Apr 26 2013

Booking Through Thursday: Language and Sporting

Category: Booking Through Thursday,Memes — Lindsay @ 11:36 pm

bookingthroughthursday

One post; two weeks’ worth of questions. Go!

April 18: I saw a Latin edition of The Hobbit last time I was at the bookstore. Do you read any foreign languages? Do you ENJOY reading in other languages?

Well, I can read some Spanish but not enough to enjoy books the way I do in English. After undergrad, I kept a few of the books I read for my Spanish history and culture (the country, not the language) class with the intent of reading them someday. A friend also gave me an Allende novel. I read enough of the books for class to get a decent grade in the glass, but the gift book has barely been touched. (Oops.) One of these days, I’ll get my Spanish back and tackle those books. I brought them all the way to Texas, so now I have to read them, right?

April 25: Do you read books about sports? How about AT sporting events? (Kid’s soccer practice?)

I think I can say fairly confidently that I have never read a book about sports. I can also say that I have never read during a sporting event, although I graded papers immediately before one once. I was a busy teacher, but I knew it would help if I went to the game, so I brought in the best of both worlds. Books will always be more important to me than basketball!

You might also enjoy these posts:

Tags:

Oct 28 2011

Booking Through Thursday: Vacation and Hard

Category: Booking Through Thursday,Memes — Lindsay @ 2:28 pm

Considering the theme of last week’s BTT, perhaps it is appropriate that I’m only getting to answer on my first full day off from work in two weeks solid.

Oct. 20: Do your reading habits change when you’re on vacation? Do you read more? Do you indulge in lighter, fluffier books than you usually read? Do you save up special books so you’ll be able to spend real vacation time with them? Or do you just read the same old stuff, vacation or not?

I haven’t been away on vacation in a very long time. I prefer staycations, really, like Deb (the BTT poster). When I’m home on vacation, I do tend to read more, although these days that translates into a lot more online reading. Generally, my current job has actually made it easier to read more real books, since I can take out some big chunks while I eat lunch, lacking a TV to stare at. I try to mix fluffy books in with serious books regardless of when I’m reading them.

Oct. 27: What’s the hardest/most challenging book you’ve ever read? Was it worth the effort? Did you read it by choice or was it an assignment/obligation?

Re-reading The Giver earlier this month was really difficult emotionally. I hadn’t read it since I officially became pro-life, so it was even harder to keep turning pages, but it was absolutely worth the pain.

A lot of the books I read for my Chicano literature class in college were difficult because they had such a strange style or were graphic (and not just the graphic novel). That was the same year I had to read Tristram Shandy, come to think of it. It was worth being able to discuss them in class and do well on my exams, but I doubt I’d have chosen to read any of those of my own free will.

Of course, reading in Spanish is the hardest of all, so the novels I read for my Spanish history class probably win the “hardest book” award in the end.

You might also enjoy these posts:

Tags: ,

Feb 26 2008

Chavez Says: No More Spanglish

Category: General — Lindsay @ 10:30 pm

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela would like a little more pureza in his people’s españolh. He is urging the country’s citizens to stop using English words for popular contemporary terms, favoring their Spanish counterparts instead.

He’s got a point. After I finished the intermediate-level Spanish I needed to graduate with my English degree, I declared my minor and moved on to more advanced classes. The first of these, SPAN 207: Reading and Writing in Spanish, was taught completely in Spanish. English was discouraged to the point that, when our teacher asked what a word meant, she wanted a definition in Spanish, not the English translation.

However, since we weren’t quite proficient yet, we would often still sprinkle our Spanish sentences with English words. It’s much harder to build up your fluency when you have to stop and puzzle over a word in the middle of a sentence. If you just drop in the English word, you can get on with the rest of your phrase. I noticed, though, that the English words in a Spanish sentence always sounded rough and inelegant in comparison.

So I see what Chavez wants. It would be ludicrous to have my Venezuelan boss call a meeting instead of a reunión, or to input my password instead of my contrasena on HarryLatino.com. (For the record, I rarely use that site, I’m not registered, and they’re mostly hunkered down after the release of Harry Potter y las reliquas de la muerte a few days ago.) There’s enough debate over Spanglish already. I love being able to read and write in both languages, but I hate getting them mixed up.

I’ll blog about something American again soon.

[Note added 5/10/12: The original article was posted at Yahoo! News. I had to use Yahoo! search to find the article on Fox News. I think that's ironic.]

You might also enjoy these posts:

Tags: ,

Feb 24 2008

Curiosidades/Curiosities

Category: General — Lindsay @ 10:55 pm

Today’s linguistic curiosities come to you via Wikipedia. I’ve only recently started reading Wikipedia articles in Spanish. It’s so encouraging that I can understand them. They help a lot when I’m studying for my Spanish history class, because my professor lectures in Spanish, and I’ll have to write exams on them in Spanish. Researching in English wouldn’t make sense; I don’t even take notes in English for that class.

Las palabras más largas del idioma español son [The longest words in the Spanish language are:] Hipopotomonstrosesquipedaliofóbicos, esternocleidooccipitomastoideo, anticonstitucionalmente, electroencefalografista y otorrinolaringológicamente.

via Idioma español

I love that section because the words are so neat. The first is some kind of animal with six legs (I think). The second sounds like a body part. The thrid is “unconstitutional.” The fourth is “electroencephalographist,” a.k.a. someone who runs EEGs. The last sounds like an adverb for things related to speech (ENT, possibly).

All of this is making Firefox’s built-in spell check go crazy.

An amusing example of the significance of stress and intonation in Spanish is the riddle como como como como como como, to be punctuated and accented so that it makes sense. The answer is: ¿Cómo “cómo como”? ¡Como como como! (“What do you mean / ‘how / do I eat’? / I eat / the way / I eat!”).

from the English version of the same article: Spanish language

And finally, a similar linguistic riddle in English:

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.

If you consider “buffalo” a verb, it works. Very cool…for us language nerds.

You might also enjoy these posts:

Tags: ,

Feb 22 2008

Premio arte y pico

Category: General — Lindsay @ 10:33 am

Premio arte y pico

Despite my most recent blogging drought, I have won an award for my writing: El premio arte y pico! (It means something like the Award for Art/Artistry and a Kiss on the Cheek.) Mara, who lives in Spain blogs at Comenzando a navegar (Setting Sail), has passed on an award that’s circulating among Spanish-language bloggers. Clearly, I blog here in English, but Mara knows enough English and I know enough Spanish that we can understand each other. I hadn’t realized she kept reading my blog after we found each other ages ago, but I’m glad she did.

According to the Arte y pico blog, where the award originated, it is given to blogs “los cuales me nutren y enriquecen el espiritu y la creatividad. En ellos veo dedicacion, creatividad, esmero, compañerismo, alegria y por sobre todo, ARTE, mucho arte. Quiero que con este premio, se agasaje a todas aquellas blogueras y blogueros que dia a dia comparten este espacio y lo enriquecen cada dia un poco mas.”

[In English: The award is given to blogs "which nourish and enrich my spirit and creativity. In these blogs, I see dedication, creativity, care, companionship, joyfulness, and overall, ART, so much art. With this award, I want to give attention to those bloggers who day after day share this space (the blogosphere) and enrich every day a little bit more."]

At first, I wondered how on Earth to pass it along, because I don’t read any other Spanish blogs. The rules make it easier, though (in English, retranslated by me):

  1. Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award on the basis of creativity, design, interesting material, and contributions to the blogger community (or blogosphere), regardless of language.
  2. Post the name of the authors and links to their blogs so that everyone can visit.
  3. Display the award on your blog and include the name and link of the blog that gave it to you.
  4. Link to this post at the Arte y pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of the award.
  5. Display these rules.

Therefore, I offer the Premio arte y pico to:

  1. Kim, at Transitus Tiber, for her graceful way of sharing her everyday struggles to reach holiness and sustain joy.
  2. Nick, at PhatCatholic Apologetics, for his relentless and bold defense of Holy Mother Church.
  3. Lyzii, at dreamlit, for being such a great friend and for the way she, like I, tries to understand the world and our God through writing.

I think quality is more important than quantity, so I’m only naming 3 recipients. Pass it on, guys! Let’s make this award bilingual!

You might also enjoy these posts:

Tags: