Newbie - You first

Some of the best food I ever had was in Chile. Everything was fresh and had wonderful flavor. It was also one of the most wonderful countries I've ever been to. Great people y vistas muy lindas.

Me gustó mucho !!

Dave

jimmy2

 pero beans on toast? seguramente les encanta los frijoles sobre tostadas. o banjos huevos o ricardo con granos o escones con nata y mermelada de fresas

lillianamata

cuando como con los carnívoros suelo comer un tipo de quiche o empanada con varias vegetales asados y salsa de bisto. pero, si fueras visitarme  te cocinaria algo muy rica ;-)

pues todos los demás eran haciendolo piensé que debo también

(con correcciones)

Lili,

Los ingleses comen mucha comida de otros países pero sí tenemos una verdadera comida inglesa y cada región tiene su propia especialidad, por ejemplo tenemos "pasties" de Cornwall, "hotpot" de Lancashire, "Yorkshire pudding" de Yorkshire. De Somerset vienen unas buenas sidras y en la zona mía tenemos un pastel hecho con manzanas.

Por desgracia a mis amigos españoles no les gusta la comida inglesa!! Les hice probar "pickled eggs" (huevos duros en vinagre) y "fish & chips" también y no les gustan. Increíble!

I won't even begin to describe the delights of eating the Scottish national dish - "El Haggis" !!

My wife is American and simply did not believe it when I told her what was in it and how it was prepared.

http://www.scottishrecipes.co.uk/haggis2.htm

Hmm ……… I can just taste it now………. Perhaps a nice ’73 Napa Valley Chardonay to go with it.

There are those who bring shame by selling it deep fried. Probably the same people who brought us the artery-clogging delights of the “Fried Mars-Bar”

http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4ADBS_enUS249US249&q=fried+Mars+bar&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=5Se1SpSlDM6F8Qa_gsiTDw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1

Dave

Después de todo el eso, aquí tenemos la buena materia:

http://www.rampantscotland.com/recipes/blrecipe_index.htm

http://www.scotland.org/about/entertainment-and-sport/features/culture/scotlands-natural-larder.html

http://www.cellaranstruther.co.uk/menus.html

I know that you all would be torn between deciding from the menu above or having the haggis/deep fried mars-bar combo……

Pero recuerde, no matter what you have, it must be washed down with Scotland’s TRUE national drink …. Not whiskey, but the nectar that is IRN-BRU !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ocaypgRHM

http://www.irn-bru.co.uk/

Buen provecho !!

Dave

dave 128

no olvides que lilliana es episcopalian o algo asi. ella no puede comer haggis aunque he comido haggis "vegetariano" una vez.

los enlaces estan para chuaparse los dedos.

Donperigo

jajaja !!

El haggis is a very cunning creature, and only a skilled cazador o cazadora can catch him.

Bye the way, the "fried mars-bar"will be banned next year by the Geneva Convention as a crime against humanity. Aye, qúe pena !!

Dave

Lili

Under the Supplemental Vocabulary section, should "educar" actually be "educado" ?

Would it be possible to get a separate web page section where people could post all the possible corrections that they think need to be made ?

The reason I'm saying this is that I've put a couple of postings "addressed" to yourself and JP before and have received no reply.

If all the "errata" were placed in one place [ as opposed to each individual lesson ] then each day, one of your staff members could review them.

This is very important for beginners, because they could pick up "bad words or phrases" right from the beginning.

You guys make an excellent product, but the typos can cause confusion for beginners.

Dave

Si encuentra errores, sólo necesita hacer clic en Contact Us en la parte inferior de la página.

En la página que sigue, elija Report a Bug/Problem y cuando la nueva opción se abre elija Lesson Material

Describa el problema en la forma.

Tks Cobre

Do you usually get a reply from someone saying that the editing has taken place ?

Dave

dave128

no contenes la respiración ;-)

A veces,  Lili,  Leo, Yenny, o Gulam, me enviará un correo electrónico, a veces no;  sin embargo, su informe se da  a la persona que se supone que debe hacerse cargo de esa tarea. Es en la linea de sucesión al casos que necesitan trabajar,  en la lista de tareas. Siempre hay muchas cosas "por hacer"

Sometimes,  Lili, Leo, Yenny, or Gulam send me an email, sometimes not; but your report is given to the person who should deal with it. It is in line to be worked on in the list of tasks. There are always many things to do.

Buen proponía, DP, las respuestas para nos son siempre los últimos cachitos de hacer.

corrections please.

Dave

I have not received an email from you personally. I receive some emails from Gulam with a list of ERRATA. I have gone over three lists already, still have three more to go.

Usually when the corrections have been made I write it under comments, sometimes I just make the corrections.

You can send me a private message to my inbox, if you are getting no quick reply.

Dave

Educado supplementary word fixed.

Sorry for the typo.

and in fairness, i recently recieved an email acknowleging my query so well done all, things are getting much better.

i still think a public bug thread with regular progress updates from praxis would be a neater solution but i do understand why it might be considered embarrassing to do ones laundry in public.

Tks Guys

The reason I have been saying this is that I remember when I was an absolute beginner a while ago and knew next to nothing. Typos can be very confusing, as you can get a "wrong idea" stuck in your head.

This is no reflection on the work produced by the people at SpanishPod. I think they do a fantastic job. Producing small stories which cover only certain grammatical areas and yet are funny and entertaining is no easy matter. I also understand the volume of material which has to be produced. So well done.

As DonP says, it might be a good idea to have one central place for corrections. The reason is that a beginner [ or someone else ] may have "picked up the wrong idea" from a particular typo.

By the time the typo is corrected, they may have moved on from that lesson and not remembered to have "clicked" the "Notify me of followup comments" box.

With most modern textbooks in the electronic engineering field, an "errata" section is provided on the associated web site in order to have one cntral place where people can go to see corrections.

Cheers

Dave

Bye the way, a great resource for learning Spanish, for those in EEUU [ USA ] as well as elsewhere is the Reader's Digest Spanish Edition.

It is small, compact and cheap. I read a page or two each day. Every week I see something that I have learned from Spanish Pod or my grammar books.

For example, today, I saw "Ayude a sus hijos a sacar A+"

"Help your children to get A+ grades [ in school ]".

This shows the use of the "personal a".

I like the magazine because it has little "chunks" of stories. Humor, cooking, sports etc.

Well worth getting [ people in other countries can order it from the US ].

Cheers

Dave

Creo que esta es una buena oportunidad de decirles a todos que yo almuerzo con Lily casi todos los días! Celosos? :-).  

I think this is a good opportunity to tell everyone that I have lunch with Lily almost everyday! Jealous? :-)

MM

:O very jealous indeed!!!

WOW, I am really Jealous.  Great new lessons guys, keep up the good work.

Por supuesto!

muy util leccion! voy a usar esto en mi clase de , porque voy a traer "mooncakes" a la clase esta semana :) 

cuando chateo con mi amiga, ella dice " que tengas un buen provecho". Es "tengas" una forma de tener? puedo decir " tienes un buen provecho?"

en el segundo texto
" No, tu primero"

es correcto decir

"No, tu primera"

porque él está hablando con una mujer?

Ewong,

"Tenga" es el subjuntivo del verbo tener.  Uno del usos del subjuntivo es para expresar deseos.

Tenga is the subjunctive form of the verb tener.  One of the uses of the subjunctive is to express desires or wishes.

Qué tengas un buen día!  Have a good day!

I think you would say Primera Tu if you are talking to a woman. 

Hi Kikuyu and Ewong,

The tricky thing here is that primero can be an adverb or an adjective, depending on how it is used in the sentence.  When you say:

No, tú primero

The word primero is an adverb, not an adjective, and adverbs don't have to agree with nouns. So it doesn't matter whether you are addressing a man or a woman; the form is invariable.

If you said something like:

Tú eres la primera persona que...

then it would be an adjective and would have to agree with its noun, in this case persona.

Anna8,

Good one!  I wasn't sure... its good to know that its an adverb when used that way. 

But you would say damas primeras for Ladies first. sí?

first ladies, (Michelle, Laura, Hillary, Barbara, et.al.)

or

ladies go first

primero

Well, Kikuyu, my big fat dictionary agrees with Cobre:

ladies first: las señoras primero

first lady: primera dama

Anna8,

Thanks, that surprises me. I'm glad that you've got that dictionary!

me too,

and thanks to you both

Las Damas primero

Hi Ewong

The phrase: "Qué tengas un buen día!"  Have a good day"  got me a bit confused as well. Have been doing a bit of reading and found out a few interesting things:

The subjunctive mood is not used as much in English as in Spanish. The indicative mood tends to describe "real" events. For example, "I am eating my lunch". Can't deny that. It's a fact. I'm sitting eating my lunch.

The subjunctive tends to be used in situations where there is doubt, hope, necessity, wishes etc. [ not "concrete" situations ]. For example, if I were to say "I wish I were eating my lunch at 1:00 p.m.", that would be translated in the subjunctive mood in Spanish [ Will I eat my lunch ? Maybe. But what if an urgent call comes in and I have to rush out ? What if a meteor lands on my kitchen ? Chances are that I won't eat my lunch in those cases ]

The subjunctive is also used in formal command forms: "You must do this !!", "Come to bed!!" etc.

There is also a strange one called the "Indirect Command". Many of these begin with "Qué.."

Whenever you watch an old movie and they shout "Viva México !!", I used to wonder why they didn't say "Vive México !!". It is because an Indirect Command part is "missing". That part is "Qué". This really translates to "That Mexico should live !!". In other words, they [ the people shouting it ] are sort of giving a command indirectly. Vivir conjugates to viva instead of vive [ in 3rd person ] to "show" the use of the subjunctive.

The same thing is used in the phrase "Qué tengas un buen día" Sort of saying "That you should have a good day".

You could even mentally imagine the person saying "I hope that you have a good day", but missing out the "I hope" part.

I'm no grammar expert [ my school teacher said I had wood between my ears !! ], so if anyone wants to correct any of the above, please dive in.

Dave

Dave128

a couple of points that i dont be on board with.. ;-)

I would suggest that the subjunctive mood is expessed just as frequently in english as in spanish, the difference is that it doesnt require as many distinct conjugations that indicate that it is in play. just because an english verb conjugation is the same as the indicative doesnt mean its expressing exactly the same concept. context is everything. in addition, we prefer to use auxiliary verbs such as may and might as well as making the conditional work a bit harder but english is just as at home with the subjunctive mood. I cant see why on earth  the spanish would have a greater need to express  doubt possibility, opinion and denial than the brits? we are all of us blagging our way through life :-)

As i understand these things; direct positive commands such as "come to bed" require the imperative. Negative commands "and dont forget to floss" (y no olvides) are those that require a subjunctive conjugation.

Consequently, debes hacer esto ( you must do this) doesnt require a subjunctified verb wheras you mustn't do it (no debas hacerlo ) does.

I perfer to see both the english and spanish as containing  the same information i find it confusing to suggest that  debas has hidden depths and translates as "you really shouldnt but you can, you dont have to, obviously you might not want to you might have a real good reason that i dont know about, look im just saying, no offense"

because one might also make the same case for the english "must not"

to me debas is mostly a gramatical requirement and not a whole extra dimension of liguistic subtlety though, of course,  i may be missing out.

"I wish I were eating my lunch at 1:00 p.m.", that would be translated in the subjunctive mood in Spanish."

quite right too since its uses one of those rare distinct english 1st person subjunctive conjugations were (i.e. not was or am (or is or are or be or do))

Hello DonP

You brought up some very good points there. What I should have said [ as you mentioned ] is not that the subjunctive is used less in English than in Spanish, but that the range of conjugations is less in English than in Spanish.

In order to form the postive direct command, we do indeed use the imperative. The imperative [ in this case ]however is conjugated using "subjunctive endings" e.g. "Venga, Ponga etc". I should have said that instead.

Dave

dave128

Im really sorry if i came off a bit strident and preachy there. honestly not my intention.

Now obviously it depends how you learnt this stuff but to me tenga is first and foremost a command word that is also utilised in subjunctive constructions.

so I would never say that the imperative is congugated using subjunctive endings

However, tengas, and tengáis because they are special case words, used exclusively  in subjunctive constructions, are what I would call  subjunctive conjugations. To me, tenga et al are imperative words whose meaning is modified by context.

Hi DonP

No problem at all. I think it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation between the imperative and the subjunctive in terms of what is "derived" from what.

Have had a look through a number of texts, and some introduce the imperative first, then the subjunctive next. Others do it the other way around.

Do any of the SpanishPod staff have any comments ?

Dave

Tks Yenny

"You can find a lot of bibliography that uses different explanations to express the same meaning. This is not about who came first, this is just two different tenses that share the same way to conjugate eachother in some cases"

The only thing is that I thought the Imperative, Subjunctive and Indicative were moods rather than tenses.

I thought tenses were things like present tense, past tense etc. ?

Now I'm really confused.

Dave

Hi Dave,

You are right, of course:  technically, imperative, subjunctive and indicative are moods; past, present, future are tenses.

And Yenny knows this better than anyone! She wasn't using the word tense in its technical sense, but rather in the common, informal sense to mean types of or categories of verbs.  I've often seen the word TENSE used this way to include tenses and moods.

You know that the second person singular present subjunctive and the tú form of the negative imperative use the same forms, right?  For example:

No comas el pastel!/Don't eat the cake.

Espero que comas el pastel./I hope you eat the cake.

The two share a form.  If you already know how to form the present subjunctive, the teacher can say: "To form the informal negative imperative, just use the present subjunctive verb endings."

But remember, even though they share a form, they are distinct phenomena. 

An example from English:

1. I wish he were here.

2. They were here yesterday.

The were of the first sentence is a third person singular subjunctive; the were of the second is a third person plural past indicative.  They share a form but they are distinct phenomena.

I hope I haven't made the situation even more confusing, Dave:-)

Merry, now that takes the cake

aye, what a mind, the spinning gears

were it to stop,

we'd wonder where the whirrs were.

No detengas que tus puestos que aclararán  nuestras perplejidades.
Espero que, te escribas más.

Muy buena explicación anna8!

Tks Guys

Did a bit of checking in some books that I have and found something interesting. A few of them said that the imperative and subjunctive moods are closely related historically from the development of Spanish throughout the centuries.

One of the reasons that was given was that when we give a command to someone, it is “up to that person” whether or not they decide to do it [ even in the Army – although not recommended !! ]. In other words that event may or may not take place.

If we say to someone “Give me five hundred dollars !!”,that is certainly in the imperative, but it is definitely not 100% certain that they will give us the money.

However, if I say “Here is five hundred dollars that was given to me”, that would be in the indicative.

I think what they are indicating is that there is a close relationship between the two [ even allowing for the fact that the conjugational endings are different in some cases – e.g. postive familiar imperative ].

On a personal note, today is my birthday. It has a lot of meaning to me today. Four years ago I was left completely crippled and told I’d never walk again. One day after my 48^th birthday I was told by a leading specialist that I would paralyzed from the waist down. I’m now getting ready to go back to work. I spent six months in bed unable to move and only began learning Spanish as a way to keep my mind off the pain. Now that I’m up on my feet, I hope to be able to get out and actually speak some Spanish to people [ I live in Orlando ]. Have included a clip from a TV program showing the device that got me walking again. [ I’m the one with the Scottish accent ]. I hope it gives some hope to any of you out there suffering from back pain.

Dave

Oops

Left out the link

http://meilus.com/Videos/VideoPlayer/TabId/403/VideoId/234/TV-Special-With-Sheli-Sanders.aspx

Dave

Dave, amazing.  Thanks for sharing.

I could see about 15 minutes of the 22 minute video and then it quit playing.

Felicitaciónes Dave con tu Gran Éxito.  La vida es llena de milagros!

Tks Guys

I treat every day I have as very precious.

If that video does not work very well, here is part of a documentary that was done on my case:

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/Dr_Jo_Accupressure

I did all my Spanish learning laying on the floor under the robot holding a book up in front of me.

Dave

Wow, Dave, that is amazing.  Happy birthday indeed!!

anna8

¡Excelente y brillante explicación!¡Gracias!

¡Feliz cumpleaños Dave!Que la vida te premie con muchos años más llenos de satisfacción.

Cobre, Hypersport, Yenny,

Muchas gracias por las flores:-)

Querida anna8 ¡Nunca fueron mejor dadas!