www.CostaRicaTicas.com

How comfortable are you in communicating with the locals?

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The best revenge is living the good life!

I really struggle communicating but I am working through Pimsleur and looking for a tutor.

King Costa gave me the idea to look for a tutor which I am doing now.

I hope to be able to communcate somewhat when I return in October.

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"Life isn't like a box of chocolates...it's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow." SP

I can get by pretty well. The key for me was to learn the root of many verbs. By using the root and learning a few key endings such as "o" for masculine and "a" for feminine and "mos" for we, it has increased my ability to communicate exponentially. Even though I know I am not speaking the language absolutely correctly the recipient clearly knows what I am saying. Also, I have a pretty large vocabulary of common nouns. This helps tremendously as well. I spend a good deal of time reading bilingual text as well. I try to learn at least one new thing a day. Usually I will learn a new verb. At this time I'm not even concerned about proper tense as mentioned earlier...if you have the root of the verb the recipient will understand you clearly. That is my 2 colones worth.

dapanz1

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Paradise= Sitting outside the Bodega in Panama City about 1 am. Drinking cool Balboas with cool friends and blazin' hot Colombianas. I want to be there..RIGHT NOW!

I can get by well. I thought it was better until a monger asked me to translate for him. I was burried!

He wanted to to get two chicas in Dom Rep to do a lizzi show, complete with dildos and vibrators. I did not know how to translate most of it.

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Hanging in Laurelas with the Paisas

One of the biggest hurdles is practicing with people who speak spanish. In the beggining your afraid of making mistakes and sounding goofy. Once I got past that it's a breeze. We have a large hispanic population in new england and people are generally happy to help out if they know you are trying to learn the language.

So every morning I practice at my local Dunkin Donuts. I get to fine tune my Espanol, and the DD chicas get to giggle at the new words/phrases I learned the night before at home. It's a fair trade.

And No, don't ask. Nothing sexual with the DD chicas. As friendly as they are, New England PR chicas just don't look the same as CR chicas. WAY too many beans, if you know what I mean. And I kinda prefer Muy Flaca

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Learned my first Spanish from Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs,
eldorob

Another way to practice is with a steady novia down there and a dictionary. She will understand your accent and correct you as you go along.

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Hanging in Laurelas with the Paisas

As stated I started on Pimsluer yesterday... One question I have is anyone who has expierience with learning with Pimsluer... for example.. they refer to spanish as the word Castiano... Probably spelled wrong without accents... I have never heard this word used... Are the formal pronuciations used on these tapes familiar to the locals or is it just a few words...

Habla Castiano? Rather than Habla Espanol? I have never heard that...

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"Success isn't having $$ it is knowing how to Spend It"

I think that refers to The European Spanish (Spain) which all the others came from. In all the Spanish speaking countries they have their own slang. They all understand proper Spanish as well.

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Hanging in Laurelas with the Paisas

The lessons will eventually stop referring to it as Castellano and start calling it Español.

Don't worry, you will not learn anything that folks won't understand. Pimsleur is "educated" Spanish with no dialect, but the speakers in the lessons are Latin.

I interact with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Costa Ricans, Colombians, Hondurans and can now hear that they all sound different. Some speak "proper" Spanish and sound like a Pimsleur lesson, others speak with a heavy dialect. Each gives me different language advice and they sometimes contradict each other, but they have never disagreed with something I learned from Pimsleur.

Buy an electronic translator and watch some Spansih TV. Stick with it and you will be amazed.

I can communicate fairly well, as long as someone does not start with the "machine gun Spanish", which leaves me with a stupid expression on my face. Usually, the girls seem to appreciate the fact that you are trying to speak their language and will speak slowly. That holds true for almost everyone you cross paths with down there. In general, the locals are pretty friendly and will try to communicate and speak very little English.

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Tunaman

Gman, Castilliano is how the Argentinians refer to speaking espaniol.

Papa Nut

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The best revenge is living the good life!

As CW stated, and they explain in the CD, that that is the formal pronuciation per the Castillans or Spainards, and eventually they will refer to it as Espanol... OK lesson two in the books.. I so much want to go and do lesson 3 but don't want to overload the brain per Dr. Pimselur even if 1 & 2 is remedial..... Then again nobody ever said I was a rocket scientist...

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"Success isn't having $$ it is knowing how to Spend It"

Jimmydr,
I'm not sure how much this applies in CR, but when I was in Thailand I had a conversations with some ex-pats and locals who told me a big drawback to using a bar-girl as your language tutor is that you will learn the "bar" version of the language (pronunciation and slang usage) that will "mark" you for where you learned to speak when talking to the regular population. In other words, there may be "class" differences in addition to the regional differences that others are referring to. OTOH, learning that way is better than nothing, the price is right and it isn't a bad side benefit to hanging out with these gals.

All other things being equal, while it is better to learn spanish from a DR hooker than to not learn to speak any spanish at all, it is much better to try and learn spanish from a CD, a formal language course or from a regular educated spanish speaker.

I make calls from my office and the Spanish speaking people laugh at my Spanish, but they correct me afterwards. Its a beginning point to build on.
If you can speak some, a lot of times, chicas will hang around longer.

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Hanging in Laurelas with the Paisas

If I remembered correctly from college is that Spain speaks Castillian Spanish..refer to proper Spanish. This is what I study in college. Here in Texas we have many Mexicans and they have combine Mexican Spanish to Texas English and thus you have a "Tex-Mex" Spanish. So speaking Spanish in Texas I try to speak the Tex-Mex Spanish.

Other Latin countries that were colonized by Spain has their base of Castillian Spanish and in time develope their own slang....which has evolved into different usage, meaning and pronunciation. In the Spanish speaking communities in the US there is a movement to try to use the words that would be recognized by all group of Spanish speakers...especially in Television...so that everyone understand what they meant.

Side note: To me... Argentinians speak Spanish with an Italian accent..and so are some Colombianas from Medellin.

After hanging around with different Spanish speaking people...I can sometime tell whether he/she speaks Spain Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Cuban Spanish or Colombian Spanish, etc.