I'm back and may be in a bind!
It's been awhile since I posted, but I have been using the translation part of this website VERY FREQUENTLY. Also, I've been up to date with the "daily word of the day" emails.
Anyway, here is my situation - I speak and write very little Spanish - maybe barely enough to barely get by at best. Most Spanish I learned was 20 - 25 years ago from friends I met while in college and during several trips to my friends homes in Colombia and Venezuela while on vacation. So, at best my learning experience is "from the streets", not from the book. My old friends from college has since married, had families, relocated for job reasons and moved on with their lives.
Well, my best friend (100% Gringo) and his wife (100% Colombian) invited me with them to her home town in Medellin, Colombia for vacation which I accepted and will leave on April 1st. These friends are NOT releated to my old group from 20 - 25 years ago.
Here is my problem - When I do the formal studies on this site and from the book, I get bored and lose interest hence my chosen name for this site - Although 95% of what I have seen in the study materials is helpful, there is a certain but DISTINCT dialect difference in the language between the Colombian dialect and other countries. Sometimes a meaning of a sentence when spoken using a Colombian dialect is hard to understand by others from a different country.
I have been closely monitoring a live Colombian web chat room on a daily basis for the past several months and their written dialect is SO MUCH DIFFERENT than what I learned here. Over time I actually started to participate in very small conversations. Maybe their Spanish may not be "book correct", but it is what it is as spoken in Colombia.
Since I only got several weeks before I leave, I would like to focus SPECIFICALLY on the proper Colombian dialect to supplement the Colombian chat room learning experience. Is there anything on this site that can help me?
John New Jersey
** Just for the record, the Colombian chat room I speak of is a decent chat room with decent people, not an adult chat room.
1 Answer
This sitehttp://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/siteindex.php lets you study vocabulary and they have short video clips of natives from different countries-- one of them might be from Colombia... the videos also have the transcript in Spanish and English so you can follow along.
welcome back and good luck!!
