Newbie - Are you ready yet?

This was my first "official" lesson. Great job! Thanks for explaining Espera/Espere. The CD I have been using has only introduced Espere for "Wait."

hello, i used the phrase "menos mal" with a native speaker from Spain and he asked me where i had learned it. he then said not to use it because it sounded strange. might anyone know where this phrase originated/is used?

I was also curious about woopsthere's "menos mal" question.  Does anyone have an answer to help us?

Gracias

Shep1582 and woopsthere

I am talking to Esty she is from Spain and she is telling me that two things might happened:

1. Maybe woopsthere used it in a wrong context.

2. That guy wasn't from Spain lol.

Menos mal is a phrase used in all Spanish speaking countries even Spain. Don't know why they told him this.

Menos mal can mean:

Just as well

Good thing...
It's a good thing...
Thank God...
Thank goodness...
I'm so glad...
So glad...

Great.  Makes sense to me.  Thanks Lili.

We are none of us familiar with every turn of phrase even surprisingly common ones. To be honest if someone who was learning english here started using terms like "word" "solid" and "booty  call"  I might well advise them that it sounds very odd in this neck of the woods. Doesnt make it "wrong" though.

I'm regularly surprised by jp saying "we dont say that in english" and i think, really? it must be just me then. (e.g. "and you?" or "its nothing")

however, i do talk funny, everyone says so.

I think were talking normal, correct english. I'm sure there are plenty of local colloquialisms and slang, even between towns in the same area.

Here in NH, you commonly hear:

Owzit goen? -----¿Cómo te va?

Gud ñu? ------- ¡Bien! ¿Y tú?

;)

Hey Russ,

Take 'er easy! ----- ¡Qué te vaya bien!

jajaja

Russ

My appologies, I may well have muddied the waters by  citing examples i felt we could all relate to.

Its purely a gut feeling but i dont imagine that "menos mal" is widely used in classical literature it seems to me to be  a construction like "none too shabby" where one invokes the opposite of ones intended meaning.  obviously there are perfectly servicable words for good so why say "less good "unless one wants to be "different"?

I was attempting to convey my belief that much of what comes to the student/traveller is opinion and not irrefutable fact and that consequently there is no "correct" spanish'. we all learn a unique blend of spanish, even if it is ones mother tongue.

I hoped to reassure woopsthere that the "¿where did you learn that?" conversation will happen a lot. but that it doesnt guarantee that what they have learned is wrong. simply inappropriate for ones current audience.

Here in the west country people say "where's it to?" instead of "where is it ?" I had no end of fun mocking the locals when i first moved here but now i say "where's it to?" without a second thought. Its not in any way incorrect. Millions of people round here speak "purficly prarper ainglish" including  judges politicians doctors etc.

However if you studied  "Inglés" here then moved 100 miles in any direction the locals would smile knowingly at your dubious grammar and quaint accent. 

it seems to me that an official "english as she is spoke" is something of a illusion and i suspect, the same holds true for spanish.

Anna8, I don't believe there is an accent on Que in "que te vaya bien".

Donperigo, there is a "General American" which is employed on television, but I've noticed even this is somewhat flexibile.  The reality is as you suspect, there is no official English.  No official regulatory body.  There's a general concensus on what is General American and it's most closely approximated by some small town in Iowa I believe, but nobody reeeally cares.  As long as we understand eachother, and have a good enough sense of humor to make fun of eachother and take a joke, then it's all good!

Gracias, thesmithtopher -- ¡claro que tienes razón!

Hola,

I am just really picky, and found some strange things in the excercise section. Multiple choice 1.: Ya vamos a ver. Both C and D have the "option" ya, however only one of them is correct.

The same feature with Listen and choice 1. B-C are eaqual. Both are marked as tiempo. Is there any reason or just misstyping?

Gracias,

beus

Hi, guys. I want to study Spanish very much. Help me please.

hi guys am learning spanish and i need help.

Hola a Todos,

    I think it was mentioned earlier, but not really answered. In the lesson  dialoge the actors pronuciation of todavia does not even remotely resemble Lili's slower pronunmciation or that of my native spanish speaking coworkers. So my quiestion is, is the pronunciation a regional pronunciation or is it just so quick my beginner ears aren't picking it up.

     Either way I'm not complaining, the sentence is still understandable when taking context into consideration. I'm just curious. Oh and I've been here for 5 days and me facsina Spanish Pod.

larrywa: Excellent question! In particular because I can answer it! ;) The Spanish "d" between two vowels is pronounced very softly, more like a "th" than an American "d". However, when Spanish speakers try to speak extra clearly, they probably tend to pronounce those "d"s harder than they usually would. Here are three newbie lessons where JP and Liliana explain the pronunciation of the "d":

A0102: Where is the restroom?

A0037: The baby is sleeping

A0008: How do you say ...?

(And in case anyone is wondering how I found these lessons, have a look here.)

nicely done marty

Gracious Marty,

 I'm sure that is probably it. I very often have difficulty picking up the differences in constonants while listening to spanish. I definately need practice.

For some reason I can't seem to download any audios but I can still listen to them from my browser.. is anyone else having the same problem?

Wintergreen,

you are using windows. xp, aren't you.

Apple quicktime hijacks the file type designation so that no matter what you do, it WILL play.

"No, no, no, you don't want to download a copy. I can play it for you, see." Complain to apple.

  I found that out by trying to change the file preferences.  Finally I went to the file system and renamed the quicktime program dir. I was then told gee sorry we can't play that type of file. and it would not download either.

I finally downloaded from a linux machine.

Cobre,

Me gusta mucho tu nuevo avatar: me enseñó una nueva palabra en chino.

铜 tóng = cobre

¡Genial!

martinillo, thanks for the list that was handy for sorting them out, looks like I will be abusing using it a lot.

spanishlearners: I'm happy that you like this list. Talking about sorting: you might have noticed that you can sort the list according to any of the columns by clicking the symbols in the top row of the table. That makes it even easier to find, for example, all lessons with pronounciation hints.

Nice, martinillo.

The PRAXIS MANAGEMENT should take note of the code when they get around to making  decent index catalogs for all the Praxis sites. They all would benefit. One major fix, five sites improve.

Saving downloads in Windows

Wintergreen,

I just discovered you can save the file that Quicktime is playing in the browser. If you click on the quicktime program player it will try to sell you a copy of it's "pro" version which will then allow you to save a copy of what you had already paid for.  That sounded a bit like extortion to me. However, you don't need to do that.

Click on the download file link of your choice. Once the program is playing in its own tab, go to the file menu of your browser and click on save page. That should let you keep a copy on your computer.

I've seen the use of " Relajate" in subtitles for relax, calm down

I have a question,

Ya estás lista?

what's the perfect sentence?

is it "Ya estás tú lista"?

So ewong, that could mean that if one was really angry to begin with, they could come down to a rela-hot-ively cooler state.

&

I think the perfect sentence for somebody found guilty of bad Spanish, would be a year of genial labor on spanishPod.

krisyouxi21cn

Ya estás lista? is the correct way to say it.

Cobre

I agree with you.

I mean that..

¿Ya estás lista? ( Are you ready yet?)

If I want to ask sombody whether is ready or not, where is the position for the person?

eg.

Is Mary ready yet?

¿Ya está Mary lista?

or

¿Ya Mary está lista?

martinillo can't wait till we get German Pod, with you on our side.

The problem with these sites is that I can't get enough from any, good atmosphere, friends, Very good friends that even sort things for you electronically, honestly there is no excuse to learn another language, at least how to say hello and hi, what is your name, etc is better than : "Do you speak english?" which i suffered from when I went to Barcelona, at least now I can ask for my Bags in spanish (lost them in the airport when arriving), a thing looking back is not that hard if you know just few words. I can even ask for help, food, menu, etc with broken spanish but still far better than nothing, which is a shame in the new internet world.

I'd just like to say how glad I am that I found this site. I've tried two lessons so far, and both have been "muy bien". I've practiced Spanish for well over a year now, though with a few breaks, and I thought I needed a way to learn that was more fun, so that I don't get fed up so much. And it looks like I've found it! I will at least subscribe for a month, and see if this is really THE thing for me. :)

I have not used this site yet, just found it today and set up the trial.

Any hints anybody to make it easier to use?

Many thanks

Geoff

in a nutshell, simply pick  a lesson, listen, laugh  and learn. then post some feedback ask questions  check out the various groups, meet new and interesting people, practice your written spanish, rinse and repeat every day. you cant go wrong. 

as well as listening to lessons ive downloaded on my mp3 player, i go to straight to the community page conversations list and follow any threads that have changed since i was last on though the site offers so many tools and options, you need to play and find what works for you 

try the intro link in the footer menu or just ask if you want to know anything specific

Hola. En los exercicios 2 y 3, la primera pregunta de cada uno tiene dos veces la misma respuesta (hay que ver porque no puedo explicar mejor que asi) en las opciones de respuestas. ¿Un bug o seria que no tengo mis aneojos? Marco

Otra vez pienso que seria muy muy util tener en el pdf todas las expresiones que estan en la expansion, y si hay diferencias entre memberships, bueno, technicalmente se podria hacer dos pdf, quizas. Todas las expresiones que encuentro en las lecciones son fenomenalmente utiles. Lo que hago es que salvo el pdf en mi Iphone y cuando estoy en una reunion de familia muy aborrada, miro el pdf diciendo que estoy mirando mi email profesional. Asi que tomo riesgos :-) Tambien seria bien una integracion de las expresiones en la applicacion Spanishpod para Iphone. Es mi sueño para Navidad, jaja :-) En cuanto al dialoguo aqui, super. Un buen finde a todoOooOooooOOos. Marco

I thought that tranquila was a command.  But the lesson explained it as an adjective following masculine and feminine forms.  Doesn't it come from the verb tranquilar? Isn't the man in the dialogue trying to calm the woman down?

que casualidad, es en la lección de hoy también

Thanks!  Makes sense to me.  :)

I am going through the free lessons one by one first.  After I finish all of the free lessons I will sign up.  I am learning everyday.  Since this is the 2nd lesson in numerical order, I have a way to go.  Thanks guys, I will be a new subscriber soon!

¡Yo listo aprendar español! Aprendo un poco antes ¡Pero nada útil como este!

¡Doy la bienvenida a sus correcciones y ayuda con mi español!

jeje, a bit of Spanish alliteration in "Tranquila, todavía tenomos tiempo"

I wonder if you also commonly hear this:

"Tranquila, todavía tenomos Tequila"

One thing that makes Spanish easier to learn for an English speaker is cognates, such as momento in this lesson. Additionally, there are cognates from the other Romance languages. I could be wrong, but this lessons "ayudarme" in the expansion reminds me of "aidez-moi" from French. Even if it isn't, it makes it easier for me to remember.

In the last expansion sentence:

"Esta zona es muy tranquila"

...I'm not picking up on the "Es" at the start. Is it there and I'm not picking it up?....or is it deliberately dropped, and if so why?

Interesting that to wait is "esperar" but then we have "esperanza" is to hope. Can't help but feel there's a connection there. After all, we wait in hope.

I've read the whole discussion above, and just a couple of things I wasn't clear on:

JP's explanation of not necessarily female gender here:

http://spanishpod.com/lessons/are-you-ready-yet?page=2#comment-803

was superb but I wasn't sure what he meant by:

"grammatical gender exists to help you keep track of things in sentence"

...I guess that if there is an assigned gender to something then anything else in the sentence that has gender will make it easier to know what refers to what. Is that what he meant? For example, in English if you were talking about a ship and then later said, something like "she's a beauty"...we know that ships are referred to in the feminine and thus this "she" would be clearly indicating the ship...that is it may help clarify it where there may have some uncertainty as to who/what she was referring to.

Secondly, I liked the poddies explanation of tranquilo/a being an adjective not a verb even though it was being used in a command, but just below that I wasn't entirely clear what Yenny was saying with her definitions:

tranquilar:

1. tr. Señalar con dos rayas cada una de las partidas de cargo y data de un libro de comercio, hasta donde iguala la cuenta.

tranquilizar:

1. tr. Poner tranquilo, sosegar a alguien o algo. U. t. c. prnl.

It was so cool to read donperigo's comment above [http://spanishpod.com/lessons/are-you-ready-yet#comment-5717]:

"I'm regularly surprised by jp saying "we dont say that in english" and i think, really?"

..because, I have made a similar observation myself before, though not specifically in relation to jp, and thought it was just me.

lool this lesson was made for me!