Indirect Object Placement [15 Dec 2009|08:48pm] aprende_espanol [morene] Maybe my brain isn't working properly right now, but could someone explain why "lo" is placed before "peor" in this sentence. I though "lo" was only used in conjunction with verbs. Más allá de las sorpresas negativas desde Dubai o Grecia, más los “sustos” que todavía nos tendremos que llevar en próximos meses, parece claro que lo peor de la crisis financiera y económica quedó atrás, situándose entre diciembre y marzo los momentos de máxima tensión. I understand the sentence perfectly, but why isn't "el" being used? Thanks in advance. 13 comments|post comment

Confused by a native speaker's sentece. [13 Dec 2009|02:24pm] aprende_espanol [lucent_beam] My Spanish 3 class rewrote a shortened script to Toy Story, but there's one thing that one of my native students wrote that is throwing me off. For a sentence that was supposed to mean "Are you worried about what he is going to get" (as in, what kind of presents), one of my native speakers wrote the end as "qué va gara" ... I'm guessing that she meant "va a agarrar" but when I asked her that, she said no and kept saying "gara" ...no a- at the front, no trilled r, and no -ar at the end. Is there something else she could have meant, or maybe does she not realize that the correct word is spelled/pronounced "agarrar"? 15 comments|post comment

Liechtenstein [12 Dec 2009|06:08pm] aprende_espanol [ann_les] Liechtenstein en inglés se pronunia "liktenstain" y ¿cómo es en español? 6 comments|post comment

[10 Dec 2009|12:08am] aprende_espanol [consecration] Hey all... I'm using the word "reader" in my paper el lector as I refer to how the reader goes kind of crazy while reading Don Quixote. I was wondering if what I write makes sense while using that, it's under the cut. Also, does está volviendo loco mean he is going crazy or it's driving me crazy - I'm not sure on that. ( Read more... ) 12 comments|post comment

[09 Dec 2009|03:42pm] aprende_espanol [instantanea] Le saco 3 años Means that I'm 3 years older than him/her, right? 8 comments|post comment

Notification System [07 Dec 2009|01:15pm] lj_maintenance [mhwest] [ mood | grumpy ] **FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009** So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything. And finally some answers to some questions: ( Read More and Get Some Answers... ) 602 comments|post comment

[06 Dec 2009|12:09pm] aprende_espanol [mandy347] For my trip to Costa Rica in the Spring, I'm looking for some resources to take with me. I believe I'm getting a dictionary for Christmas already, but I'd still like to keep an eye open in case. I also want to look into a book of idioms, a side-by-side reader, and one of those 1000 Spanish verbs conjugated books. Any suggestions? :) 15 comments|post comment

Reading vs. "Hearing" Spanish [06 Dec 2009|10:03am] aprende_espanol [flowergirl624] First, let me say I'm old. I took three years of Spanish in high school and one semester in college all before Ronald Reagan was president. (And he was elected in Nov. 1980, so yes, I am old.) But I've always used as much of my Spanish as I could remember and I would chat with my cubano brother in law and his family in Spanish and about four years ago, I used a "Learn Spanish in Your Car" CD series to prepare for a trip to Spain (for work) and I did pretty well. I could order food, get a cup of cafe descafinado, tell the front desk at the hotel that "no puedo abrir la puerta de mi sale" and they understood me. I said, "despacio, por favor" a lot when people spoke to me, and they would slow down and I could get the general idea. The longer I was there, the better I got at speaking and listening, and definitely reading in Spanish. But I have not been able to keep up with it. I find that I can read in Spanish much better than I can "hear" in Spanish. The problem is that I don't think in Spanish, so my brain is busily translating one phrase or sentence and then I miss the next one. I don't know how to make myself think in Spanish. I've tried, but I always ALWAYS find myself translating in my head, which I know is not going to work. I've been tempted to buy Rosetta Stone pero es muy caro y soy muy barata. Can anyone make a recommendation about how I could learn to think in Spanish? Thanks. Edit: Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I wasn't trying to say that I'm too old to learn -- I don't think I am. I just meant that I've tried for a long time and haven't figured out how to do it yet. :) 30 comments|post comment

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