One of my new favorite Spanish words, the one for “bee.”
I love the lightness of the “ha” sound, just the right lift to suggest the fluttering of wings and the buzz over flowers.
Spanish
Archived Posts from this Category
2 June 2012
23 May 2012
One thing I like a lot about Spanish is the expression for certain human conditions. In English, we say, “I’m sleepy.” Or, “I’m hungry.” I will need to get used to using the Spanish verb tener, to have. Instead of I’m hungry, I would think, “I have hunger.” And I would say:
Tengo hambre.
Or if the young miss has been up late studying for her final exams, instead of ”My daughter is sleepy,” it would be “My daughter has sleepiness.” I would say:
Mi hija tiene sueño.
It makes more sense to me for people to say they “have” these conditions, rather than to say they are these conditions.
15 May 2012
One of my favorite greetings to our 17-year-old cat is, “I count on Count.”
Mi gato bello. People who meet him think he’s female, but he’s always been a “man’s cat,” as my wife says.
Lately, he’s been spending a lot of time on the computer hutch:
My wife is starting to worry about him. He cries to get attention. He seems to have lost a bit of body mass. But he still has a healthy appetite and he purrs loudly when petted or groomed. He’s begun to eliminate around the upstairs of the house, rather than use the litter boxes in the basement. But he’s still rather spry, and will chase the younger cats and consent to be chased.
The worry is that we’re getting close to the end. Of course, he may still have many years left in him; he’s always been extremely healthy. His teeth and gums are good. None of the other maladies that have bothered our other rescued pets.
14 May 2012
Cleaning things out, one of my staff colleagues unearthed an old Bible. She gave it to me. What do you think of it?
Looking at the illustrations within, it reminded me of the Good News Bible. I may be able to translate the cover of the Bible these days, but I doubt I would be anywhere near skilled enough to differentiate between the Spanish equivalents of the NRSV and the TEV. I suppose by their footnotes you will know them.
Before the Spring semester was over, I met with each of three peer ministers I will be supervising next academic year. It was a bit embarrassing with Jessica, as I had to apologize and say, “When you plan prayer for our meetings next Fall, don’t do what I’m about to do: scramble to find a Bible and pull a passage out of my hat.” I didn’t even have an English-language Bible in my office that day. I did have a Nuevo Testamento, so we turned to a familiar passage, Colosenses 3:12-17. I’d quote it for you, but I can’t find the translation anywhere online. Jessica is quite fluent in Spanish, so I gave her 12-15, and I stumbled through 16-17, much slower and less lyrically. After catching a few minutes of fútbol and the occasional telenovela, it’s rather nice to have something substantive.
God speaks today, I guess.
15 April 2012
Family matters have obliged me to cancel my planned trip to Honduras next month, but I’m consoling myself with expanding my vocabulary and working on my verbs. One fantastic (macanudo) idiom I’ve been taught is the Latin American expression for giving birth, dar a luz. (To give to light.) What a great poetic expression, that each new person coming into the world is a gift from a mother to a world very much in need of more light.
8 April 2012
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
4 April 2012
On my morning bike commute to the parish, I’ve been practicing counting forwards and backwards in Spanish. The relationship between different languages fascinates me. And the patterns of numbers is almost as cool as the blooming trees in my neighborhood.
In English, you know two and the Spanish dos. The d and the t just differ in the amount of pitch or “whisper” one puts into the speaking. It’s not really one or the other–I’ve always been curious about the degrees one can shade the pronunciation of either.
The English twenty and Spanish veinte seem even a bit closer, considering the closeness of v and w in many words.
Did you know Sanskrit for two is dva?
In German it’s zwei, pronouncing the z as ts and the w like a v, so the end result sounds like tsv, with an English long-i.
From Europe to India, a lot of connections for such a simple number or two and a limited set of sounds to communicate them.
28 February 2012
After about a month (January) of neglect I’m trying to resuscitate my Spanish studies. One of our parishioners who offered to help me with conversation last month started speaking to me in Spanish the other Sunday and I completely froze up. Muy malo.
The young miss now enjoys drilling me daily on my few hundred vocabulary words. We compare notes on her French and my Spanish. She’s brilliant with languages, so it’s quite possible she’ll pick up more Spanish from our exercises than I. As it is, she’s thinking of adding German instead of Spanish as her elective next year. And why not? The more languages, the better.
Anyway, my wife picked up this classic diccionario at a thrift shop for a quarter. “You need one for your office,” she said. I already have two at home–the big one is by the computer and the little one is usually at my bedside. At the public library yesterday, I picked up 501 Spanish verbs. More information than I probably want, and definitely more than I can handle–Honduras is less then three months away. But still, I’d like to be slightly more advanced in the language than Tourist Spanish for Dummies.
When I was a kid, I loved to read reference books like encyclopedias and dictionaries. Still do. This 1948 edition is no exception. I found the section on irregular verbs and decided I needed to start on these. I noted all these verbs with “go” endings in first person singular. So cute! Our spiritual life peer minister, adept in the language, said to me, “The yogo verbs.”
I put … pongo
I say … digo
I hear … oigo
I do … hago
I come .. vengo
I fall … caigo
I bring … traigo
I leave … saigo
and my favorite Spanish word this week: I have … tengo.
Another embarrassment (not embarazada!) is missing the double l’s in the middle of a few personal pronouns. I was corrected by another one of our peer ministers on this one. I love the Spanish words for rain and key, so how could I have missed the proper pronunciations for “she” and “they”?
On another front, my comprehension is still stuck on day one. I tried watching some Spanish language television, and they’re all talking so fast. Nice looking women, to be sure, but I’m in it for the language, amigos. I do a bit better with listening to Spanish music in restaurants and on YouTube. On the latter, I let the Selena Channel play the other day. “Amor prohibido.” I think I’ve got that one down. Linguistically speaking, of course.
Adios.
1 December 2011
The word of the day:
el escritorio
I love this Spanish word.
30 November 2011
My first Spanish lesson today. Made a stack of note cards for vocabulary–my weak spot with languages. Only the pets were home before dinner tonight, so I got to practice …
Hola, mi gato blanco.
Mi perra negra:
The trick is, to speak so I can communicate with native speakers this coming May when I go to Honduras. My pets were decidedly unenthusiastic about my first effort in Spanish.
