Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Thursday, November 25th, 2010
Unless you're fluent in Spanish when you come here to Andalucia - whether to live, or to have a holiday or extended stay (to write that novel, for example) - speaking the lingo is one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the most essential skills for starting a ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Education, Language | 5 Comments »
Saturday, November 6th, 2010
After living in the western Andalucian countryside for three years, in a fairly quiet area with very few foreign people around, coming to the Costa del Sol is a shock to the system. I went down there for a work meeting this week, and felt like the country mouse in ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Driving, hotel, Language, Shopping, Travel Andalucia | 12 Comments »
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
To continue on from my previous, language-themed post on Monday, today I’m going to focus on misunderstandings and real experiences of Malagueño (from the Malaga region) words and phrases. After having invested a lot of time learning the intricacies of Spanish, when I arrived here I found that I didn’t ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Language, Stories | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 9th, 2010
As a student, the phrases “last-minute revision” and “rote learning” are familiar to me, but neither of these, no matter how hard you try, fit into the brief of learning a language. Knowing a language is, in my opinion, about immersion, accents and culture, and so in this post, I’d ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Education, Language | 7 Comments »
Monday, July 26th, 2010
One of the things that really galls me (me fastidia, me cabrea, me molesta, me enfada) about living here in Spain is dubbed television. I loathe and detest it. The voices are all the same - I think there's a stable of about five people they use - young woman, ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Current affairs, Education, Language | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Having studied languages at university, and now living in Spain, I am fascinated by words. What I hear, read, speak - I don't get all of it, by any means (but oh, how satisfying when I do) - is a constant source of interest. In my early,enthusastic-student days here, I ...
Posted in Culture and Customs, Current affairs, Driving, Language, Social affairs | No Comments »
Friday, December 19th, 2008
In my near 15 years in Spain I've heard many complaints about how few Spaniards speak English. Therefore, before I dive into the latest news about our regional government's attempts to raise the level of English instruction in state schools, I'd like to address this bit of criticism levied by ...
Posted in Language | No Comments »
