anna8 - It's the Spanish, stupid!

Hypersport: I've been thinking about the renewal issue. JP said we would see more changes in the fall. Reading between the lines, this could actually translate as: don't renew your subscription beyond this fall. I have to renew in September and I'll probably renew month by month for a while until I'm sure to know what's going to happen.

Anna8: I don't think that the problem is due to a translation from English to Spanish and I also don't think that the problem is limited to the most recent advanced lessons. In fact, I think that most of the lessons about a biographic or encyclopedic text are rather dry. Writing exciting, interesting, funny articles just isn't easy. (Listeners of "SSL4YOU" and "Spanishpodcast" probably know what I'm talking about. These podcasts are good, but they are neither exciting nor very funny.) My suggestions for the SpanishPod team would be:

• Instead of writing an encyclopedic article about a topic, have a short spontaneous conversation about the same topic (you may use notes if you want to include some facts ;); write a transcript of this conversation, and then (in a second recording session) comment on the language that you used in it. The conversation would be similar to the one in the Del Taco al Tango show about tequila but you would have to keep it a lot shorter in order to keep it manageable.
  
• Don't disguise encyclopedic articles as dialogues. In my opinion that doesn't work well. Again: recording a spontaneous dialogue, writing a transcript of it and commenting this transcript would probably work much better. And finally:
  
• More lessons about tales! You promised! ;)
  

Anna8, Hypersport, ... and all the rest of the active community here.

I don't get out that much, so most of my exposure to Spanish is right here.  This is my feedback loop and I appreciate all the help I have received from the user community as well as those on the team.

From what I have heard here and on Chinesepod, the entire crew is pretty multi-talented and expected to wear lots of hats. Jenny doing a lot of php programing for example in addition to being "the voice" and Ken's foil (lucky Ken). I was quite astounded by the pace that our team was putting out lessons at (vs some other organizations doing one a week) and then adding the Taco al Tango and then cooking with Tabasco on top of that.  This all from mainly 4 people who also are working on Chinese and other projects as well as keeping the blogs clean.

I agree the native speakers should be writing or at least rewriting the dialogs. 

As far as advanced lessons are concerned, I would suggest a media review.  Grab an interesting paragraph from any native source and with proper credit given to the source, pick it apart. There should be no copyright problem because it would definitely be fair use.  Indeed, it should funnel new readers/ listeners to the subject's feed.

The review process would also work for science and liturature. JP or an intern would be the perfect host.  Hey Lilly/Esti/Leo/Carlos what the heck did they mean here?

It could be a fast short lesson, with dangling problems like bait waiting for user input. That is the nature of advanced, end with please post your questions/comments to the lesson forum. Let us tear it apart and identify our confusion with the "in the wild" usage and make the response a new lesson, or put it in pa' que sepas. You cannot possibly guess all the things we can trip over but you can help us get back up.

Something that Praxis might consider, is awarding "emmeritus" status to advanced members of the various communities who have paid their dues, become proficient and continue to contribute to the forums.  Supporting a helpful online community is one thing that can help the bottom line.  The few users that actually post end up as proxies for the rest, our confusion, is your barometer.  Having knowlegable more advanced students that are willing to help new arrivals is definitely something that makes this place a great place to study.

I supect that translations from the english are often easier to understand as the subject verb object convention,  keeps the concepts where we (english speakers) expect them to be and that genuine DDD spanish is a whole other thing. I would suggest that they both have their place in learning the language.

Love the emeritus status idea, it would be a loss to the "community" were the trustys to be allowed to escape leaving us intermediates  bereft of their support. its a prize and a privilege all in one.

truth be told i  havent bothered with the advanced lessons much to date so im speaking from a position of ignorance here, but i sorta get the idea and have recently had a similar conversation with my spanish conversation teacher. If i really wanted to know the ins and outs of the lives of Dalí or Gaudí id be listening to ArtHistoryPod. Inevitably the lesson fails to cover the the subject in sufficient depth to be historically worthwhile but ends up using obscure and rarefied literary terms that you will almost certainly never hear in normal conversation. Were you foolish enough to start a conversation  with a native speaker on a subject you know very little about you would crash and burn or bore them to tears.  I think it far more likely that i could have a conversation about what i thought about "Eeeron man" or the new blackberry phone or how the tourists have ruined the costas.  Popular culture, technology and current affairs rather than high art and history. I suspect that the advanced user has long since moved past a need for explanations of the grammar,and is more interested in  getting to grips with rambling overexcited conversation peppered with colloquialisms contractions and slang.

the problem with this approach to advanced spanish is that  it becomes very regional and there are a lot of regions de español. poor esti always causes unrest when she fills a lesson with the present perfect because thats what they do this side of the pond. you cant please all of the people all of the time

Guys

Thanks for all the feedback. Here are my comments.

Carmen wrote four lessons in total. Jp has written one "Breakfast at the hotel". All the rest are lesson written mostly by me and Esti.

Martinillo and donperigo I understand you don't like the bio ones, but there is a lot of people that enjoys them. What I will do is balance them out.

I want to make something very clear, we are writing more upper intermidiate and advanced. I already talked to the academic team about it and they agree. I will also try to focus  more on current events that you can be able to talk to people about.

Guys also the lessons they have levels of difficulty, sometimes we have a more simple advance, a middle advance, or a very advance lesson. We have over 55,000 users in SPOD and the mayority don't comment on the site, but use the service. So it can be very difficult to please everyone. We do listen to our most active users as yourselfs. So if u have lessons ideas, please send them to me on a private message, we need fresh ideas. A lot of lessons we make are requests, sometimes this is why they are very specific to a topic.

I am open for suggestions! big beso a todos!

Anna8...thank you.  You too are a huge benefit to all here at this cool place that we have come to love, this big house where our friends share the same passion for Spanish, it really is something special, and I continue to tell anyone interested to have a look. 

Martinillo, Cobre, donperigo, wow!  Anna8 made a great point and you guys really added some good stuff.  Really good ideas.

The nice thing is we know that the team will look at this thread and consider it as Lili has already commented.  Thanks Lili.

Lilli

thankyou for the reply,  and the beso X

55,000 users, gwow

There are a lot of people that enjoy them :-) :-)

trying to find a balance that is all things to all men is nigh on impossible and you do a very good job. the truth is,  I have impressed fellow students and teachers with the spanish i have learnt here to date. even something as simple as "huele bien" has been a point of discussion.

I can see that current events lessons pose a problem in that they date quickly, who wants to listen to last weeks news and you are trying to build a body of work not just disposable, listen once, shows.

In all honesty, Im unlikely to talk to anyone in the wild because my spoken spanish isnt good enough and im far too reserved but i can imagine that one day i might be proficient/drunk enough to strike up a conversation with a native speaker so i can understand the desire for more "real" spanish. Perhaps you could take a microphone to carmens leaving do.

Personally, I should really concentrate on learning how to understand tour guides. oddly enough, I am actually quite interested in art history

Here is my 2 cents worth,

I live in a Spanish speaking country and let me tell you that if you are at an advanced level you wont know what these guys are talking about amungst each other. They do however understand 99% of the spanish in spanish pod and if you talk to them with what you have learnt in Spanishpod then they can teach you dialect. The vocabulary taught in Spanishpod from my experience is very useful and my friends and colleagues here find it interesting about what different words are used in different areas.

So from my experience, anna8, I don't believe you need to concern yourself whether or not the dialect is 100% authentic Spanish, but yes a bit more colour is fun. I personally pay more attention to the commentary of Esti and Lili as a lot of what they are saying is straight off the bat. Esti is quite a character.

Excuse my english if it dose not make sense as I am in the twilight zone between two languages.

Anyway great job so far Spanishpod team, but like anyware there is always ways to improve.

Donperigo I am sure you under estimating yourself go book yourself a ticket to Colombia, or Argentina if you want to hear a classic spanish accent that sounds a bit drunk anyway. Oye vos te gusta poshzo (pollo).

Okay I most get back to work..........

Chao a todacitas.

vencafe

Thanks for the vote of confidence. If my spanish reads as well as your english I will be happy. I am planning to make a trip to spain in a few weeks (my father in law tells me that they dont have any vegetables in Argentina) However other than buying train tickets and checking in/out, I will almost certainly just observe. I know me, chicken is right.

donperigo: some ideas for you to get in touch with people:

- ask for the time (even if you know it, but don't show your watch ;)

- ask for the way (even if you know it)

- eat in a restaurant and ask for something that is not on the menu

- eat in a restaurant and order a menu del día (that might be quite challenging if they don't have a vegetarian choice)

- go to a pastelería, buy something (I recommend: galletas de manteca) and ask for the recipe

- in a train or bus comment on the weather or the landscape

I guess you get the idea. If you "plan" these conversations, i.e., if you memorize your first sentence beforehand, it's a lot easier. You will see that the most difficult part is sometimes to get out of a conversation again! :)

DonPerigo: I discovered this website where you can speak via skype with native speakers. Its a way to get out "into the wild" from the comfort of your own computer. 

Thanks, everyone, for chiming in with your thoughts, and thanks especially to Liliana for listening and replying so graciously.  Cobre, Martinillo, Donperigo -- great ideas!  Yes Hypersport, this  is a cool place, isn't it.  Kikuyu, I agree, that website is nice and the Guatemalan teachers know their stuff.

Vencafe, your perspective is really helpful.  Thanks!

Let me clarify a little:  when I talk about idiomatic Spanish, I don't mean Spanish chockful of colorful slang and strongly regional idioms, even though these things are often fun to hear.  As donperigo and others have pointed out before, we would sound pretty silly trying to use most of them even if we actually managed to use them correctly.  (It's different if, like Hypersport, you're immersed in an environment to the extent that you become part of the group: then it's natural to blend linguistically with the group, if you choose to.  )  

It's true that we all speak a dialect but it's also true that some dialects are more generalizable than others.  As in English, in Spanish, once you pick your continent, you can express yourself in a clear, educated fashion that almost any speaker, native or non-, will readily understand.  That's the kind of Spanish I hope to hear on SPOD most of the time.   I love the chance to hear strongly regional dialects now and then, but I see that as a little extra, not the main course.

Let me give you some examples of language from recent dialogues that capture the SPOD essence, or at least as I see it:

From Una Manta con Mangas:  ¡Qué mal! Se cae todo el rato, me entra frío por el cuello, y la mano del mando se me está quedando helada de tanto sacarla para cambiar de canal.

From Hiccup:  Ay, no se me quita con nada.

From Minibar:  Es carísimo, quédate con sed.

From Tailor-made:  Se nota, te queda perfecto.

From What's done is done:  ...me siento fatal, le tenía que haber cedido el asiento.

And now and then an expression like this one from Nosy:  ¿Y a ti quién te ha dado vela en este entierro?

I like to hear examples of 'super' verbs like quedar and echar and verbs like seguir used as modals, just to cite a few examples.  And when those examples are supported by the discussion on the podcast of by the Expansion sentences, or Audio Review, so much the better.

Does that make sense?

Sí, los verbos como:

dar, quedar, llevar, poner, & echar tienen muchisimos sentidos.