What I’ve been up to
¡Aprender español! (Y no me digas que dije eso mal.) I’ve been learning dozens to hundreds of words a day, using Supermemo. So far I’m at around 3200 items, (where common words have many items for different senses and idioms,) and still have a long way to go. But I think I’m at the point now where I can start practicing actually using the Spanish. When I was learning it in school (I’ve had about three years of classes, all told) I was always so frustrated by having an extremely limited vocabulary that I never enjoyed using what I’d learned, and of course I couldn’t understand a damn thing any native speaker said anyway. But by learning gobs and gobs of vocabulary using this great program, I think I’ll be able to get past that point easily now.
Oh, and how could I forget to mention WordReference, whose neato lookup will tell you if the word is a conjugated form of a verb, has a conjugation reference, and a fairly complete inventory of idioms? Pretty neato.
By this point I can actually say quite a bit, and even hold non-trivial, if limited, conversations with other intermediate learners. But when it comes to understanding the language spoken by native speakers, I’m still mystified. I can maybe catch 10-15% of the meaning on average, even though I know 80% of the words being used. ¡Qúe coñazo! So I plan to start reading a lot of Spanish, starting maybe with El Blog del Capi, which uses a lot of good varied and colorful non-specialist language, and is occasionally funny. Then maybe go to a bookstore at some point and pick out an easy read in Spanish, like maybe a Harry Potter translation. (If the bookstores here have anything in Spanish, they’d have that, right?) Once I get to where I’m only coming across unfamiliar words once every few hundred words or so, then maybe I’ll be good enough to start listening? And I guess I should learn the subjunctive mood at some point. And the future tense. And imperfect, and conditional, and the perfect moods. Yeah.
Damn, it takes a hell of a lot of memorizing to learn a language.
BTW, why is it that 95% of the most active blogs at es.wordpress.com are porn or warez or otherwise complete fluff? Oh well, I guess English blogs aren’t any different, I just haven’t had to look at “most popular” lists in forever.
Anyway, look for this blog to become Spanish language only in the near future.
July 19th, 2008 at 21:32
You have a great sense of humor. You should consider authoring a webcomic-I think that format would be a good fit for you.
July 19th, 2008 at 21:54
Thanks!
You know, one of things low on my list to do is to learn 3DS Max (I found the warez version on one of the very spanish blogs mentioned in this post) and do a webcomic that way. I just recently noticed a webcomic that seems to be done this way (or with another 3d modeler), the first regularly updating one I’ve seen do it, so I’m encouraged that it’s possible. (It looks crappy, but it’s fully textured and rendered photorealistically, which doesn’t give you good results when you can’t spend more time on your models and poses. I don’t plan render that way.)
I really really hate drawing. Well, not really, but I’m no good at it, and I’d sooner learn to model and texture (or to model and cell-shade!) than to draw.
But I have at least 3 years worth of projects that are more interesting that that one, so not anytime soon. :( If I didn’t already have a job, I might look into that as an interesting, lucrative option, but currently the non-lucrative interests are winning out.