Hope you’re feeling better 
1 Like
Thanks Nikki, I am finally feeling up to some Spanish today, so back to the Challenges!!
Stu
1 Like
If you feel like a breather at any stage, or plain old revenge, come and watch me suffer live today on www.saysomethingin.com/manxday …
1 Like
Hola Aran,
Caught you live doing Challenges 7 and 8 of the Manx, and boy they sound hard, with some very long sentences in there 
Good to see you suffer, and very instructive too. Looks like we use the learning material in an almost identical way in terms of repeating certain parts of the sentences (particularly endings) more than once to get them bedded in and sounding fluid (but then again perhaps everyone does this!) Great to see and hear you celebrate when the words from a previous challenge crop up in the current one and come out right as well, its a great feeling when that happens. I don’t know if I will manage to see your conversation with the Manx Language Officer live, but hopefully I can see it on YouTube this evening. Keep going! 
Hasta pronto,
Stu
Gracias, amigo…
Thanks for your support, Stu! Yep, we need to figure out how to trim some of those sentences - but this sort of experience is so, so valuable for fine-tuning the SSiBorg - onwards and upwards!
1 Like
Hola a todos,
Back in the groove now, with a quick run through Challenges 15, 16 and 17. Some really good and useful stuff in these challenges, but nothing too hard. Books and films still getting swapped around in my responses (ever tried to read a film? and its so boring watching a book), but that will sort itself out in its own time I know. It is great to be back learning Spanish after feeling too poorly to bother and guilty that I was not bothering. A week off does not appear to have had any detrimental effects on my recall, but has dented confidence a bit, as I was on quite a high when the bug struck!
I really enjoyed Aran’s Manx day, particularly his cries of “No, that sentence is too long!”. It was fantastic to see how well he did in the conversation with the Manx Language Officer afterwards, really inspiring.
Got to get back to the listening practices as well as the challenges, as they fell by the wayside as well unfortunately. Going to put the ear buds in while I write some code I think…
Hasta pronto,
Stu
1 Like
Don’t beat yourself up - it never helps - and pauses are hugely valuable chances for your brain to consolidate…
2 Likes
¡Hola Stu and Welcome back to Spanish!
Don’t feel guilty about not doing any lessons while sick…it’s not like we have an exam to write tomorrow. I hope you can get your confidence back as well. I find that if I set my goals too high, it never helps. But if I set them a little low, when I exceed them, it boosts my confidence. If you’re learning Spanish for fun, keep it fun! Besides, I agree with Aran, a break is good…especially when you’re not sick.
I’ve forgotten about the listening exercises…thanks for the reminder.
Enjoy the rest of the Challenges.
Hasta Luego,
Amanda
2 Likes
Muchas gracias Amanda! I have burned through Challenge 18 now, and it was okay-ish. Another word that comes early in a sentence in Spanish and at the end in English was introduced though - ya. That is going to take some practice, just like aun… Bit confused that siento is “I feel” and que le parece…? is “How do you feel (about)…?”, but hey ho, accept it and move on, it is clearly not a straight mapping
If the rain holds off, its Challenge 19 for me this afternoon on a stroll down the bike path, maybe even 20 straight afterwards if I am feeling brave
Listening exercise 3 is still pretty much a blur. More individual words or short phrases are jumping out after several listens, but its not an easy one for me at the moment. I must get my act together and listen to some Spanish radio. Not found the time so far, but I can do nothing but help me at this point, I reckon.
Hasta pronto,
Stu
1 Like
Hola a todos,
Just got back from my walk, and I’m on a high having run through Challenges 19 and 20 on the trot. Finishing lesson 20 feels like a real milestone. The lessons went very well, and it is really beginning to feel like a critical mass of Spanish is on the horizon, when my ability with the language will start to expand very rapidly. I know there is lots more to learn, but the basics are starting to bed in and it feels maravilloso. It wasn’t all plain sailing. que va usted a hacer… is a mouthful at this point in time, but there wasn’t much other than that to trip me up. The question is - how much will I have retained tomorrow?
Hasta luego,
Stu
PS
Cooking myself up a Spanish feast for tea in celebration - pork and chorizo meatballs, some paella and patatas bravas to be washed down with a Spanish red… 
1 Like
¡Hola a todos!
A gorgeous sunny day made the nature reserve the prefect place to tackle Challenge 21. All was straightforward until the introduction of todos. I could hear that something was happening to the sentences with this new word, but I had to rewind and do the section again before I started to pick up the addition of an -n to the verbs; so we had quieren, necesitan and I think that dijo became something like dijeron. I’m assuming these are plural forms. This was really quite a tricky section, testing my ear to the limit, but the difficulty spiked there and it was easier towards the end.
The end of level 1 is now well within my grasp. As I am on holiday at the moment; I had hoped to get the level completed within the next week, but that may be a bit ambitious, depending on how busy we are.
Really enjoying using Memrise as an adjunct to the course. There is a new feature that just became active for Spanish just this week, called “Immersion Mode”. Basically, it is a series of 2-3 second video clips of real people in Spain saying various words or phrases from the course. Its interesting and fun, but a bit limited in scope at the moment. I know that the people at Memrise have been touring España recording these clips, so hopefully they will get better and more diverse over time - currently I seem to get the same ones over and over if I select that option.
I am not going to be able to keep up with the listening exercise schedule I don’t think - I should be working with number 4 currently, but am still struggling with 3. I’m not going to worry, because as far as I can see, there are no listening exercises for Level 2 yet, so I figure that I have plenty of time to get to grips with the Level 1 ones, even after I begin Level 2.
Hasta luego,
Stu
1 Like
Remember that you’re not meant to reach a certain level with the listening stuff - you’re just meant to listen to the right ones for the sessions you’ve done - so however you feel about 3, now you’ve done challenge 20, you should be on 4 - otherwise you won’t be getting exposure to the stuff from 16 to 20…
1 Like
Entiendo Aran, that’s a good point I had not thought about 4 it is…
Stu
1 Like
¡Hola a todos!
I ran through Challenge 22 pacing up and down in the kitchen this morning. Doing the challenge this way rather than whilst driving or on a nice walk felt harder than normal, and I struggled a bit. That’s not to say that I found the lesson particularly hard, its just than it didn’t feel as natural as usual for some reason. “A struggle” is the definite feeling I have come away from that Challenge experiencing.
I have to admit, I keep forgetting a quien le gusta and saying qué le gusta instead - I need to break that habit! I had also forgotten tuvo usted…? from a previous lesson. Good revision for that in the Challenge, so thanks Aran. I am assuming that tuvo is a past tense version of tener here? There seem so many verb forms in Spanish that I am starting to really worry about them. In Welsh, I can blag my way through a sentence pretty easily these days, but it feels that that is going to be really hard in Spanish. English and Welsh verbs seem so easy in comparison! Guess only making mistakes and getting corrected is going to help…
I have a busy day today, so time to let the Challenge percolate through my brain and we will see what happens in the next Challenge…
Hasta pronto,
Stu
Don’t - once you’re getting into conversations often enough, the ones you need regularly will quickly become second nature for you, and the others you can leave be. The blagging your way through a sentence has usually got much more to do with having a secure framework than with making guesses based on regular patterns (but you will in any case start to see more and more of the patterns in Spanish as time goes on)…
Great news … there do seem to be an awful lot of them! I guess the problem is that when you start out with a new language, you know nothing, so anything you learn from that basis is estupendo. Then you begin to get into dangerous territory when you know a bit, and the enormity of the task you have before you begins to dawn. Resetting expectations the way you advise is a great help - I won’t need that vast array of verb forms in everyday chats, so forget 'em for now!
Muchas gracias de nuevo Aran,
Stu
1 Like
¡Hola a todos!
A quick whizz through Challenge 23 whilst walking in the hot sunshine was a great way to begin the day. There are no horrors in the lesson but there is some very useful revision throughout, especially at the end, that was much appreciated. This was a welcome confidence boost after I struggled through 22 and ahead of the final challenges, which are bound to be, well, challenging. Some really useful stuff here, such as nos vemos, más tarde and allí. With this latter, what is the difference between it and ahí please? Is it just that allí is “further away” than ahí, similar to the Welsh? Also, I had a good workout using para, which was very helpful in cementing its use, at least in the context of this lesson. I am still not 100% on when to use de and when para, but that will come with practice in real conversations no doubt, if I ever manage to get into some!
Almost at the end now - can I finish the Level by the end of the week?
Hasta pronto,
Stu
There’s a good set of answers here:
But a more important question+response (if you ask me) here from someone who grew up speaking Spanish but hadn’t previously realised that they were different:
[aka ‘Don’t worry!’…;-)]
1 Like
Muchas gracias Aran
Stu
1 Like
¡Hola a todos!
First run through Challenge 24 today whilst I was esperando a ir de compras en Solihull (is that right by any chance?). Boy was it a packed lesson; definite spinning head by the end, there was so much new stuff to take in. demasiado, lo más posible and lo más a menudo posible all very useful constructs. They are about all I can recall whilst writing this short post, but I know that there was more in the lesson (one being teniá that I really need to work with more to fully comprehend). The Challenge went well, but I was left feeling that I need a lot more exposure to the new stuff at the end. With 25 being a big revision-fest, I am not sure how much of this lesson it will cover, so I am going to do 24 again, in a break from my recent spate of doing lessons without repeating them, just to make myself feel better about the new material - it looks to be so useful.
Hasta pronto,
Stu