| Most Recent Messages of Each Discussion |
Created by |
|
|
iradj n.
September 7, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
I'll be in china in 4 days ,looking for friends
Hi, Hello, salam, Bonjour , Niha.
I'm a tour leader I come to China 5 times for year and I'm looking for a chines girl to make friendship with her my name is iradjnorouzi gmail.com you can write me , and i'll reply you , I could send you my pic too.I'll be in Beijing and Shanghai..looking for you ASP. thanx
Bonjour je cherche une copine Chinoise a Pekin ou Shanghai, je vous attands.
|
Language pair: English; French
|
|
iradj n.
September 5, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
Sicilia ottobre '05
Englishman visiting soon would be glad to meet an italian speaker or learner, ideally of graduate background in an arts subject and familiar with catholicism. I have some free spare accommodation for the right person.
|
Language pair: Italian; English
|
|
charles s.
September 3, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: September 21, 2005
|
Re:vecinos nuevos
Hola Brittani,
Lo siento, pero no entiendo tu dificultad. ¡Tu español es excelente! ¿Porque tienes miedo?
Pero, aun si puedes escribir el español mucho mejor que hablarlo, no es ninguna cosa. La verdad es que no mejoraras tú español si no lo ensayes. Y notarás que hablar con hispanohablantes nativos es muy importante para eso. Puede conseguir la habilidad muy fácil de hablar español con otros hablantes ingleses, y las mismas oraciones y frases desaparecen cuando estás hablando con hispanohablantes nativos. Es como hay que aprenderlos de nuevo.
Y tus vecinos, aunque no les conozco, lo más seguro es que prefieran que conocerte ahora, y no esperar a cuando puedes hablar la lengua perfectamente, que será un bien rato. Los nativos no hablan español perfectamente, así que nosotros jamás lo conseguiremos. Pero creo que a tus vecinos no importan ayudarte mejorar tus habilidades con su lengua. La esfuerza vale mucho, y apuesto que les impresionará mucho.
Yo también soy hablante de inglés nativo, y he aprendido que el obstáculo más importante de superar es la vergüenza de hacer errores. Siempre me siento dolores en el estomago cuando estoy hablando el español con hispanohablantes nativos, pero esto no importa nada. Es muy importante hacerlo caso omiso y hablar con ellos sin embargo. Es la única manera que puedes abrumarlo.
Por cierto, hay muchas maneras que hacer errores con tus vecinos puede ser muy útil. Primero es que será muy divertido. Había una vez que intenté decir a un amigo que me sentí muy embarazoso, pero en vez de eso, dije que estaba muy embarazada— ¡que estaba yendo a tener un bebé! Sí estaba aun más embarazoso con eso, pero también era bien divertido, y ahora tengo una historia muy graciosa que puedo contar. La otra cosa aquí es que tal error es excelente para aprender. ¡Puedes apostar que jamás haré este error otra vez!
Ojalá que mis sugerencias son de alguna ayuda. Favor de dejarme saber si puedo ofrecerte algún más apoyo.
¡Suerte!
Mark
|
Language pair: English; Spanish
|
|
Mark S.
August 28, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 28, 2005
|
Re:vecinos nuevos
Hi Brittani,
I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I understand your difficulty. Your Spanish is excellent! What are you worried about?
But even if you write Spanish much better than you speak it, that doesn’t matter. The truth is you can’t improve your Spanish if you don’t practice. And practicing with native speakers is a very important part of that. You’ll see that you can get very comfortable speaking Spanish with other American English speakers, and then when you try to use the same phrases with native Spanish speakers, it’s like you have to learn it all over again.
While I don’t know your neighbors, the greatest likelihood is that they would much rather get to know you now than wait for you to perfect your Spanish (And trust me, they’ll have a long wait. Native speakers don’t speak Spanish perfectly; you never will). They won’t mind helping you improve your Spanish, and they will probably be very impressed at the efforts you are making.
I’m also a native English speaker. I’ve learned that the most important challenge to get past is the embarrassment over making mistakes. I always feel a terrible pain in my guts when I’m speaking Spanish with native speakers, but it’s not important. I have to ignore it and speak with them anyway. That’s the only way to make the pain go away. And it does.
And, by the way, there are a lot of good reasons to let yourself make mistakes speaking to native speakers. For one thing, it’s great comic relief. Once I was trying to tell someone, “I’m very embarrassed to tell you…” (estoy muy embarazoso decirle), but I accidently said, “Estoy muy embarazada” (I’m very pregnant). Of course, I was very “pregnant” about that at the time, but today it’s a wonderful story to have to tell. And these mistakes are also the very best of learning opportunities. I have never made that mistake with embarazada/embarazoso since that day.
Well, I hope that my suggestions are of some help. Please let me know if there is anything more I can do.
¡Suerte!
Mark
|
Language pair: English; Spanish
|
|
Mark S.
August 28, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 28, 2005
|
necesidad de ayuda para España , PARTIR EN ESPAGNE AVEC FRANCAIS
Hola,
voy vivir en España para un año en el mes de diciembre, y busco
personas para ayudarme a encontrar trabajo, o hacerme descubrir y
hacer la fiesta juntos, en cualquier región de España gracias y écribe mí.
Gracias hasta pronto
SI DES FRANCAIS sont intéressés pour partir vivre un peu et découvrir l'espagne avec moi ca pourrait etre bien, pour le moment je pars seul, récrivez moi si ca vous intéresse, bonne journée, A+
|
Language pair: French; Spanish
|
|
Frank B.
August 23, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
necesidad de ayuda para España
Hola,
voy vivir en España para un año en el mes de diciembre, y busco
personas para ayudarme a encontrar trabajo, o hacerme descubrir y
hacer la fiesta juntos, en cualquier región de España gracias y écribe mí.
Gracias hasta pronto
i'm going too in spain, it's a great country, when will you go ? we can maybe we help for travel and at the spain, i wait your message, thank you and good days.
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Frank B.
August 23, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 23, 2005
|
Studying abroad for Spanish
Hi, I have been to a few Spanish speaking countries for quick visits/vacations, but now I plan to go abroad for about 3 or 4 months to paractice my Spanish more. I am just wondering to all the native Spanish speakers, where would be a good place to go? Or what countries would be best to stay away from...? I have been to Colombia for a visit with my friend and loved it, but Spain is very nice too...I just don't know anyone there, any ideas would be appreciated????
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Melissa L.
August 16, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 23, 2005
|
Puti in Japan, Part 2 of 3
(Continued from part 1)
The streets around us are quite narrow and follow the spaghetti layout typical to Tokyo. The appearance of the city is no accident, as it was purposefully built so in the historic times to slow down the attacking enemies. It is quite opposite to Kyoto, which has a rectangular grid of streets familiar from western cities. I like the meandering streets and the irregular jumble of building styles, but my wife, who is a city planning architect, often disagrees with what she sees there.
In the hot and steamy weather I have to drink much, and I often get out of the house and visit the nearby 24-hour convenient stores to buy this or that beverage, as if the stores were an extension of the living room. I also like to get out to read a book, as the house is quite small and cramped for five persons, but my reading is often interrupted by rain, mosquitoes, or the sunset feeling so premature for the season. The house has an air-conditioning machine, but we have not used it much, as it is quite hard to find a setting that lets us feel comfortable but does not make us catch cold. (I had the machine once blowing cold air on my neck over a night. Next morning I woke up with a high fever and intolerable pain in my neck and shoulders.)
We bought Japan Rail Passes to let our family to travel in the national railway network freely without further payments. The passes are available only from foreign countries. They are valid also for most of the Shinkansen trains, but not for any private railways. If the railway line contains a private section, a surcharge is required.
We used our rail passes quite a lot. First we visited the city of Kanazawa. On a Japanese scale the city is quite small, only about 300 000 inhabitants, but it is famous of its university. The city is located on the west coast, and due to the (relative) scarcity of people is therefore more spacious than the east coast cities. The district surrounding Kanazawa has the largest snowfalls in the world, up to the point that sometimes people have to leave their homes through second-floor windows or a roof hatch, as the building is nearly buried in snow. Maintaining urban traffic is quite a stunt, too.
Our friend, a professor of mathematics, had us stay in his home and showed us the city. Kanazawa has an old town with preserved cities and streets and we walked there for an afternoon. We also enjoyed a seaside drive with the professor's open car. We visited a beach with bare rock instead of sand, and caught sea shells which we ate later as a dinner. (As far as I remember, sea shells were the earliest main food in the history of Japanese people, excluding Ainus who had a diet of their own).
(Continued...)
|
Language pair: Finnish; Thai
|
|
Juha-Petri T.
August 7, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
Puti in Japan, part 3 of 3
(Continued from part 2)
After Kanazawa we visited the city of Himeji which has a famous white castle. We visited the castle guided by a cousin of my wife. The castle looks bright outside, but is somewhat gloomy inside due to its dark-brown wooden interior and scarcity of window area. (You do not really want panorama windows in a building bombarded by thousands of aggressive enemies.) The castle has often been used as the stage of Kurosawa's samurai movies.
In Kurashiki city we saw more of historic town streets. The word "kura" means a storehouse for comestibles or other merchandise. These storehouses of the city have been protected, as there are not too many of them left in Japan any more.
The city of Okayama, besides Himeji and Kurashiki, was a third city in the southern Japan we visited. Okayama ha a large and beautiful park. Not very far from Okayama there is a very long and high bridge connecting the mainland Japan to Shikoku island. We did not go as far as Shikoku, but stopped at the small Yushima island at the midpoint of the bridge to eat a lunch in a restaurant.
We visited Kyoto, too, as my wife wanted to show the historic buildings to our children, but son got a fever, so I returned with him to Tokyo, leaving my wife and daughter to continue their excursion in Kyoto.
As a finale of our trip we saw the firework show in Chofu city (actually a part of Tokyo). My wife felt very happy, as she is a great enthusiast of fireworks. She is dreaming about seeing again a show with a "sanjaku" firecracker large enough to fill the whole sky with its light. Sanjakus are so large that their launching site must be selected carefully in order to not cause damage to the surrounding city.
The last day or two we spent buying presents for our Finnish relatives and filling our bags with foodstuffs not available in Finland.
Now we are back to Finland. Our holidays are over but the summer goes still on for a while. Next summer that we do not go to Japan, I plan to compensate my losses by going to northern Finland and basking in the midnight sun for a good while. :-)
Puti
|
Language pair: Finnish; Thai
|
|
Juha-Petri T.
August 6, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
