Spanish Learning Journal

Notes from learning Spanish through movies and study.

Published January 15, 2025 ET
languageslearning

Journal from learning Spanish.

Log

3/21/2021

  • Watching The Fury of a Patient Man. I tried watching Roma the other day but it has a lot of Mixtec and isn't exciting enough to watch over and over. It's also more softly spoken. I'll have to work my way up to that.
  • I'm going to need to learn how to type more accents, and that funny upside down question mark.

3/23/2021

  • Wondering if I should be using DuoLingo. I can never seem to stay motivated by using it, though.
  • There are many nouns I should be learning independently of studying movies and songs:
    • numbers
    • days of the week
    • months of the year

Notes

From watching "The Fury of a Patient Man" (2016) by Raul Arevalo

Vocab

  1. vamos - We Go
  2. dale - Go ahead
  3. ir - To Go
  4. arranca - Start / Pull out
  5. la policía - Police
  6. farfulla
  7. sirenas se aproximan - Sirens approach
  8. dios - God
  9. motor - Engine
  10. motor resopla - Engine snorts/puffs
  11. resopla - snorts

General notes

Pronunciation

  • the letter "H" is silent

    • unless it's next to the letter C ("chocolate")

  • the letters "C" & "G" sounds different depending on what it's next to

    • "Ca" sounds like "Ka"
    • "Ce" sounds like "Say"
    • "Ci" sounds like "See"
    • "Co" sounds like "Ko"
    • "Cu" sounds like "Koo"
    • "Ga" sounds like "Ga"
    • "Ge" sounds like the "G" in the last name Jorge (hard "G"), like "Gay"
    • "Gi" sounds like the "J" in the last name Jorge (soft "G"), like "Gee"
    • "Go" sounds like "Go"
    • "Gu" sounds like "Goo"

  • "á" or "Á" (a-acute) is pronounced just like /a/

    • the ´ symbol is called a "diacritic mark" or "accent"
      • ´ is called "acute"
    • indicates the stressed syllable in a word with irregular stress patterns. Can also be used to "break up" a diphthong or to avoid what would otherwise be homonyms
      • the individual sounds in spoken language are called phonemes (the word "big" has three phonemes, /b/, /i/, and /g/).
      • a letter between slash marks, /b/, shows the phoneme, or sound, that the letter represents, and not the name of the letter.
      • recognizing and reading words by translating the letters into speech sounds to determine the word's pronunciation and meaning is called "decoding"
      • phonemic awareness => take spoken words apart sound by sound (the name for this is segmentation)
      • put together sounds to make words (the name for this is blending)

Typing accents / diacritic marks

  • [acute] Option + "e", then whatever letter ("a", "e", "i", "o", "u") => é, á, í, ó, ú
  • [tilde] Option + "n", then "n" => ñ
  • [umlaut] Option + "u", then "u" => ü
  • Option + "1" => ¡
  • Option + shift + "/" => ¿

(not relevant for Spanish, but also worth knowing)

  • [grave] Option + tic, then whatever letter ("a", "e", "i", "o", "u") => à, è, ì, ò, ù
  • [circumflex] Option + i, then whatever letter ("a", "e", "i", "o", "u") => â, ê, î, ô, û

Days of the week

Days of the week are actually not capitalized in Spanish (unless at the beginning of a sentence):

  1. lunes - Monday
  2. martes - Tuesday
  3. miércoles - Wednesday
  4. jueves - Thursday
  5. viernes - Friday
  6. sábado - Saturday
  7. domingo - Sunday

Months of the year

Also not capitalized:

  1. enero => January
  2. febrero => February

Saying the date

English: Today is Tuesday, March twenty third, two thousand twenty one Spanish: Hoy es martes veintitrés de marzo de dos mil veintiuno