So that your Spanish doesn't sound like plastic Spanish:
recibir = llegarle algo a alguien

Here is one more tip so that your Spanish doesn't sound like plastic Spanish. I don't know about Spain, but in most other countries we don't always say recibí una carta, we say me llegó una carta, Lit: a letter arrived for me. I really get the jitters when students keep going the easy way and say recibí el libro ayer, todavía no he recibido el libro, and the like.

OK, stop using recibir 95% of the time and give some variety to your speech. Here are some examples:

recibí una carta ayer = me llegó una carta ayer (a letter arrived for me yesterday)
¿recibí algo en el correo hoy? = ¿me llegó algo en el correo hoy? (did something arrived for me in the mail today)
todavía no he recibido el paquete = todavía no me ha llegado el paquete (the package hasn't arrived for me yet)
recibiste un sobre = te llegó un sobre (an evelope arrived for you)
ya recibí mi pasaporte = ya me llegó el pasaporte (my passport arrived for me already)

recibí un premio = me llegó un premio. Hold on, this doesn't work in this example. You only say me llegó when something literarily arrives for you, maybe by mail, by email, but not when you receive an award or a good note in school. In this case we would say: me dieron un premio, they gave me an award.

Sometimes you could say in English: a letter arrived for me today. That's how we say it in Spanish, and it's perfectly correct. Remember, you are using the indirect object pronoun in this structure.

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Hispanics who are studying Spanish

I have had some students like them, and it is very difficult to teach them. I mean, the "seed" is there, but the grammar terms are boring to them, and they just want to learn faster than that, and they can. Their advantage is that they don't have to work hard on their pronuntiation because they already pronounce Spanish like natives, but they still need to work on their intonation sometimes. These are recent stories from three different websites:

ALBA GETS SERIOUS ABOUT SPANISH

JESSICA ALBA is taking Spanish lessons, so she can sign up for Latin movies and feel more confident when talking about her Mexican heritage. The actress admits she confused a lot of journalists when she first became a star - because she looked Latino but couldn't speak the language. Her lack of Spanish led to criticism and suggestions she wasn't a true Latina - something that really upset the Fantastic Four star. She tells Siempre Mujer magazine, "I didn't want to misrepresent Latinos and I didn't know how to defend myself. But I went to my room and I cried all night. Since then, I've preferred not to comment on the subject. "I tried to explain to them that, in this country (America), I'm considered Latina and, thus, I consider myself Latina as well. I grew up eating enchiladas... I identify with Mexicans. It's in my blood whether or not I speak Spanish." And now she's a mum, she has decided to sign up for Spanish lessons, so she and her daughter Honor can become fluent. She adds, "I know the basics, but I just hired a professor that specialises in Hispanic studies to teach me and Honor. God knows that I wish I was raised bilingual. But it wasn't to be. "I want to make movies in Spanish... There are so many interesting themes and stories that are worth sharing, like the lives of immigrants, for example. "There's a whole world that hasn't been sufficiently explored and I want to be part of it - the violence on the Mexican borders, the political upheaval in Venezuela and Bolivia and the drug trafficking in Colombia." 

SO IS SANCHEZ

Mark Sánchez
Age: 22
Birthplace: Long Beach, CA
High School: Mission Viejo High School, Mission Viejo, CA
College: University of Southern California
Football position: quarterback

Sánchez is a third-generation Mexican American. His great-grandfather was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and was one of the displaced Hispanics who lived in Los Angeles’ Chávez Ravine – a hardscrabble place where Mexican immigrant families were cleared out to make way for Dodgers Stadium. Sánchez hails from a family of football players. Older brother Nick Sánchez Jr. was a Yale University quarterback, and his other older brother, Brandon Sánchez, played on DePauw University’s offensive line. Dad Nick Sánchez Sr. was a quarterback at East Los Angeles College. Sánchez’s growing Los Angeles fan base includes legions of Latinos, and his fame in the Mexican-American community has already been likened to that of now-retired boxer Oscar de la Hoya and retired Los Angeles Dodgers pitching legend Fernando Valenzuela. Sánchez began taking Spanish lessons in his junior year at USC so he could conduct interviews with Spanish-language media without the need of a translator. Interest in Sánchez from Mexico-based media in addition to U.S.-based networks prompted the decision.

SO IS LONGORIA

21 August 2009, 10:57 AM. ByCindy Casares

Eva Longoria is currently in Mexico City shooting the film Dias De Gracia which focuses on a kidnapping that takes place during the World Cup. And is completely in Spanish. Eva, who was born and raised in Texas, began taking Spanish lessons in Mexico in March because, as she told the Mexican press, she grew up speaking English. Her character, Xochitl, is not the protagonist, but according to the film’s director, Xochitl’s role is key to the movie. (Translation: It allows them to use Eva’s name on the marquee.) With her last film–Over Her Dead Body–being such a flop, Eva’s lucky she has her Mexican heritage to fall back on because, while the producer of Dias De Gracia says Eva was drawn to the project because of its characters, we’d guess she was drawn to the fact that someone–anyone–wanted her to be in their movie. Dias De Gracia is scheduled to be released June of 2010 during the next World Cup.

The truth is that I have heard the three of them speaking Spanish, and I think their Spanish is great.

from: www.contactmusic.com, Hispanic SportBusiness, and guanabee.com

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BusinessWeek: Mexico City's hottest buildings

There is an article in BusinessWeek today about modern arquitecture in Mexico City.

Design including the underground mall

About the building above

BusinessWeek: Mexico City's Hottest Buildings (slideshow)

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Árboles frutales (fruit trees)

This is a sample list of fruit tree names in Spanish. If you pay attention, very often, the tree name of a fruit with a femenine noun, is the masculine version of its fruit's name:

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Sótano de las Golondrinas (Cave of Swallows) San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

Continuing with the series, I have another cave for you. This is the deepest cave in the world. It's even deeper than the 300 meters of the Cave of Crystals below. This is 400 meters. BBC narrator (none other than) Sir David Attenboroug says that the Empire State Buiding would fit in there.

You could call it also Cave of Parrots:

Sótano really means basement, but it's called sótano because it is the basement of the world.

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Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. La Cueva de los Cristales

This is what you encounter if you dig deep down in the Earth. The largest crystals discovered so far in this planet. In fact, before finding this in year 2000, nobody thought something like this could exist. Many expert scientists initialy thought that it was fake.

If you live in the UK, you can watch this BBC program tonight, January 19th, 2010.

Here it is, somebody uploaded it to Youtube a few days ago. I was confident that someone would do it for us. I did some research and found out that the narrator's accent is Scottish. (removed for now, let's see if it gets uploaded again).

To get there they need to travel in a vehicle for 30 minutes down the Earth using a mine tunnel. Everything in there is high tech since this is within a world class mine. They need a special outfit containing ice pack layers in the cloths and an ice container that cools the air they breath through a mask. The temperatures reach 150 F and the humidity is 100%. They can stay in there 30 minutes max at a time wearing the outfit. The caves may be open to the public soon. Currently, only scientists and media have access to it.

Discovery Channel program about the Naica Project.

Discovery Channel quick description of the mine (video)

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Aerial view of Cancun

One of my students is going to the Mayan Riviera in a few weeks and I wanted to show him these videos. The water is so clean you can see the bottom of the Caribbean sea from the plane. These flights took an unusual route since jetliners don't usually include an extra free tour above the hotel zone.

The pilot was in a tourist guide mood. At 2:18 he said ".???????..podrán observar Isla Mujeres" (?????? you will be able to observe Isla Mujeres).

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President Obama in trouble

President Obama danced with Mexican singer/actress Thalia. Just check Michelle Obama's face after he returned to the table.

Here is more evidence that Michelle Obama was not happy::

.

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Amores Perros. Lucha de Gigantes.

I saw the film Amores Perros together with one of my students. Below is one of the main soundtrack songs. Its name is Lucha de Gigantes, by the Spanish band Nacha Pop. The actual movie scene is too strong to embed it on this website. It's not for kids and it's not for many people. I decided to embed this other video, which contains the same exact soundtrack.

This is a link to the Amores Perros actual scene with Gael García Bernal. It's strong, but if you watch the movie, these two overlapped stories within the scene are very meaningful. At that point of the movie you just can't believe what's happening. The synchronization is perfect and it makes the scene more dramatic. In this single scene there is violence, blood, betrayal, pleasure, cheating, revenge, sex, beatings, love, kidnapping, nudity, brutality, smiles, guilt, fear, all wrapped in a beautiful song. I was reading an article made at a British university about this movie indicating that they needed a lot of mathematics to make all the scenes match, they needed time graphics and geometry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXROJzncGWA

My translation: I had two options for the title, Fight of Giants or Wrestling of Giants. I decided for the second one. Mexicans and Americans associate the word Lucha with Lucha Libre, you know, the guys wrestling with masks on. I tried to make the translation as literary as possible and I tried to match all the structures for learning purposes, and it came out very good. Thanks Spencer for your important suggestions.

"Let us enter with no fear", sings Antonio Vega in Lucha de Gigantes, and so he did on May 12, 2009 at only 51.

This is the Amores Perros Facebook fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/Amores.Perros

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America's Got Talent's runner up (2nd place). Barbara Padilla from Guadalajara, Mexico, living in Houston.

2nd place from 100,000 auditions is awesome. Second place; just like Susan Boyle in the British version.

This is Barbara's Facebook profile

Barbara Padilla's Twitter

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Shopping carts

After doing shopping, some people leave the carts right in the supermarket, some people take them out and leave them at the parking lot, but some others go to the extremes of abandoning the shopping carts only right before getting out of the United States!

The end of Main Street in San Luis, Arizona., is a border crossing station that connects the city to San Luis Rio Colorado in Mexico. Photo: Jesse Shapins.

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Pau's AT&T commercial

So this is the current AT&T commercial for the Spanish television in the United States; it's been around for about a month already.

And this is Paulina Rubio's video singing Causa y Efecto, the song on the AT&T commercial. The clip has more than 2 million 300 thousand visits, which is unusual for a video in Spanish that's been up less than 6 months. It cannot be embedded so this is the link:

version 1 (original version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvI6utLGlHE

version 2 (a version with lots of American children towards the end)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d0xEA5eXyk

Here are the lyrics with an attempt at a literal translation:

Key vocabulary and expressions:

ni = nor, not even
lograr + infinitive = to manage to + intinitive
así = like this, like that, this way
más deprisa = faster, (more in a hurry)
me toca = it's my turn; te toca = it's your turn
llevarse bien con = to get along with
hacer mal = to make sick
por = because of, for
girar = to turn around, to spin, to rotate

In the early 80's, my family and I went to Acapulco, a beach resort in Mexico. For a whole week every time my cousins and I went to the swimming pool at the Fiesta Americana Condesa hotel, Paulina was there also. We looked just like the children on the second video. LOL. We were all playing ball or just jumping or splashing about. Every time a new kid joined us, she used to tell him or her, "You don't know who is my mother!, my mother is Susana Dosamantes!." The first day we met her at the pool or at breakfast, she told us the same thing. At that time Susana Dosamantes, Paulina's mother, was more famous than her daughter, now everyone in Latin America and Spain knows who is the great Pau.

If you think about the law of cause and effect, the sphere device they use throughout the video makes perfect sense.

La Ley de Causa y Efecto / Law of Cause and Effect

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Onomástico

It's an old tradition of Spanish speaking countries to celebrate the day of one's name, also known as the day of one's saint. Spanish calendars outside the United States usually indicate saints names for each day. This is an example I found on the internet for the month of September, 2009:

This means that if your name is Fausto, your onomástico will be on September 6th. It was a tradition in many countries that if, for example, you were born on September 25th, then your name would be Dalmacio, like it or not! All my grandparents were named after the saints of the day they were born. Luckily for them, they had more than one given name to choose from.

It's a custom also in many Spanish speaking TV and radio programs outside the United States, to congratulate everyone whose onomástico falls on that day. An example of this would be, for September 1st. "....Y ahora la sección de onomásticos para el día primero de septiembre. Felicitamos a todos aquellos cuyo nombre es Arturo, Egidio y Gil...."

This tradition is alive in many countries, not only Spanish speaking ones. This is a popular tradition in Italy, in Germany, and in many other non Spanish speaking countries. This is a calendar for the month of September, 2009, that includes Polish, Islandic, German, and Hungarian names:

Some people in the Spanish speaking world, and in another countries, celebrate both, their birthday and their saints day or onomástico.

These calendars were taken from this great web site:

http://calendar.zoznam.sk/nameday-spsphor.php

Calendar.sk   27. agosto 2009
Onomástico Hispania > Hoy: Mónica

Today is the day of Santa Mónica, so congratulations to all Mónicas. Is there a famous Mónica besides Lewinsky? hmmmm.

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Adiós bolsas de plástico

The CNN Wire Latest updates on top stories 

August 19th, 2009

No more plastic bags for Mexico City

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) — Mexico City’s thousands of stores went green Wednesday, as amended ordinances on solid waste now outlaw businesses from giving out thin plastic bags that are not biodegradable.

The law affects all stores, production facilities and service providers within the Federal District, which encompasses the city limits. Nearly 9 million people live inside the district and another 10 million reside in surrounding communities that make up greater Mexico City.

Mexico City becomes the second large metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw the bags. San Francisco enacted an ordinance in March 2007 that gave supermarkets six months and large chain pharmacies about a year to phase out the bags. Los Angeles is set to impose a ban if the the state of California does not impose a statewide 25-cent fee per bag by July of next year.

Bans are also in place elsewhere in the world.

China has adopted a strict limit, reducing litter and eliminating the use of 40 billion bags, the World Watch Institute said, citing government estimates. Although compliance has been spotty, violation of the law carries a possible fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,463), World Watch said.

In Tanzania, selling the bags carries a maximum six-month jail sentence and a fine of 1.5 million shilling ($1,137).

Mumbai, India, outlawed the bags in 2000 and cities in Australia, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan have imposed bans or surcharges. Ireland reported cutting use of the bags by 90 percent after imposing a fee on each one.

Some leading environmentalists are calling for a global ban on the bags, about 5 trillion of which are used worldwide. In the United States, about 100 million bags are used each year, of which 90 million are not recycled.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, says plastic bags are the second-most-common form of litter, behind cigarette butts. The bags are the greatest form of litter on the globe’s oceans, the U.N. agency said in a recent report.

The bags are also a major threat to ocean wildlife, causing the deaths of 100,000 sea turtles and other marine animals that mistake them for food.

“Thin-film, single-use plastic bags, which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere,” Steiner said in June. “There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere.”

Mexico City, which has had some of the worst air pollution in the world, also is looking at improving its environment in other ways. The municipal government announced this month it will place more than 1,100 bicycles at 84 stations throughout the city for residents to use. Officials said they hope to increase bicycle use as a form of transportation to 5 percent, up from the current 1.2 percent.

You won't believe this: What is astonishing about plastic bags being illegal, is that on the other hand, something else became legal, and on the same week:

Mexico decriminalizes small-scale drug possession

(AP) – 4 days ago

MEXICO CITY — Mexico has enacted a controversial law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

The law defines "personal use" amounts for those drugs, as well as LSD and methamphetamines.

It says people found with those amounts will not face criminal prosecution, but that if caught a third time they will be required to complete treatment programs, though no punishment is specified to enforce that.

The law enacted Thursday says anyone caught with personal-use quantities of drugs will be urged to seek treatment for dependency. It takes effect Friday.

In 2006, the U.S. government publicly criticized a similar bill. Then-President Vicente Fox sent that legislation back to Congress for reconsideration.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Rudo y Cursi

This past week I saw the movie Rudo y Cursi with Vladimir, one of my students. His Spanish is awesome and I would say he is post-post-advanced. He speaks better Spanish than many natives. We got to a point that what he needs to learn is slang and curse words in order to understand this kind of movies a 100%. I think Mexican movies are the most complex Spanish speaking movies to understand because of the amount and variety of slang they use. it seems that they create new slang every day. Many words in this movie would be impossible to figure out by non Mexicans. I asked another student who saw this movie if the subtitled English version has as many curse words and slang as the Spanish version; he said no, so I told him that in that case, the English subtitles show a different movie.

For me, the task was a little embarrassing. So many curse words I had to write down with their corresponding approximate translations. I couldn't believe it at first. I checked on the web who created this movie and it's truly a dream team: Gael García, Diego Luna, Carlos Cuarón, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñarritú. To me, this means all the curse words, slang, and fake regional accents, have a very well designed purpose which I still can't identify. Maybe they are making fun of people from the coast of Veracruz, who are famous for using way too many curse words. Maybe they are making fun of uneducated people in general. Both Rudo and Cursi speak using very exaggerated accents which is a little annoying to me. Rudo's wife has the worst accent and it's so exaggerated and fake that sometimes it's impossible to understand (yes, I had to watch it with Spanish subtitles), and sometimes it seems that she speaks like a retarded. The Argentine actor Guillermo Francella is the easiest to understand because, unlike the other roles, he is using his own, real accent.

Since the movie title is Rudo y Cursi you might think of "Rude and Curse". ¡Nada que ver! Rudo in Spanish actually means rough; it means something a little less than violent. Cursi is a very difficult word to translate since there is no exact English equivalent. This is the Wordreference entry. In British English it means twee:

Pocket Oxford Spanish Dictionary © 2005 Oxford University Press:

I know I have high school students reading this, so do not use these words!

Chingar is the XXX Mexican swear word they use the most, together with many of its variations. Many people prefer the less strong XX euphemism fregar. Fregar means to scrub; fregadero is the kitchen sink.

Here you can listen to the actors' real Spanish (i.e. not faking an accent):

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Desconocer

Every Spanish language student knows that there are two verbs that mean to know, saber and conocer. This is true in other Romance languages as well. What many students don't know is that we have a verb with the opposite meaning: desconocer.

The main meaning of desconocer is to not know, but it could be translated as to ignore something, to be unknown to, to be unaware, to fail to recognize someone because of some unusual behavior or some unusual physical appearance. In many cases desconocer = no saber, no reconocer, and sometimes no conocer.

Examples:

Lo desconozco por completo. I don't know anything about it at all.
Desconozco qué hora es. I don't know what time it is.
Te desconozco. I don't recognize you.
Desconozco la respuesta. I don't know the answer.
Desconozco si él está en casa. I don't know if he is at home.

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Flojera

There are many words in Spanish to mean lazy or laziness. In Mexico, we use the noun flojera and the adjective flojo. You can use also holgazán and holgazanería, which are stronger. In South America they use the word vago, and in Argentina they say fiaca, and atorrante is a lazy person in that country. We all use perezoso, which is also a sloth (the animal), and pereza. I imagine this last word is the one used in Spain because it's included in many textbooks.

In order to say I'm lazy right now, we say tengo flojera. We don't really say estoy flojo. If you mean you don't feel like doing something you can say me da flojera. ¿Quieres ir a dar una vuelta al parque? No, ¡qué flojera! This means the person doesn't want to do this particular activity, but might be willing to do something else.

If you want to tell a guy that he is lazy you can say eres un flojo, eres un flojonazo (a variation of flojo), eres un perezoso, eres un holgazán.

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The largest Spanish speaking town

You fly over the town for more than five minutes and it continues and continues. This must be a cockpit view. Two complete Enya songs and still they weren't enough. It's quite an experience. You have to be at a window seat on the right side of the plane to see this (or at the cockpit, if you fly over Mexico it's not prohibited as long as the captain invites you), if you are on the left side you still see the city spreading up to the mountains. This video will take just 8 minutes of your time:

At 1.00 you see a large dark spot to the right of a highway. these are the Military Camp 1, and right next the Centro Deportivo Israelita. From 2:10 to 3:10 you see a dark spot in the center and towards the left, crossed in the middle by a main highway (el Periférico), and with a cluster of bright white lights which is an amusement park, which is right across Los Pinos, the president's home. This is a huge park called Bosque de Chapultepec. The pilot (or co-pilot) makes two zooms. The first one is the Chapultepec Castle (at the top of a hill), where the Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian of Hausburg and the Empress, Charlotte, cousin of Queen Victoria of England, lived in the 1860's. The second zoom is the World Trade Center in the darkness, which after 9/11, sadly, became the largest WTC in the world.

One time I landed in London, and the immigration officer was giving me a hard time. He was asking many questions and he said, What town in Mexico are you from? I told him form a town called "DEEFE" (D.F.). He said he's never heard of that town. I told him that it was probably because it was a small town.

The video is from Youtube, user elociodepp, who, judging by his videos, is a pilot.

Here's a day landing.

2:55. Chapultepec, our Central Park, but many times larger with several lakes, zoo with pandas, a real castle, museums, rollercoasters. On the upper side of the park you can see the Torre Mayor, which is the tallest building in Latin America. 3:50. The World Trade Center complex, with the Guiness record for the largest rotating restaurant in the world on top of the tower.

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encontrarse = estar, contar con = tener

These expressions are alternatives to encontrarse and tener. I was reading a travel brochure that said: El hotel cuenta con piscina. It really means El hotel tiene piscina. It's just a more wordy, elegant way to say the same thing, the hotel has a swimming pool.

On the phone: ¿Se encuentra Marcela? No, salió, no se encuentra en este momento. This really means ¿está Marcela (en casa) ? No, salió, no está en este momento. Is Marcela at home? No, she's out, she's not at home right now.

¿Cómo se encuentra tu amiga? Todavía se encuentra un poco enferma. ¿Cómo está tu amiga? Todavía está un poco enferma. How's your friend? She's still a little sick.

El pobre trabajador cuenta con una esposa y cuatro hijos y apenas puede mantenerlos. El pobre trabajador tiene una esposa y cuatro hijos y apenas puede mantenerlos. The poor worker has a wife and four children and he can hardly support them.

La casa cuenta con cuatro baños. La casa tiene cuatro baños. The house has four bathrooms.

Contamos con tan sólo cien dólares. Tenemos tan sólo cien dólares. We have only a hundred dollars.

Solamente contamos con unas cuantas horas para entregar el proyecto. Solamente tenemos unas cuantas horas para terminar el proyecto. We have only several hours to deliver the project.

El banco se encuentra junto a la estación del metro. El banco queda/está junto a la estación del metro. The bank is next to the subway station.

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Astronautas con sombrero

Desfile apoteósico: This picture was taken during a welcome back parade in Mexico City on September 23, 1969. Exactly 2 months and 3 days before that date (today 40 years ago), these three brave men, here with sombrero and poncho, were in the Moon wearing a different outfit.

The Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, wearing sombreros and ponchos, are swarmed by thousands in Mexico City as their motorcade is slowed by the enthusiastic crowd, September 23, 1969.

On the back of the truck (or is it a different vehicle?) you can see their wives waving to the crowd.

Probably, this was the only parade in their honor they were present at, and that would be the reason why the NASA publishes this picture. There were parades in their honor in the United States, but they were not present, they were still in quarentine. This was one of the first events they attended after they were released from observation.

20090720 Photo: NASA Images (spanishNY.com) top