Comments (12)

(with apologies to James Carville)...

Hypersport, I agree with almost everything you said in your recent ¿Qué pasa? comment although my standards aren't quite as high as yours.  Like Cyberdiva, I am encouraged that the team is paying attention to what we have to say.  We all agree they have created some spectacular podcasts and it's because of their own standard of excellence that we are disappointed when a lesson is just 'pretty good' and not 'great.'  And I do hope you will have reason to change your opinion when your subscription is up for renewal.  Selfishly, I would miss your comments here and I'm betting I'm not the only one.

But I'd like to talk about something that you hinted at and that I've tiptoed around but have never fully addressed because I didn't want to offend anyone.  Okay, here goes:  I think lessons should always, without exception, be written in Spanish by one of the native speakers.  When they are composed in English and subsequently translated into Spanish by a native speaker, they lose the spontaneity of language and become mere academic exercises.  That's why some of the recent advanced lessons have been so uninteresting, linguistically speaking.  And conversely, that's why some of the newbie and elementary lessons are unexpected gems: they (sometimes) reflect authentic, colloquial Spanish, albeit in miniature.

I had the same feeling as you did, Hypersport, when I listened to the most recent advanced lesson, namely, that it didn't seem so advanced;  I wondered who had written it and in what language.  Did JP or Carmen write it in Spanish?  Did Carmen write it in English and then have one of the native speakers translate it into Spanish?  Or did Lili or Esti really write this uncharacteristically bland piece?  It is exactly the level and type of language we see in American textbooks and not the real deal that we are used to seeing and hearing here.

It's got to be hard to come up with topics for the advanced lessons and I understand that you can't hit it out of the park every single time.  But I think it's important to reiterate that advanced language level doesn't mean lofty language on lofty themes.  To me at least, it means naturally paced language, maybe some structural complexity, some colloquialisms that challenge or even defy translation.

Is it just me or is this really an issue?