Newbie - Pencil Sharpener

nice work chaps. I hadnt noticed the as ending rule either

 odd how a pencil is a lapiz. presumably this is from the latin for stone but why? with what stones were the spanish-romans writing? chalk perhaps? i wood have expected a charcoal derived word

Great job, Leo.

Great observation on the compound words, JP

Lapis, latin for stone...

I had this vision of the Romans using natural graphite but this article says that natural graphite wasn't discovered (or at least documented) until 1564 in England.

Historia del lápiz

En 1564 una fuerte tormenta derribo unos árboles cerca del poblado de Borrowdale en Inglaterra, dejando al  descubierto una sustancia negra, de aspecto mineral, desconocida hasta entonces. Era una veta de grafito natural o plombagina "plomo negro", como se le denominó entonces por tener el mismo color gris oscuro que el plomo. Los pastores de los alrededores comenzaron a usar pedazos de este material para marcar sus ovejas, al tiempo que otros habitantes con visión comercial comenzaron a partirlo en forma de bastoncillos, que luego vendían en Londres bajo el nombre de "piedras de marcar". Estos bastoncillos presentaban dos grandes inconvenientes, se rompían con facilidad y manchaban las manos y todo lo que tocaban. Al principio, el problema de la suciedad ser resolvió enrollando un cordón a lo largo del bastoncillo de grafito, para ir quitándolo a medida que se gastaba, más tarde comenzaron a usarse unos primitos portaminas hechos de  trozos de madera con una oquedad en la que se insertaba la barra de grafito. A mediados del siglo XVIII, el grafito se usaba también para la fundición de cañones, por lo que se convirtió en un mineral estratégico, de manera que robar un trozo de este mineral podía llegar a castigarse incluso con la pena de muerte. La escasez de grafito en el resto de Europa obligó a buscar soluciones alternativas a la fabricación de lápices. En 1760,  el químico (en sus ratos libres) Kaspar Faber, artesano de Bavierar, mezcló el grafito con polvo de azufre, antimonio y resinas, hasta obtener una masa que, moldeada en forma de una vara delgada y tras ser horneada, se conservaba más firme que el grafito puro. Más tarde, se fue mejorando la calidad de estas barritas de grafito al incorporarle otras sustancias como el azufre y la arcilla. Esta última fue  añadida al grafito en 1795 por Nicolás Jacques  Conté, químico, ingeniero, militar y pintor francés que descubrió la plombagina artificial una mezcla de grafito y arcilla que usó para la fabricación de lápices por encargo de Napoleón Bonaparte, dada la escasez que había de ellos a causa de la guerra con Inglaterra. Añadiendo las cantidades adecuadas de arcilla a la mezcla, pudo modificar el grado de dureza de estas minas. Así, cuanto más grafito se utilice más blando y oscuro es el trazo del lápiz. La invención del lápiz también se atribuye a Josef Hardtmuth, un austriaco inventor de un lápiz hecho a base de una mezcla de arcilla y polvo de grafito con la que fabricaba unas barritas que posteriormente cocía y sumergía en un baño de cera que recubría la mina permitiendo que el grafito dejara rastro en el papel. En 1792 Hardtmuth fundó su propia empresa en Viena. En 1812 William Monroe, un ebanista de Concord (Massachussets), fabricó una máquina que producía tablillas semicilíndricas de madera de cedro, de 16 a 18 centímetros de longitud. A lo largo de las mismas el aparato marcaba estrías en el centro del delgado semicilindro. Monroe unía con cola las dos partes de madera, pegándolas en torno una mina hecha con una mezcla de grafito y arcilla. Así fue como nació el lápiz tal y como lo conocemos en la actualidad.

The question of the day is:

¿Qué usas mas pluma o lapiz?

What do you use more often a pen or a pencil?

Yo uso pluma, me gusta mas la de tinta negra.

I use pen, I prefer the black one.

stones or feathers?

es interesante que un lapiz, pueda hacer una marca mas ligero que una pluma.

its interesting that a pencil can make a mark lighter than a feather

Ahora, se puede escribir, con fluidez, las palabras que antes eran escribido en piedra

now one can write fluidly words that previously were written in stone

Donperigo

Ahora, se puede escribir, con fluidez, las palabras que antes eran escribido escritas en piedra.

thanks lilliana,

 what do you think of your stand ins performance?

I was surprised to hear the word "dejas" used. 

Could you also use prestar here?  "¿Me prestas tu lápiz? 

I've had someone ask me for a sheet of paper using something like "Me regalas una hoja".  Would it sound weird to say "Me regalas un lápiz?

Also, what about dar or tener?  Me puedes dar un lápiz or Puedo tener un lápiz? 

Gracias Missworldtraveler!

I was a bit nervous I have to say. It's not like the other shows. You have to sound grammatically intelectual in which I'm not very strong.

Cheers!

leo

¡no lo sudes! tú molaste :-)

dont sweat it, you rocked.

You're a natural, Leo.  I'm proud of you.

Leo

Hiciese muy bien.

Lili

Espero que sientas mejor.

Steve

Muchas gracias, ya estoy bien.

Saludos

Thanks JP and Stevestr! The real natural one here are JP and Liliana. They have done more than 350 lessons already. For them is now like taking a shower, they really make it look so easy.

Yo uso lapiz, me gusta B2.

Leo muy bien, very well done for a first timer, no ooo, ah, I I I , which shows good comand of the situation,Lili better watch out.

Lili hope you get better soon.

Hello everybody. I use a pencil for taking notes on my pdf version of the lessons. At work though I usually use a pen when taking notes or I write directly on the computer.

I noticed in the vocabulary and expansion portions that the "z" at the end of the word "lapiz" is hardly heard. I heard more "lapi" than "lapis". Am I correct?

suz333

Spanish speakers from Spain they hardly pronounce the letter Z, Latin American people they pronounce it more like and S. LAPIS.

yo quiero usar el lapiz cuando estudiendo epañol

en frente de computadora.escribo las palablas

nuevo que no las sabo.

khin

sabo? quizas quiera decir Sé

Como hispanohablante debo decir que no tenía ni idea que en otros paises usaban "dejar" con el sentido de "prestar".

Yo uso prestar y si es una situación muy formal, uso "facilitar".

Genial, las variaciones son infinitas jej

Hi Lili

I found your correction here very interesting:

"Ahora, se puede escribir, con fluidez, las palabras

que antes eran escribido escritas en piedra"

I have been reading up on the use of "the passive voice" using a great little book called "The Ultimate Spanish Verb Review and Practice". Chapter 15.

I was comfortable with expressions such as:

"Las puertas fueron abiertas"

The doors were opened [ doesn't say by whom, hence use of passive - the true passive in this case ].

It then went on to talk about something I hadn't known before:

"Las puertas ESTABAN ABIERTAS"

The doors were open

They said that using estar and the past participle focuses on the RESULT of the action

It also said that if we use "estar" that we cannot then use an agent phrase with "por" after it.

I'd recommend this book to anyone. I do one page a day and hope to finish the book in a year. It contains brief but good grammar notes and tons of exercises with all answers given [ no me gusta los libros que only have odd numbered answers !! ]

Cheers

Dave

Dave12345678

do you mean interesting because lili didn't change the ser as well as my dodgy participle? i.e. do you prefer estar for the sentence in question? or is it that you prefer fueron to eran (i know i do)? 

 I cant honestly say i intended to exploit  the ambiguity between written, the past tense of writing and written, the completed action although  now you mention it i think it works better focussing on the action (ser).

Id intended a fluidly/with fluids pun (perhaps i should have used fluido) and this would resonate better with the action of writing

thanks for the interesting grammar tip, I shall endeavour to make use of it soon although too much clarity leaves less room for puns. :-(

Hi Donperigo

Actually the reason I found it interesting [ which I forgot to put in ] was that I'd just been reading about the use of estar+past particple yesterday morning. I open up this lesson, and there it was !!

I've looked through a lot of grammar books regarding the passive voice, but this was the first time I had found anything about the use of estar.

Bye the way, your posts are always very interesting.

I cut and paste all the grammar comments into a word document each day, which I use as a study tool to refresh my memory.

Cheers

Dave

dave128

now theres a clever idea i wish id thought of that last year. if you could occasionally dump a copy in the grammar guide as a coment it would be hugely beneficial to future users. I keep meaning to trawl all the old conversations for illluminating grammar conversation but then i remind myself that there are people getting paid to do that sort of thing in shanghai.

thanks for the kind words, Im afraid I cant see your estar + past participle passive voice example anywhere though. perhaps your coincidence is an illusion :-)

When I was at school I was terrible at grammar and loathed having anything to do with it.

A while ago, I came across two books that actually make it fun!! I would recommend them to all of us beginners.

The first one is called "Laugh 'n" Learn Spanish" by Lynn Johnston and Brenda Wegmann. This is a very clever book that uses cartoons from the famous "For Better or Worse" series. There are 80 cartoons, all in Spanish. Translations are provided for each. The grammar starts off with the simple present tense and gradually and gently goes all the way up to the imperfect subjunctive. It has really helped me "enjoy" [ for want of a better word ] spanish grammar. The book is very cheap and can be obtained from Amazon etc very cheaply.

The next one is my favorite:

"Correct Your Spanish Blunders" [ I have to correct mine all day !! ]. This is a compact little book that gives common grammatical corrections for everything from articles to prepositions. Well worth having.

I can speak a little Spanish, but my grammar has always been very poor. Over the last few months, by using these books, it has slowly been improving.

Cheers

Dave

Dave

I found it very interesting what JP said about many of the compound nouns having feminine endings with a masculine definite article [ el ].

Did a bit of research and found this explanation in a book [ "Laugh 'n' Learn Spanish p.150 ]:

"En el lavaplatos ... in the dishwasher.....these words are usually masculine since el aparato [ the apparatus] is understood "

Don't know if that's the correct reason, but it sounds fair enough.

Cheers

Dave