My pathetic spanish skills have been getting worked this week

flavio

flavio

Banned
I'm doing a little construction work with a neighbor until I find my next IT job. He's a general contractor and he had me and these two other guys working on this house since Monday. One is from somewhere near Mazatlkan, Mexico and has been in California for 7 years. He speaks English pretty well and there's only an occasional misunderstanding.

The other guy is from Guadalajara and here on a 1 month working vacation. I think he knows about 10 English words. So today the guy from Guadalajara and me were by ourselves working for the whole day. The other guy and my neighbor were at another job.

I took 4 semesters of spanish in college, got mostly B's and still somehow never learned to speak the language worth a damn. I had to dig deep today though because otherwise we would have been communicating through improvised sign language all day (well, we still had to use that too).

If I had been in this type of situation on a regular basis while I was taking the classes I would be fluent now.
 
Lived with a spanish chick for a month a while ago.. she could speak sufficient french but spanish is just so much more fun. :cool: Knowing Spanish means you get to seduce other spanish chicks with your cute spanish accent at parties & stuff.. :)
 
Isn't it weird about the courtesy that resident people have?

If some english-speaking person comes here, we make the effort of trying to speak to him in english.

And if a mexican goes over there you make the effort of speaking spanish.

Cheers flavio
 
Heh any American comes over here I make the effort to let him know he better learn some French or else he ain't gonna get very far... :p
 
The problem I always had understanding spanish is that people usually speak way too fast for me to catch many of the words. I always did fairly well at reading spanish.

Well, I'm off to work again.

yo
tu
el
ella
nosotros
usted


Hey, do you live anywhere near where these guys are from Louis?
 
Best way to learn a language is to go and live in the country, preferably where no-one speaks english.
 
Whether there are english-speakers there or not, doesn't mean you have to talk to them and even if you talk to them, doesn't mean you have to talk to them in English..
 
People that know more than one language, or at least make the effort to learn, are so incredibly awesome. Like on boards like this you will get Swedish people posting in English. It's not like English was their first language, they made the effort to learn it. I respect that.

And I suppose you speak french A13? See now that is freaking cool :beerbang:
 
flavio, Guadalajara would be considered as near, is about 4 hours from here, but Mazatlan is definitely far away. :D
 
I speak enough French to find my way around, but not enough to hold a conversation beyond the basics and I start my 4th year of Spanish in a month but I still find it very hard to keep up with a complex conversation, it's much easier to read and write it.
 
Luis G said:
flavio, Guadalajara would be considered as near, is about 4 hours from here, but Mazatlan is definitely far away. :D
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I thought he meant Mazatlan by Cancun (with the ruins) at first but It's a town on the pacific about on the same level as Cabo San Lucas except on the mainland. I found out today the guy from Guadalajara came up to Oakland by bus.....damn that's a long bus ride.
 
Talking about long bus rides, the father of my girl traveled all the way from Morelia to Maine by bus........ :eek:
 
I took three years of Spanish in high school and two semesters in college. Problem is like you said, it's all vocabulary and conjugation of verbs. I couldn't carry on a real conversation, just use certain words and phrases here and there. With the sentence structure being different also, me speaking it always came out wrong.

I've used it in hospitals when a translator wasn't available, on the ambulance, and in a store I worked at. Besides that, I hardly have reason to so I've forgotten so much of it.
 
My late aunt was a French teacher at the school level. My father speaks some french, and I've forgotten quite a bit of the French I once was fluent in because of disuse. I speak some Spanish, but, as anyone can tell, I've never had any classroom instruction. Same for my slight bit of Korean and my abysmal German. I've also picked up a few words in Japanese, but a guy could get hurt saying "ohio gozaimas" with the wrong inflection, so I stay pretty far from speaking.
 
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