3rd Meeting: Word Order

3rd Class Meeting

I LOVE our homework from last week. We were to investigate a famous Spanish speaking person and describe them as much as you can in Spanish. I didn't choose any of the celebrities, although I must confess I wanted so bad to write about Javier Bardeem (I am a BIG fans of him). I did my homework on Mario Benedetti, an Uruguayan Journalist, Novelist and Poet - es de periodista, novelista y poeta. I googled Spanish Speaking Important People and choose randomly a name from the list that goodle provided. Reading about Mario Benedetti got me to appreciate the literary of the Spanish speaking country. I am especially taken by the poem he dictated to his secretary shortly before he passed away.

Mi vida ha sido como una farsa

Mi arte ha consistido

En que esta no se notara demasiado

He sido como un levitador en la vejez

El brillo marrón de los azulejos

Jamás se separó de mi piel

(Fragment)

A free translation into English of these few lines might be as follows:

My life has been like a farce

My art has consisted

In this not being noticed too much

I've been as a levitator in my old age

The brown sheen of the tiles

Never came off my skin

(Fragment)

(Source Wikipedia)

This class meeting we learned:

1. How to count to 10 in Spanish, the name of things around us (table, chairs etc) and colors.
2. We learn about the masculine and feminine attribution to nouns (el and la) and how it ended (-a or -o). Ex:  la mapa (map - masculine, end with -a) and la foto (picture - feminine, end with -o). But not to forget that there are the special words, the irrregular words that stays masculine etc and how the attribute change when they are plural (los - las)
3. We also learned more communicative phrases

Discovery:

The adjective+Noun placement in Spanish is the same as in my Language, Bahasa Indonesia.
    English -     Red Book
    Spanish - el libro rojo (book red)
    Indo     -     Buku Merah (book red)

Is it helpful for my Spanish learning when I find a similarity of pattern in my L1 and my first learned foreign language? Yes and No. In a way it is motivating because at least I have a notion of knowledge but it is confusing because my brain says foreign language thus i switched to English pattern and soon got tangled in my english-spanish 'transfer of knowledge'. (Note to self: train myself to approach the matter in a differnt perspective)

To Do: This is a good insight on the role/interference of L1 (or 1st learned foreign language) in L2 learning. --