Greetings Amigos.

[Quaeso]

Hi, my name is Christopher, I'm 37 years old, and I'm here to improve my Spanish reading, composition, listening, and speaking. I'm from a place where there are not many Spanish speakers (North Dakota, USA), but I have several friends from Puerto Rico (Boricuas), with whom I would like to be able to communicate better with, and to learn more about the apparently rich Spanish literary and historical tradition.

Like many Americans, I took some Spanish in school, and was able to visit Southern Spain years ago. Although I have some practical motivation for learning Spanish (I work in a Supermarket), my main goal is to focus upon reading comprehension by working through various Spanish novels. I tend to spend a lot of time reading, and I'm interested in Ecclesiastical and Classical Latin along with some in Biblical Greek. I don't consider myself to be very far progressed in the Classical languages, but I enjoy learning them mainly for the sake of appreciating the traditions of both my church and secular society, and I'm hopeful that this interest in Latin might improve my progression in Spanish, which seems to derive much of it's vocabulary and grammar from it. If you like, you can read some of my online postings on another forum called latindiscussion.org where I have the same username, which is a reference to my relationship with God and certain prayers within my church called "proper collects".

I've started to read Marcelino pan y vino, which was recommended to me by the AI bot, since I was having trouble getting registered here; and is really my first attempt at a Spanish novella. It is a simple children's style novel about some humble Franciscans in Spain who founded a small monastery and who receive by surprise a small child on their doorstep. As far as resources go, I think that I am fairly well geared up already for studying Spanish: I have Cassell's dictionary, the DLE regular and student editions (it took me awhile to find a dictionary with some etymology), 501 verbs, and two older grammars, one from Espinosa, and the other from Ratcliffe. Along with an English translation of Marcelino from about 1960. So starting out if everything goes well, I will likely be asking grammar questions on the threads about this book and others (recommendations welcome). Thank you for your support and generosity here, and nice to meet you all.

[Rusty]

Welcome to the forums, Christopher.

We love questions here. Come back soon!

(BTW, 'novela' contains only one 'l'.)

[aleCcowaN]

Welcome, Quaeso!!

[Quaeso]

Thanks, nice to meet you. Do you think it's better to try to ask the grammar questions in English or Spanish?

[aleCcowaN]

Whatever works for you.