So, I thought it would be a good idea to try to learn a little Spanish in odd moments at the computer. I’ve studied French and Latin so I can sort of read easy Spanish phrases already. I decided to practice a bit on some basic beginner student readings, and Google suggested learnpracticalspanishonline.com.
:eek: Is this some kind of prank? These Beginner Practice Readings make 1984 look like Little House on the Prairie. The crescendo of existential despair starts off subtly: Ana and her family are doing okay, except her mechanic husband has to moonlight as a dishwasher on weekends. Carolina is exhausted from grueling 12-hour days at the call center and is losing touch with her friends. Francisco’s new home, the best he can afford, is a filthy dump. Miguel has just been detained by airport security, while Andres got blackout drunk and woke up in a strange apartment without his medicine (or his pants). The basketball team is losing a soccer match and their coach is too drunk to realize it? The unemployed and desperate Jorge has just withdrawn the last of his savings when robbers burst into the bank. Paul must abandon his car in a traffic jam or risk missing his crucial interview. Jacobo seriously injures himself trying to rescue a neighbor’s cat; Diego’s dumping Renata hardly registers against the general background of universal misery. Marcelo and Chris are hopelessly lost, and Rodrigo is a heroin addict. The only person in the whole shebang who seems reasonably content is Sangeeta in New Delhi, and it’s probably going to turn out that her brother who’s away in Australia has been eaten by a shark.
Is the author just trolling, or do they actually want introductory Spanish students permanently plunged into suicidal gloom? Are they Trumpian nativists, or perhaps left-wing reformers, trying to spread a message about the incessant trauma and indignity of Spanish speakers’ lives? Do language learners these days actually enjoy reading this stuff? :dubious:
And can somebody point me to some nice bland online Spanish reading exercises about the pen of the gardener’s aunt?
It’s not reading, but Duolingo.com is an excellent online language learning site. It’s run by Carnegie Mellon University and it’s free. Well organized and no pop-ups or garbage ads. This is by far the best online resource I’ve found.
It sounds like a telenovela! Actually, it sounds a lot better than the Spanish reader I had, which was full of things like “My cat lives under my house” and “Where is the bridge? Here is the bridge. It is a big bridge.” Not much there in the way of narrative drive.
Spain has a twisted, wild aesthetic that this sort of fits, in my comfortable Anglo-American way of seeing things. It’s like the Sagrada Familia, or El Greco paintings, or one of the later Almodovar movies.
¿Donde está Imán? was the first lesson in a hilariously awful tape-plus-picture-book Spanish series from grade school, spoken by an obnoxiously squeaky-voiced child. Even the teacher was embarrassed by it. Imán, which means magnet, was the name of a dog…something the widow of the late Mr. Bowie could never be accused of being.
Is this some kind of prank? These Beginner Practice Readings make 1984 look like Little House on the Prairie. The crescendo of existential despair starts off subtly: Ana and her family are doing okay, except her mechanic husband has to moonlight as a dishwasher on weekends. Carolina is exhausted from grueling 12-hour days at the call center and is losing touch with her friends. Francisco’s new home, the best he can afford, is a filthy dump. Miguel has just been detained by airport security, while Andres got blackout drunk and woke up in a strange apartment without his medicine (or his pants). The basketball team is losing a soccer match and their coach is too drunk to realize it? The unemployed and desperate Jorge has just withdrawn the last of his savings when robbers burst into the bank. Paul must abandon his car in a traffic jam or risk missing his crucial interview. Jacobo seriously injures himself trying to rescue a neighbor’s cat; Diego’s dumping Renata hardly registers against the general background of universal misery. Marcelo and Chris are hopelessly lost, and Rodrigo is a heroin addict. The only person in the whole shebang who seems reasonably content is Sangeeta in New Delhi, and it’s probably going to turn out that her brother who’s away in Australia has been eaten by a shark.