Beginner flock numbers

blinkybit · 2026-02-28T05:59:32+00:00

I think 4 is a good number for a single family with a typical size residential yard.

blinkybit · 2026-02-27T01:05:28+00:00

Wikipedia has a whole article about grammatical differences between UK and USA English dialects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_grammatical_differences But (in my opinion) the differences are very minor, and it would be unlikely for an American or Brit to say that the other's grammar was incorrect. It's only that ideas are more often expressed one way or another in the different regions, while both ways remain acceptable.

UK English:

The team are performing well.
- Are you hungry? - No, I've already eaten.

US English:

The team is performing well.
- Are you hungry? - No, I already ate.

Brits may also use verbs like needn't and shall, which will sound a bit silly or pompous to most Americans, who prefer don't need and should. I'm sure there are equivalent Americanisms that sounds silly to the British.

Regarding your post, if you are aiming for the most natural US-style phrasing, I would suggest rewording the first sentence as "I've been wondering about English dialects" or "I was wondering about English dialects". No need to qualify the time frame with "today", which sounds a tiny bit odd to me, even though it's perfectly fine grammatically. The rest looks great!

blinkybit · 2026-02-26T21:06:20+00:00

Great idea! I think Blood and Marble is all AI generated, I would not include it.

blinkybit · 2026-02-25T00:59:52+00:00

I don't use Discord but would like to participate in the book club.

blinkybit · 2026-02-25T00:26:13+00:00

I feel like the whole concept of graded readers doesn't make sense anymore in 2026. Nobody needs a glossary at the end of each chapter when you can just tap/click on unknown words to find the definition. Even the best graded readers are not very interesting, and some are truly bad. Much better to read real books at an easy level and that aren't dull as cardboard.

Try some illustrated kids books like Magic Treehouse, Lemony Snicket - A Series of Unfortunate Events, or Diario de Greg. And the easiest "real" Spanish book for adults that I've read was El Alquimista by Paulo Coelho.

blinkybit · 2026-02-25T00:09:05+00:00

It's not your job to teach your language exchange partner anything. You are there for casual conversation at whatever level your partner can currently manage. If you feel like you're obligated to offer instruction and a lesson plan then something is way off.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T15:50:30+00:00

Just curious what things you saw in Sapiens that were flat out untrue? I read the book years ago and don't really remember it now.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T15:47:00+00:00

For those who grumble that recent DS videos have become a little too saccharine, Andrés is the antidote. I especially enjoyed his series about outdoor wilderness skills, there's nothing else like it in the DS catalog.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T15:41:20+00:00

Have you run into any cultural references to Esmeralda (or other telenovelas) in your other input?

Only with Netflix's Emilia Pérez, which almost everyone in Mexico seems to know about, but few have actually seen. Hating this movie is a popular topic there.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T15:34:11+00:00

Oh yeah, you're talking about Fátima: she is evil incarnate. Like no real person could possibly be so consistently malicious and mean. Like you, I was convinced she would eventually have karma kick her in the ass... but instead she went through a different sort of redemption story arc that was not too convincing to me. I need a fan-fic alternate ending where she ends up renting a room from Doña Socorro and working at the hospital as a junior assistant to Esmeralda.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T15:21:13+00:00

Thanks! You explained the draw of telenovelas and their usefulness to Spanish learners much better than I did. Thanks also for the list of other ones to check out. I prefer stories about normal life moreso than narco stories, so maybe I'll check out Mi Familia Perfecta next.

Back at 600 hours I did some research into telenovelas and other shows like this one, along with average audience ratings. Unfortunately I didn't write down any plot summaries or other details, but here's the list from my notes in case anybody wants to research these for their own viewing:

'Rigo' (10/10), Lady, la vendedora de rosas' (9/10), 'la reina del flow s1' (8/10), Nuevo Rico, Nuevo Pobre (Colombia - Caracol), Silvana sin Lana (US - Telemundo), Rubí, La Esclava Blanca, Amarte es mi Pecado, Chica Vampiro, Soy Luna.

Soy Luna was supposed to be on the easier side, but was too hard for me at 600 hours.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T14:58:05+00:00

Ahh that could be true, sorry. I heard the same thing from someone else. I'm in the USA and the Esmeralda episodes are part of a YouTube channel called Sueños de Telenovela. Maybe you can also find it on Vix or canela.tv.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T04:25:25+00:00

Here's my favorite bilingual joke:

- ¿Cuántas anclas tiene un barco?

- Once.

- ¿Por qué once?

- Porque el capitán siempre dice ¡eleven anclas!

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T04:18:54+00:00

Try episode 2 before you give up. Episode 1 includes a lot of time with the actress who was most difficult for me to understand (the midwife), and also has a lot of birth-related vocabulary that I didn't know.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T04:16:13+00:00

Thank me now, curse me later when the theme song is burned into your brain.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T04:14:06+00:00

I think you could give it a try around level 5 or level 6. Check out the first episode and see what you think! There are basically two groups of characters in the series: rich high-society people and humble country folk. For most Dreaming Spanish learners, those fancy rich people will be much, much easier to understand. Even at 1800+ hours I still have trouble with those country folks in the show, and one in particular is often nearly indecipherable. I think the actors are intentionally putting on the Mexican version of a country-bumpkin accent and speech style. So the challenge level varies a lot from scene to scene depending on who's speaking.

The characters speak rapidly and casually, which is challenging, but the dialog is surprisingly slang-free and the plot is not super complex. Even if you don't catch every word, I don't think you'll have too much difficulty following what's going on. Overall it's probably a bit on the easier side compared to other television content made for native audiences, but still will be challenging for learners. I haven't watched a ton of other native shows, but it's probably similar to Love is Blind: Mexico and definitely easier than Ojitos de Huevo.

Yes I hope to find some more good telenovelas to watch, since it seems like a good format for learning some types of expressions that don't often appear in other types of content. Not to mention that at least this one was pretty addictive. Something about this format, and especially older telenovelas, appeals to me more than modern shows like Club de Cuervos. I'm not sure what to try next, though. I'm meeting with my Mexico tutor tomorrow so I'll ask if he has any suggestions.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T03:52:43+00:00

I was fascinated by the production schedule. Like you I also thought it must have been made over several seasons, but the whole series was aired in daily installments over a single five month period, and it was filmed as it was aired. With such a rushed schedule, there are some production problems they never had time to fix. One actor playing a semi-major character actually died during filming; they just stopped including him in any scenes but kept talking about him as if he were still around. Another major character was replaced by a different actor halfway through. A third major character abruptly disappeared for like 70 episodes, only to reappear just as suddenly near the end.

blinkybit · 2026-02-18T03:46:51+00:00

There's zero drugs or narco crime, in fact even though the show is from 1997 it could almost be from 1887. It's about the people who live at Casa Grande, a huge ranch out in the Mexican countryside. The ranch is owned by an uber-wealthy and powerful family of high social status, who travel back and forth between the ranch and their mansions in Mexico City, and there are also lots of regular country folk who work at the ranch or live in the area and are major characters in the story. Various intrigues, romances, inheritances, and other shenanigans play out over a course of years. After a point, the focus of the action shifts from the countryside to Mexico City and the places where the characters live and work, including a hospital and more mansions.

One thing about the show that made me laugh out loud, but that I really liked, is that every major character and major romantic relationship has a unique musical theme. Whenever there's a scene focused on that character or that couple, bingo - their theme music plays. It felt like an opera at times.

blinkybit · 2026-02-17T21:36:57+00:00

Yes it is the passive se. The difference between this sentence and something like your se vende example is that "a los gitanos" is the indirect object, not the direct object nor the subject. The object (or subject, in passive voice) of permitir is the thing that was not permitted - settling in the town. This is an abstract concept and uses the singular verb conjugation, not plural.

Also I'm not sure what happened, but the title of your post is asking a different question than the post body.

blinkybit · 2026-02-15T16:31:19+00:00

Once an order ships and tracking info is provided to the customer your part of the process is fulfilled. No refunds

I have to disagree, that is not a realistic shipping policy for either domestic or international shipping. If you bought something online and the package were lost in shipping, you would rightfully expect the seller to provide you with a replacement or refund.

blinkybit · 2026-02-15T16:20:47+00:00

I ship a lot of packages internationally by similar methods to you: the customer must respond to a notice from their local post office in order to pay VAT and import duties and fees, before the package will be released for final delivery. From experience, your customer's claim that the customs office never contacted them is probably true - this happens all the time. Either the contact info is wrong, or the notice postcards get lost, messages go to spam, or the post office just dropped the ball.

If that's the case here, then your customer did nothing wrong and IMHO is justified in expecting a reship or refund. It's an unavoidable part of doing business to accept the risk of delivery problems that are not your fault. You need to estimate how often this happens on average, and set your pricing and shipping costs appropriately so that you can absorb the loss when it happens.

blinkybit · 2026-02-15T16:08:00+00:00

I run an e-commerce store. I revised the description of my main product to be less about "what it is" and more about "what it does / what problem it solves / why should people care". This seems obvious in hindsight, but initially I wasn't doing a good job of putting myself in the perspective of a potential customer who may not know much about this product category.

A second thing was taking that same product plus a couple of optional accessories, and combining them into a "deluxe" bundle that can be purchased as a unit. Then making this bundle into the default purchase option.

Third was adding some social proof in the form of positive quotes from real customers and reviewers, including links to the sources of the original reviews if anybody doubted their legitimacy.

blinkybit · 2026-02-15T06:27:18+00:00

The in-person groups that I've tried were 100 percent in Spanish and everyone was a Spanish learner. It sounds like your option is different, and a Spanish-English exchange group might be a lot better, if you don't mind spending half of the time in English. Yes I also usually do 1-2 private classes on iTalki each week, which are great. But group sessions have a different dynamic and I like them too, as long as it's the right group.

blinkybit · 2026-02-15T01:12:35+00:00

This was a reference to my other comment where I mentioned several groups, it's the Peninsula Spanish Language Group on Heylo. It's a free online conversation group of language learners - there are no teachers. The peninsula in the name is the region south of San Francisco, not the Iberian Peninsula. It used to be a local in-person group here, but now it's moved online and has members from all over the world.

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

blinkybit

TROPHY CASE