy muy feliz también.
Yo hablas español sólo un poco, pero estoy aprendiendo!

Dan,  ¡La vida es bueno!  ¿De dónde eres?

Philip: Vivo en Roanoke, Virginia. ¿Y tú?

Vivo en Corinth, Texas.

Bienvenido Phillip. 

Que haces esta fin de semana?

Esta fin de semana estoy recuperando de un choque en mi bicicleta montaña. El domingo mi novia y yo vamos comer la cena Pasqua.

Haces = ???

Aurora:  I'm not sure what you are said, but I think you asking what I'm doing this weekend.  So I shall reply...

¡Yo necesito trabajo de jardín!  Quiero para cultivar y planta tomates y otro los vegetales.

Hola Jo.  ¿Como te va?

Philip: haces is the second person singular conjugation of hacer; to do or to make.
hago: I do/make
haces: you do/make
hace: he/she/it does/makes
hacemos: we do/make
hacen: they do/make

So haces is you do or you make. When phrased as a question, "¿qué haces?" you are right, you are being asked what you are doing.

¡Esta difícil ser un principiante!
 

Hola Phillip, muy bien gracias. ¿Y tú? ¿Estás bien? Hoy estoy aprendiendo español en mi jardín.

I am finding hacer a challenging verb to get my head around because they use it in so many situations where we would not in English e.g. hacer comprar - to do/make shopping. Thank you for sharing all the conjugates Dan.

Buenos días todo el mundo!

Important question!!! ....

How do I say, "Could you speak slowly please".
 

Hola Phillip,

¿Podría hablar más despacio por favor?

Saludos,
Ricardo

 

Or for those of us not as advanced as Ricardo,"

Hable más despacio, por favor.

This phrase was a lifesaver for me in Cuba.

Gracias to all !!!
 

Hola to all, I may seem to be way ahead of some of you, but I'm only in module 3 of level 1. Most of my points come from the tests and answering some of the posts for the 1st time. I am not that good at being consistent studying the lessons, despite writing them down ahead of time and practicing some of what I have learned with one of my Hispanic neighbors. I've enjoyed reading some of the posts!  

Bienvenido Brittany.

I am in the same situation Brittany, my badge also says I am a 'Certified Hispanophile' but I am only on Level 1 Module 4. Don't worry, everyone learns at their own pace and the guys on the forum are so helpful in answering questions and discussing things.

Buena suerte.

Is anyone else having trouble with the testing locking up on a Mac ???

Phillip: Is this just happening now or a regular occurrence? I use a mac...a MacBook to be specific, several years old now and running increasingly erratic lately. Not just in RS but everything.

I took the Know It test on lesson 13.2 this morning and it worked fine. I do notice that occasionally when I click on the play button it takes a few seconds to respond. And a few months ago they were doing some system maintenance and the program was crashing in the middle of tests.

Yes I have a fairly new mac, (about 6 mo old), and RS testing is the only thing that ever hangs up.  I thought maybe it was having my iPhone logged in at the same time, but it doesn't matter.  I'm thinking maybe it's just so busy.  I can test on the iPhone just fine.