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| Martín Ventola’s 3 rules to remember about Spanish vowels:
They are short sounds
They are “pure” sounds
They start and end differently from English vowels.
Visit Martin’s blog, Spanish Pronunciation 101, for a detailed description of the correct pronunciation of Spanish vowels.
Vowel A : In Spanish, the “a” is similar in sound to the “a” in the English word [...]
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| La yerba mate (An Argentine legend)
De noche Yací, la luna, alumbra desde el cielo misionero las copas de los árboles y platea el agua de las cataratas. Eso es todo lo que conocía de la selva: los enormes torrentes y el colchón verde e ininterrumpido del follaje, que casi no deja pasar la luz. Muy [...]
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| [See post to watch QuickTime movie]
Part 2 of Going 2 America
Above, video of Grand Central Station in Manhattan.
Below, view of Central Park from Top of the Rockefeller Center.
David calls a scavenger hunt a ginkana. He also uses the expression dejar a la altura del betún when comparing Whole Foods, a U.S. grocery store, to El [...]
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| La ciudad de Esteco era, según la leyenda, la más rica y poderosa de las ciudades del norte argentino. Se levantaba en medio de un fértil y hermoso paisaje de la provincia de Salta. Sus magníficos edificios resplandecían revestidos de oro y plata.
Los habitantes de Esteco estaban orgullosos de su ciudad y de la riqueza [...]
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| La noche de los feos
por Mario Benedetti
1.
Ambos somos feos. Ni siquiera vulgarmente feos. Ella tiene un pómulo hundido. Desde los ocho años, cuando le hicieron la operación. Mi asquerosa marca junto a la boca viene de una quemadura feroz, ocurrida a comienzos de mi adolescencia.
Tampoco puede decirse que tengamos ojos tiernos, esa suerte de faros [...]
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| [See post to watch QuickTime movie]
David, el Cántabro, is back. This time he’s going to talk about stereotypes that exist among the Spanish regarding mi “pueblo,” the United States, and explains what he’s looking forward to seeing during our vacation there.
Music featured in this podcast:
Big George Jackson
“If I Could Change” (mp3)
from “Big Shot”
(Black and [...]
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| In this podcast I chat with Maya Escobar, a performance artist from the U.S. Her culturally-diverse family background (Dad is Guatemalan and Mom is Jewish) has inspired her to create a series of photos and satirical videos about stereotypes related to Latina and Jewish women. Maya says her work “Acciones Plásticas” is a “commentary [...]
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| Here’s Part 2 of my chat with Teresa Córdova from Middlebury College. In this podcast Teresa talks about the ways some American university students have found to work legally in Spain. You can find more info about the Language Assistants program she mentions here. Also, Julie Espinosa, a current language assistant in Madrid, gives advice [...]
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| Today’s episode of Spanish Pronunciation 101 is about Spanish consonant sounds that don’t come naturally to English speakers. Martín Ventola, our Spanish instructor from Buenos Aires, has written a detailed post on his blog about the subject but here is a summary of today’s topic:
There are five Spanish consonant sounds that sometimes throw a wrench [...]
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| Teresa Cordova, a coordinator for Middlebury College’s program in Spain, talks about the benefits and challenges of studying abroad. Teresa is from Puerto Rico and a graduate of Tufts University.
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| Cody’s Cuentos is my new podcast featuring children’s stories in Spanish. Cody, a mischievous, lovable puppy, serves as the mascot to this new program. Every month Cody and one of his human pals from Spain, Mexico or Argentina will present to you a well-told tale in Spanish. Spanish-speaking and bilingual families everywhere can now [...]
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| The first step to improving your Spanish pronunciation is to isolate and eliminate the sounds from your native language (in my case, English) that don’t exist in Spanish.
In this podcast Martín Ventola talks at length about some of these sounds from English that interfere in pronouncing Spanish correctly. You can get more details here.
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| Era un tipo guapo Santonni. Siempre con jeans y zapatillas blancas percudidas. Y siempre con esa mirada ausente, introspectivas, que tienes los ojos que no son verdes, ni azules, ni grises, sino una mezcla de los tres, esos ojos que miran hacia adentro como escudriñando el alma para reporcharle al mundo y a su madre [...]
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| Juan Manuel Villalobos, a writer and journalist from Mexico City, talks about his novel, “La vida frágil de Annette Blanche.” Click here for more details.
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| Today’s podcast is an introduction to a series of podcasts I plan to do with Martin Ventola, a Spanish teacher from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Martin has studied English phonetics, so that background, combined with his experience teaching Spanish to extranjeros in Buenos Aires, makes him the ideal guide for those of us who want to [...]
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