¡Muchas Gracias! y bienvenido Santiago!

Jeff

Thanks for the advice. I'll try it myself. Lord knows I need the training in listening skills. Gracias otra vez.

J.P. ¡De Nada!

I know what you mean. Going from elementary to intermediate has somewhat stalled my advancement. I feel like I attempted to leap across the Grand Canyon. I discovered my listening skills are truly lacking in Spanish thus far. Now, I just listen to the newbie and the elementary lessons over and over each day.  Maybe one day I will be able to advance to intermediate and actually get something from them. I don’t blame Spanishpod, not at all. But, I do feel a lesson group between elementary and intermediate would be a great idea. Maybe it needs to be suggested on user voice.  http://spanishpod.uservoice.com/pages/general

Jeff

Thanks for the transcript. :)

Jeff

Great job on the explanations. please know your efforts are appreciated

Jeff.

The use of “Yo fumaba.” For “I used to smoke.”

The usage of the preterite and the imperfect is one of the most difficult aspects of Spanish for an English-speaker. Essentially, both the preterite and the imperfect are past tenses, much as the way "he did" and "he was doing" both express past action in English. The deciding factor between the two tenses is a characteristic of verbs not frequently talked about in English: aspect.

Every action has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When one wishes to focus on the middle of an action, the action is on-going, that is, nothing changes radically (which is not to say that nothing happens). For example, "he was eating" indicates the "middle" of the action of eating in the past. We don't know when he started to eat or when he finished (or even if he finished). We just know that at a certain time in the past, he was in the middle of eating. This focus on the middle of an action is called the imperfective aspect. Not surprisingly, it is associated with the imperfect tense in Spanish, for example:

In each case, there is no notion that the action began or ended, only that at some point it was on-going. Notice, however, that English has three different, common ways to indicate the imperfect: the past progressive ("was speaking") to show that a single action continued, the "used to" construction to show that a series of separate actions continued, and the simple past, used particularly with verbs that show state of mind or body ("was," "thought," etc.) as ongoing in the past. (www.trinity.edu)

Jeff

How do you say "I used to smoke" in Spanish? Like "Habitúo fumar"?

Gracias, Jeff

Si, jajaja

Jeff

Oye chicos y chicas...... Buena idea en la "uservoice" opción. Entiendo como con alguna empresa, se debe hacer decisiónes basado en la exigencia del cliente. Capaz de hacer votación sobre sugerencias está una gran idea para dar retroalimentación de qué la mayoría inmensa quieren y nesicitan de su servicio. Mejora y evolución son ciertamente una técnica de supervivencia en alguna empresa, sin embargo, ustedes proporcionan servicio destacado como está.

jgrob

Ufffffff, si. Soy un trabajador por turnos (shift worker). Trabajo una semama de noche y una semama de día. En forma rotativa. Nunca me duermo bien. ¡Ambien! ¡Es la pastilla del cielo! :)

jgrob

Jajaja

Ughhhh! JP, the media storm is rising. I want to believe in you. But, I just don’t know, now! The police, JP………… they suspect you!.

jgrob

Thanks, ………… this morning I kept trying it make sense of it in the way it was translated in the lesson, and I just couldn’t. I admit that the reflexive just kills me, though. So I imagined I was missing something.

Of course my other answer for not understanding was, I imagined I was not simply “going crazy” but I had actually “arrived there.” Jajaja.

Thanks again,

Jeff (jgrob)

A Question:

Hola todos, ¿cómo estan?

After thinking about the following sentence all morning, I have become more confused. In the last sentence of the expansion section (¿Se te olvidó y lo dejaste plantado?) the translation for the sentence into English is stated as (Did he forget and ditch you?)

Yet the literal translation is “Himself  to you  he forgot  and  he  you left  planted.”  Where the verb dejar is conjugated into the second person (informal) of the past perfect tense. Which seems to suggest that the person being spoken to in this sentence is the one that actually performed the “forgetting” and the “standing up.” Which would suggest the translation is “Did you forget him and stand him up?” What am I missing here?

Thanks, Jeff

Dejar plantado(a):

de·jar plan·ta·do(a)  Verb

1.       to stand up, let down, run out on, walk out on, jilt, leave in the lurch; Synonyms: dar poste a, dejar burlado, dejar esperando, plantar, dar plancha a, dar un plantón a, tirar la plancha a, tirar plancha a

In the example (¿Se te olvidó y lo dejaste plantado?) from the last sentence in the expansion section, the verb “dejar” is conjugated into the Pretérito perfecto simple - past perfect simple tense of the inductive mood.

Otros ejemplos: You have stood me up other times! (¡Me has dejado plantado otras veces!). Where dejar is in the Pretérito perfecto compuesto - past perfect compound tense of the inductive mood.

¡La franqueza es mucho mejor!

Jeff

SSSS  AAAA  FFFF EEEE TTTT YYYY!

Now I realize my problem, I’m a product of the 80’s “cheese.” :)

“Cause if friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance then they……… nobody will.”

Chuckle, what he @*%& was he saying?

Jeff