Hey, I’m going to start a series of interviews with people who speak fluent Spanish. I asked them how they learned their second language (Portuguese, English, etc.) and they talked about other topics too, like their occupations, family, etc.
The first interview is with Oscar Eduardo Gamboa. He’s Mexican and lives in São Paulo. He has [...]
Oct
30
2009
30
2009
Entrevista con Óscar
Oct
30
2009
30
2009
Spanish Idiom October 29, 2009
“Gente de alto copete” means “people of high crest”. The idiomatic equivalent in English is phonetically similar: “upper crust people”.
Oct
30
2009
30
2009
An Easy Pronunciation: F
Finally in our series of pronunciation lessons, we’ve come to a letter that is pronounced the same way nearly all the time in both Spanish and English. So our lesson on pronouncing the f is the easiest in the series so far. So you can relax a bit this week; next we’ll cover the letters [...]
Oct
29
2009
29
2009
Italian Verb Exercise
One useful method for studying verbs is to take an excerpt of several paragraphs—print out an article from an Italian newsweekly—and highlight every verb. Then translate each verb and identify the tense. Parse it out—write out the infinitive, look up the word in a dictionary if you don’t know it, and be sure to clarify [...]
Oct
29
2009
29
2009
Colloquial Italian – 1. Ecco
As many students of the Italian language have discovered, there is a big difference between the Italian learnt in a language class and everyday colloquial Italian. In fact many students suffer a serious blow to their confidence when, having diligently studied in their language class, they first set foot in Italia and come face to [...]