raferguson
Oct 14, 2009, 12:57 PM
Post #26 of 27
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Re: [Zarcero] Developing An Ear for Spanish
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I would agree that translation holds you back from understanding and speaking Spanish. Ideally, it becomes automatic. Sometimes I will recall a conversation, but not be able to remember whether the conversation was in Spanish or English!
It is hard to get the point where one no longer translates, but that needs to be the goal. I think that part of any language learning is the daily phrases, which you should be able to recognize instantly, and say automatically. In English they are things like "Excuse me", "Good morning", "How is it going?", etc.
Sometimes I respond to somebody quickly in Spanish, and then I hear what I said and wonder if I said it right! But if I stopped to consider and translate, it might not come out any better, and the conversation would quickly get slow and stilted.
I like the TV news, the Mexican announcers speak correctly, like the US announcers do, and speak with minimal accent and slang. As Mike said, they do speak fast. I tend to have to pay attention and turn up the volume a bit, to understand all the news.
The hardest of all is the radio news, because there is no visual aid, and they often change topics (and countries) every other sentence.
Humor programs are very tough, double entendres, slang, cultural references that you might not instantly recognize. I don't watch those programs, I miss too much. One time I watched a political humor program, and I understood it, because I had been reading the Mexican newspapers daily, and so recognized almost all the references.
Old movies are great; new movies tend to have too much slang and "grosarias" (bad language).
Practice, practice, practice..........
Richard
http://www.fergusonsculpture.com
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