Back in Andorra

This summer I showed myself how hard it is to stay motivated to keep my Spanish moving forwards while I was in France. I didn't abandon Spanish completely, but I did put a lot less energy into it. I also did the obvious thing and tried to learn some more French while I was there. This blog was an obvious casualty of all this, as can be seen by the fact that this is the first post since late July.

So, here are the things I kept doing -

Watching Telediario en 4 minutos a couple of mornings a week on the RTVE website.
Speaking to Spanish speakers on the few occasions when I had the chance.
Watching El Aguila Roja (also on the RTVE website).
Visiting a couple of favourite Spanish websites.
Cooking dishes from my Spanish recipe book (in Spanish).

And things I should have done but didn't -

More of all of the above
Writing this blog
Reading Don Quijote
Looking for other Spanish websites
Reading Spanish newspapers
Looking for other Spanish sites


Back in Andorra it is time to 'poner las pilas' and get a bit more motivated, now that there are a few more people to speak Spanish to.

Useful website for Spanish and recipes

I am always on the look out for Spanish and Latin American recipes to try, and I have just seen a great one for Cuban Arroz con Pollo (Chicken with rice) at Learning Spanish is Fun which is a great Spanish blog and resource. I think cooking dishes and learning the words for different foods and ingredients is a great way to learn about a culture. The recipe is well written and illustrated with a really mouth watering photograph - you can tell that the blog's author, Sabrina, really has a passion for her subject matter. I'm really looking forward to trying out the recipe if I can track down some of the ingredients.

The weather

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sitting and watching torrents of rain beating against the windows, it seems a good time to get out the dictionary and revise some weather words. Like in English there are nouns (the rain) and verbs (to rain / it is raining). In English we also use a lot of adjectives to describe the weather - 'it is cold / hot / windy', whereas in Spanish nouns are also used for these. It is like saying 'there is wind' or 'it makes heat today'.

Rain

la lluvia = the rain
llover = to rain
llueva = it rains / it is raining
está lloviendo = it is raining (right now)
va a llover = it is going to rain
lloverá = it will rain
llovió = it rained
ha llovido = it has rained
llovía = it was raining

Snow

la nieve = the snow
nevar = to snow
nieva = it snows
esta nevando = it is snowing (right now)
va a neva = it is going to snow

Wind

el viento = the wind
hace viento = it is windy (lit. it makes wind)

Temperature

hace calor = it is hot (it makes heat)
hace frío = it is cold (it makes cold)

Sun

el sol = the sun
hace sol = it is sunny (it makes sun)
soleado =sunny

Cloud

los nubes = the clouds
nublado = cloudy
la niebla = the mist

The Spanish Civil War - Guerra Civil Española

75 years ago this week, on the 18th July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began, entering Spain into four years of war and forty of facist rule under General Franco. Although in Europe and worldwide, World War II still casts a long shadow, the Spanish Civil war probably cast an even longer shadow over that country. The Spanish had to wait until the mid 1970s before they had a vote again. Their war was particularly nasty in that it pitted neighbour against neighbour, and even family members against each other. The depth of feeling the war and the Franco era still evoke can be seen by the number of comments on this newspaper article - http://www.publico.es/espana/387587/una-sombra-larga-que-se-proyecta-hasta-el-presente.

It is easy in hindsight to paint one side as the bad guys, but the truth is that both groups did some pretty bad stuff before and during the war, and that either side could probably have averted the war if they had wanted to pursue a diplomatic solution. Wikipedia has a good article covering the causes and events of the war in a lot of detail - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War

Notes on the simple past

Yesterday's conjugation of the simple past gives a way to express the past. Harder than learning the verb forms though, is learning when to use it. The good news is that if you use the wrong past tense you will nearly always be understood, in the same way that a foreign person speaking English will often make mistakes but still be understood. The simple past is used to represent a single event, a point in the past, never for something that is ongoing.

Therefore 'tiré' can translate 'I threw', but never 'I was throwing' or 'I used to throw'  which would be translated using the imperfect tense - more on that in future posts. However, 'I threw' is not necesarily translated as 'tiré'. 'I threw a ball every day' would also be translated using the imperfect tense because it refers to a repeating, ongoing event. Practise of reading and listening is the best way to learn when Spanish people would use each tense.

There are another couple of points which are important to note. Firstly the pronuncuation - it is important to stress the accented sylable, otherwise the words will be heard as the present tense. The stress in the simple past falls nearer to the end of the word in most cases.

Secondly, the first person plural ('tiramos' / 'we throw') is the same in the present and simple past tenses, so the context has to be relied on to indicate which is meant.

Conjugation of the week - 13. Tirar - to throw, simple past

This week it is back to the regular -ar verbs with the simplest of the many past tenses in Spanish. The simple past tense is also known as the past historic tense or the preterite tense. It is similar to the simple past tense in English, but is perhaps used less. It refers to a specific event in the past, that is now finished. See previous posts in this series for more about conjugations.

Tirar - to throw, simple past tense

tiré = I threw
tiraste = you threw (sing. fam.)
tiró = he/she/it/ you (sing. pol.) threw
tiramos = we threw
tirasteis = you threw (pl. fam.)
tiraron = they/you (pl. pol.) threw

Telediario en 4 minutos

I have mentioned RTVE's four minute online news bulletin before. I find it is a great way to keep my Spanish from getting too rusty if I am not using it, as well as keeping up with events in the Spanish speaking world. I thought it was worth mentioning again here as I have just discovered that I can now watch it on my Android phone. I don't know whether it is down to a change on the site, or an Android browser update, but when I tried previously I could not view the video.

I have no idea if it works with other phones. The site uses Flash to show video, so I suspect iPhone users will be out of luck. I should mention that this is not a mobile site and is therefore quite bandwidth intensive. You will need to use wifi to view it unless you have a really good data plan. I guess you need an up-to-date version of Android with Flash enabled as well. Even so, I find it is great to watch over breakfast without having to drag a laptop to the table.