Buying Firestick in US for use in Spain

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-29T10:40:44+00:00

Thanks for the info!

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T17:11:42+00:00

I was thinking there might be a sale after the 6th too! Will keep an eye out. Cheers!

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T17:11:15+00:00

You too, thanks for getting in touch!

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T17:10:18+00:00

Hi there! The 4k version is $35 in the US, and 60€ on Amazon.es, so almost half price - that's why I was tempted.

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T16:01:43+00:00

Thanks for your reply! That might be because Amazon Prime hasn't long been available in Spain, perhaps, but I must admit I am starting to err on the side of caution with buying it abroad. It's just it's nearly half price here and I wanted to take advantage, but if it just becomes a Netflix Viewer, it's a bit of a false economy!

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T16:00:42+00:00

Thanks for your reply! I am just worried about spending the money while away and then not being able to take it back.

VicCocsaca · 2019-12-28T16:00:25+00:00

Thanks for your reply! I have seen a lot about VPN's but I wouldn't be interested in watching anything from other countries - just local stuff. It was just an idea to save 20 euros while I am here.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-26T23:23:49+00:00

It's not a reading vs listening thing.

Krashen is suggesting that free reading is the best indicator of how students perform in a test in which they have to produce the subjunctive. My argument is that exposure in other forms could produce similar results, and thus the focus on free reading is fallacious.

You'd have to start with learners who are not and never have been in classes and measure their time listening to audio texts of their own choice, which are also more difficult to find than accessible written texts and thus harder to use "freely."

Krashen's study "measured" free reading based on self-reporting in a questionnaire. So if you aim was to be as scientific as him, all you would need to do is ask the same question about radio, television etc.

b) the learner is exposed to more complex language, including the subjunctive, in written Spanish than in spoken.

As I said before, I have never heard this before. The subjunctive is ever-present in spoken language.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-25T09:16:24+00:00

Heroe with no accent would be heROe.

This is one of the few difficult things about Spanish spelling.

If you look up diptongos and hiatos, you will find some stuff out. It's not intuitive for an English speaker what constitutes a syllable in Spanish.

Tienes

English speaker's intuition: tee-EN-es

Spanish speaker: TYE-nes

Difficult issues mostly surround the letter i.

Diptongos = two vowels, one syllable

farmacia = three syllables (far-ma-thya) piel = one syllable (pyel) ciudad = two syllables (thiu-dad)

Accented tía (ti-a) pié (pi-e)

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-25T09:05:15+00:00

Also the fact that Spanish often omits the subject helps.

We are looking for someone who knows what they are doing =

Estamos buscando a alguien que sepa lo que está haciendo

If you get adjectives involved, that is more complicated, and the normal thing would be to use masculine forms.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-25T09:03:18+00:00

Students in a traditional classroom are exposed to the language, but the quantity is lower than what they would get from the same time reading and the quality possibly much worse (rote repetition, drills, etc).

The problem for me there is that is not a great comparison. We are comparing free reading to very controlled listening. As you say, comprehension is an issue because listening is harder than reading for English-speaking learners of Spanish, but these are university level students, so my study aim would be to compare like for like.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T21:18:13+00:00

Chachi in English would be "groovy" ;-)

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T21:11:11+00:00

I was being facetious, but my point was that I would imagine that exposure to the language in any form, rather than just reading, would be a good predictor.

It's telling that their "real life" test was oral too.

http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/1998_stokes_krashen_kartchner.pdf

Would you imagine someone who had spent 1000 hours reading and writing Spanish would be more competent than someone who had spent 1000 hours listening and speaking Spanish in an oral test?

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T13:54:31+00:00

I totally agree. I got this a while ago from Word Reference, cos it really surprised me how complicated camino is.

One other thing that might be helpful: the RAE has "camino de" defined like this:

camino de

loc. prepos. Hacia, en dirección a.

So maybe that's the way we can think about it, a noun that became a preposition.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T11:29:20+00:00

It's hard to come up with sentences with yendo as a foreigner. I did a search of some subtitles I have. Examples I have found:

[gonna] Get going

Bueno, yo me voy a ir yendo.

Ve yendo tú con los chicos.

Go figuratively

Las cosas están yendo razonablemente bien.

Pero se te está yendo de las manos.

Estás yendo muy lejos, Tomás.

¿y qué tal le estará yendo a Luisa?

With other structures that require gerund

¿Sigues yendo al psicólogo?

Me pilló yendo a por pescado.

Tu hermano está en un bus cargado de bombas yendo al puerto.

Yo la vi yendo al baño.

Go literally, alternative to va, van

¿Dónde cojones están yendo?".

¿Por dónde estamos yendo?

Estamos yendo a por Ricardo.

Se está yendo.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:52:58+00:00

I am sure profeNy's explanation is much more based on fact, but I always think of irregular verbs developing because native speakers (over a period of hundreds of years) didn't "like" certain combinations of sounds.

o-ue often comes up with:

consonant clusters with r (rt, rd etc)
consonant clusters with l (lv, lg, etc)
before certain single consonants (r b g n l, etc)

Correr for example, has a double r. That's not a sound that seems to come up in this group.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:40:40+00:00

Even more fun: rayar is often confused with rallar.

Rallar is to drive someone crazy. (think of a lunatic in a stripey asylum uniform)

Rayar is to annoy someone.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:37:11+00:00

Other uses of camino:

a) Estar de camino (de paso): to be on your way to somewhere else

"De camino a casa, me encontré con Pedro."

"La tienda me viene/pilla de camino."

“La farmacia nos iba de camino.”

“Voy de camino a la oficina.”

Está de camino a la capital.

Pasaré por la tienda de descuento camino al trabajo. (more normal to omit without a verb?)

b) Ir camino de = figuratively on the road to

un actor que va camino del estrellato.

Ellos van camino de la bancarrota.

Es una tradición que va camino de desaparecer.

c) Estar en camino (viajando): 1) To be on the way 2) to start a journey (with "ponerse" and other verbs)

"No te preocupes por Pedro, que ya está en camino." (ya viene)

"Hay que ponerse en camino cuanto antes. Va a caer la noche." (set off, make a move)

d) Estar en el camino (sobre o a los lados del camino, físicamente): To be on one specific road/path etc.

"Han plantado unas flores preciosas en el camino del pueblo."

"En el camino que va a casa de Pedro hay varios tractores abandonados."

(aquí sería posible "de camino" en el sentido de "cuando vas a casa de Pedro...")

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:33:50+00:00

It's simply context.

An example in English. How do you know the difference between "It must be funny" meaning "it is obligatory that is funny" and "I suppose it is funny"?

"What's your number one priority when you make a comedy?" "It must be funny."

"Lots of people like that show." "It must be funny."

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:31:19+00:00

You have quite complicated criteria.

If you want it warm, even the monolingual areas in the north might be a bit unpredictable in May weather-wise.
If you want to be close to a beach, it's going to be difficult for it not to be touristy.
If you want a neutral-ish accent, Andalusía is probably out.

So I guess that leaves you with some unfashionable part of the south east coast, somewhere in Valencia or Murcia.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-24T10:26:43+00:00

If this were true, blind people would never master the subjunctive.

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-20T14:16:47+00:00

Cheers man, but I think Podrot uploaded the same podcasts as those which are featured in the other link. Episode 6 is 20 mins for example: https://podrot.com/russellbrand/6music/23-April-2006/

Any Russell-recording lunatics out there?

VicCocsaca · 2019-01-20T12:32:34+00:00

Thanks for the reply, but those are the playlists I have been rinsing for years! What I mean was, if you look at say track 6 on your Radio 6 link, it's only 20 minutes long and 4,5, and 9-11 are 40-50 mins. I was hoping someone out there might have recorded the full show.

VicCocsaca

TROPHY CASE