Voices en Español

I heard about a language learning software that may be of interest to some of you. It’s called BYKI (Before You Know It) and it’s an interactive flashcard system. Personally, I’m not big on memorizing words off of flashcards but I know that for some people this an effective way to build vocabulary in a foreign language.

BYKI has two versions, BYKI Lite and BYKI Deluxe. The “lite” version is the free one. I downloaded BYKI Lite for Spanish and played around with it for a little bit. They’re not kidding when they call it “lite” because it truly is bare bones. There are only 17 vocabulary categories available covering basic verbs, food, animals and dining out, among other topics. That said, there is enough to work with in their free version to get a good feel for how the software works and to see it in action.

Here are the pros and cons of BYKI:

PROS

• Software interface is simple, easy to read and navigate (at least for Mac, which is what I use).
• There are 5 different learning modes that gradually take you up the ladder to incorporating the new words and phrases into your vocabulary.
• There is audio of a native speaker pronouncing every word or phrase.
• The $39.95 price for the Deluxe version seems reasonable, based on what it offers. You get access to more than 75 different vocabulary categories and you can create and customize your own personal lists of words.
• Additionally, the Deluxe software has a way for you to record your own voice and then graphically compare it to native pronunciation and supposedly help you to isolate and correct problem areas. I didn’t try out this version of the software so I can’t give you any impressions on how well that part of it works, but that capability sounds like a great idea.
• There are 64 different languages to choose from, so if you’d like to dabble in a little Albanian or Urdu, this software seems like just the ticket.

CONS

• The software, at least the “lite” version is ideal for raw beginners. If you are at an advanced beginner or intermediate level, you’re not going to get much out of this. But since it is free, you lose nothing by trying it out.
• The flashcards don’t point out the importance of gender in Spanish and don’t alert the user to the distinction between male and female made in Spanish. For example, the speaker for the Spanish BYKI is male. When he says statements like “Estoy cansado” or “Estoy contento” none of the flashcards point out that if the speaker were female, that the endings would be “cansada” and “contenta.” Not pointing this out to users of the software is a big mistake, particularly since the primary market for this product are English speakers and this type of gender-related change to adjectives does not exist in English.

Final verdict? Worth a look, particularly if you’re new to a language and need to practice basic vocabulary.

This post has nothing to do with Spanish but today’s Independence Day in the U.S. of A, so I figured you’ll forgive me for going (way) off-topic. Also, I’ve got a soft spot for Beaker. To all of you guys in the U.S., this one’s for you!

Whenever I need a good chuckle, I head on over to 20 Minutos and click on a random story to read the reader comments. They never disappoint. If you want to read unadulterated, real-life colloquial Spanish and have a good laugh at the same time, there is no better place online. Open 24/7, 365 days of the year.

Today’s news that Starbucks is going to shutter 600 locations and lay off 12,000 people in the U.S. caught my attention. Not because I’m a fan of Starbucks, ni hablar, but because I was curious to find out what impact, if any, those moves in the U.S. were going to have on Starbucks overseas, particularly in Spain. A few months ago I wondered out loud about why Starbucks even exists in Spain. Based on the comments over at 20 Minutos, many Spaniards wonder the same thing.

20Minutos readers’ reactions to Starbucks’ woes in the U.S. were as amusing as I hoped they would be. A guy (or gal) who wrote under the moniker “No los aguanto” said:

“A mi esta cadena me pone enferma. Yo no entro por la chorrada america de preguntarme cómo me llamo ( el marketing este de tratar a las personas por su nombre, etc etc y los pajaritos y las ovejitas bee bee pio pio argg!!) y lo de que pase un buen día forzado. Es hipócrita total. “

A commentator called mmmm seems a little paranoid when he/she writes:

“El café que sirven en el de la calle Orense de Madrid es malísimo…. En recipientes de plástico bien tapaditos para no ver el contenido. Caro, caro, no sabe a nada.”

Another 20Minutos reader blames Starbucks for the loss of his precious Ray-Bans sunglasses:

“Precisamente en un Starbucks de Londres me robaron unas Ray-ban nuevecitas. No puedo demostrarlo pero estoy casi seguro de que fueron los empleados, pero no veas como se hacían los disimulados.“

Funny how everyone says they hate Starbucks and yet (still) so many people go there to buy coffee.

Summer’s here and I’m bushed. I’m soooo looking forward to summer vacation.  The great news is that I’ve recruited two guest bloggers to pitch in over on the Spanish side of this blog.

When I first launched this blog back in November, I initially double posted everything in Spanish. Boy, was that time consuming. It got to the point where I didn’t have time to write everything twice (and make sure that the Spanish was cien por cien correct), especially when at one point I was posting as much as five times a week on this side of the blog. I hate to admit it, but I kind of let things slide over on the Spanish side.

Well, starting today, Clarisa Muñoz from Barcelona by way of Buenos Aires and Veronica Pamoukaghlián from Montevideo, Uruguay will be lending me a hand with twice a week entries in Spanish. They’ll be contributing to the Spanish side of the blog for the entire summer. Clarisa and Veronica are both super creative women with professional backgrounds in music production, filmmaking and writing. They will be blogging on all sorts of topics with a focus on culture, social stuff and, of course, language. In some instances, their entries may be posted in English, but for the most part, they will be blogging primarily in Spanish over on the Spanish side of this blog. So, to make sure you don’t miss a single post, subscribe to my RSS feed for the Spanish side of this blog.

In Veronica’s debut entry, she takes a lighthearted look at Spanglish and how it is invading Latin America.  And please feel free to leave comments (in Spanish or English) on the Spanish side of this blog letting us know what you think of the new voices here at Voices en Español.

¡Hasta pronto!

Kelsey, a reader of this blog, left a detailed account of an experience she had recently dealing with a language intercambio she found via the Mixxer.

You can read her full account here, (it’s the last comment in the comments section). Long story short…a seemingly normal beginning morphed into something very creepy when her Chilean intercambio declared his love for her and canceled his vacation plans to be sure that he would be in the SAME COUNTRY as Kelsey.

Make no mistake, the benefits of doing language exchanges (intercambios) can be tremendous, but no matter who you are or where you live,  your personal safety MUST come first. Don’t lull yourself into thinking that just because your conversational partner lives three time zones away on another continent that they may not have unspoken intentions that could radically affect your physical wellbeing and emotional state of mind. There are a lot of lonely people out there and while they may be harmless, you never know. Better to be safe than sorry. Read my entry on the 5 questions you should ask before agreeing to an intercambio.

Don’t be afraid to be upfront and direct, letting your conversational partner know upfront that the arrangement is strictly business. If a real friendship develops, great, but true friendship takes time. Meanwhile, if your top priority is to focus on improving your conversational Spanish, not finding a future spouse, be sure that this intention is crystal clear, especially if you pick up any vibe that the other person may be rearranging their life and/or thinking of having a more intimate experience with you. Also, keep in mind that cultural differences can come into play, especially with the way men view women and vice versa.  What is viewed as socially normal and typical behavior between platonic friends in one culture (for example, signing off with “un beso” in an online chat or phone conversation) could be misinterpreted as a signal of undying love by another person from another culture where such terms aren’t used in the same contexts.

Kelsey also offers up some excellent advice born out of her unpleasant experience:

• If you are planning on studying abroad, DO NOT contact someone near your destination. If you really feel strongly about meeting someone who lives in or has been to your area, I would suggest someone of the same sex.
• Even if you and your partner decide to speak every day, try to keep much of your personal information out of the conversation.

Great advice, Kelsey. Thank you for writing at length about this experience. This will be a big help to others facing similar situations.

Has anyone else had any horrible experiences with intercambios? How did you deal with it?

There’s a news story getting wide exposure this week about a U.S. study that claims to have proven that people change personalities when they speak a second language. Like really change personalities at an incredible Hulkian level.

Researchers in the U.S. say that they’ve found evidence of personality switching among bicultural Hispanic women. According to the study, the women interpreted events differently depending on which language (Spanish or English) they were using at the time. Additionally, the women judged themselves as more assertive and self-sufficient when speaking Spanish instead of English.

On the surface, this research sounds interesting, but there remain many unanswered questions. It would be nice to have more of the nitty gritty details. For example:

• How many women participated in the study?
• Why only women and not men?
• Which language is their maternal and primary language?
• How do we know that this change in personality isn’t something that is merely a result of comfort level in the primary language?
• For someone who was truly bilingual and bicultural, (for example someone who grew up speaking both Spanish and English and had the same verbal dexterity in both), would this change in personality still exist?

I tried to get my hot little hands on the academic journal article about the study to see if these basic questions were addressed. Unfortunately, the piece is behind a subscription firewall over at the Journal of Consumer Research, where it was published. Oh well, still makes for a fun headline.

What about you? Does speaking Spanish make you more of an extrovert or an introvert?  Does it make you feel more adventurous and want to go for broke, or make you want to fade into the background? In what ways does speaking Spanish change your personality?

Spain is home to as many as nine languages, three of which (català, euskera, galego) have co-official status with castellano, i.e. Spanish. As a result, these three languages have tremendous political and social clout inside the country.

It’s a messy and complicated issue but in recent years language has been used as a political weapon to elevate and separate different communities in Spain. For example, a Spaniard who aspires to be a public school teacher, a public health doctor, a cop or a city hall bureaucrat in Catalonia, is pretty much out of luck if he/she doesn’t speak fluent catalán. Meanwhile in several communities the primary language of instruction in the public schools is one of the co-official languages, not Spanish. With the way things are going, could there eventually emerge a massive population of Spaniards who will be functionally illiterate in Spanish since they won’t speak nor use Spanish as their main language? It is a frightening thought.

(Earlier this year, the Partido Popular, the conservative Spanish political party, distributed audio of a call of a mother trying to enroll her child in a Spanish-language school without any luck. You can find the audio and more details about the call here.)

Now, finally, a group of Spanish intellectuals are saying enough is enough. They’ve drafted a manifesto calling for the use of Spanish as a common language for all of Spain. It asks the government to guarantee the right of all Spanish citizens to learn and use castellano in both public and private life. Among the signers of the manifesto is famous novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. You can download a copy of the four-page document here.

Spanish for all Spaniards. It seems so simple, but it isn’t.

Consider the evidence:
perro: Man’s best friend
perra: a bitch

zorro: an extremely astute and crafty man
zorra: a whore, a prostitute

golfo: a gulf (like the Gulf of Mexico), or a human male rascal, jerk or lazybones
golfa: a slut, a prostitute

And the list goes on. The Plataforma Andaluza de Apoyo al Lobby Europeo de Mujeres believes that sexist language is a form of verbal violence and has an ongoing public service campaign to sensitize the Spanish-speaking public about the issue. (See one ad below.)

Another campaign of theirs is to get the Real Academia Española to admit feminine versions of Spanish words. If the RAE can add non-Spanish words like overbooking to the Spanish lexicon, why not words like miembra and jóvena, said Rafaela Pastor, a leader of the Andulucian feminist group, in a news interview earlier this year. Spanish evolved from Latin, a patriarchial language. Pastor believes that the legacy and influence of Latin is holding Spanish back and preventing it from adapting to modern times. Women, she notes, were second-class citizens in Roman times, so the same linguistic rules should no longer apply in the 21st century.

“La lengua es algo vivo y la Real Academia admite que se integren nuevos términos, aunque parece que se sienten más cómodos con las palabras anglosajonas”, añadió la presidenta de la plataforma. “Si tenemos que destrozar el lenguaje para que tengamos espacios de igualdad se deberá hacer”, indicó.

Maybe it’s because I’m an angloparlante, but I see nothing inherently sexist with words like miembro or joven. Using the Spanish article “la” is enough to distinguish that the person being referred to is a female. The other stuff, like the feminine forms of some nouns having pejorative meanings, that’s been with us for time immemorial. Until mankind (or should that be man-and-womankind?) come up with new ways to insult one another with terms that don’t have to do with gender (or race/ethnicity), I’m afraid we’re stuck with the insults we have. Personally, I think Spanish feminists have bigger fish to fry, [whoa, is saying that sexist too?]  such as age and sex descrimination in the workforce and battling against the cult of beauty that is so pervasive.

What do you guys think? Is the sexism/machismo ingrained in Spanish inherently harmful to women?

The letter “W” in Spanish is the red-headed stepchild of the Spanish alphabet. In technical, linguistic terms, the letter “W” isn’t patrimonial to Spanish, meaning that it’s not a letter that is naturally part of the language. It is a letter that exists in the Spanish alphabet to cover words imported from other languages. Crack open a Spanish dictionary and look under the letter “W” and you’ll see what I mean.

So foreign is this letter to Spanish that there are four different ways to pronounce it. In Mexico and Columbia, it’s pronounced “doble u“; in Argentina “be doble“; in Chile “doble be” and in Spain “uve doble.”

When foreign words starting with W become commonly-used in Spanish, the “w” is dropped and the letters “v” or “gu” or “gü” are called into service. For example:

Wagon became vagón

Walzen (waltz in English) morphed into vals

Whiskey shapeshifted into güisgui; a whiskey bar, a güisquería

The trailer for this eagerly-anticipated Woody Allen movie came out this week. For a flick that centers on a love triangle, -o mejor dicho a love rectangle-, the trailer makes the film seem rather flaccid.

Starring Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, the movie is about two American girls (Johansson and Hall) who go on vacation in Barcelona where they meet a Spanish artist (Bardem) who tries to woo them both while juggling an on-again, off-again relationship with his ex-wife (Cruz).

The early buzz on the movie was that it would be quite saucy for a Woody Allen movie with a kiss between Cruz and Johansson and a threesome thrown in the mix. But Woody went public and essentially told the world to take a cold shower, stating the movie wasn’t going to be as steamy as the media was making it out to be. Poor Woody: There he goes sabotaging potential $$$box office€€€ of his own movie. Doesn’t he know by now that sex sells?

Whatever the case, a trailer is supposed to whet your appetite, so to speak, and make you want to run out and see the movie right away, not help you make a mental note to cross it off your list. Maybe it’s just me, but Javier Bardem seems miscast in the role of a modern-day Cassanova. He’s an intense actor but this role calls for him to be suave, laidback, charming and likable yet slightly devious. His trademark intensity has been dialed down and it seems like he’s trying to channel George Clooney.

Generally, a trailer presents its best moments, its best lines, etc., in 3 minutes or less. But from the Vicky Christina Barcelona trailer it’s hard to tell whether the movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy or a bittersweet dramedy. It also seems to be a movie of interiors and generic exteriors, with no images of streetscapes that connect the movie to Barcelona.

If that’s the case, that’s bad news for the Ayuntamiento of Barcelona since it picked up part of the tab for Woody’s Catalonian film-making adventure. News of this subsidy didn’t go down too well when it became public last year, particularly once it was reported to be the biggest investment of tax money in a single film in the history of Spanish cinema.

Obviously the public officials who signed off on this subsidy are hoping for a movie that elevates Barcelona’s international profile, making it a widely-recognized iconic city on film, like Paris or Rome. How disappointing then it will be if the movie turns out to be a flop and doesn’t deliver at least a few winning shots of la Sagrada Familia, las Ramblas, L’Eixample or Barri Gótic.

No matter what, life will go on for Woody. Although his mojo has weakened in the U.S., he’s still a powerhouse in Europe, where he’s universally adored and revered. He’s pretty much bullet-proof at this stage of his career and he’s already announced that he would love to make more films in Spain.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona opens in August.

P.S. What do you think of the trailer? Just for kicks, do you have a favorite Woody Allen movie? To tell the truth, I’m not a big fan of his work, although I did enjoy Match Point. Feel free to leave your thoughts below.