Trying to understand Argentine, Uruguayan & Chilean accents

[Caballero]

You can also use that magic phrase "Más despacio, por favor" .

[chileno]

Originally Posted by Caballero

You can also use that magic phrase "Más despacio, por favor" .

You cannot do that with a movie though, it sounds horrible...

[laepelba]

Sí, claro. Y "me repite/a, por favor", etc...... Ya sé. Pero algunas veces voy a estar presente cuando algunos nativos tienen conversaciónes ... y a veces conversaciónes profesionales. No siempre podré interrumpir esas conversaciones ... pero estará muy útil para mi a entender esas conversaciones para saber que pasa........... Voy a estar la única persona que no habla español con fluidez. Pero, también voy a estar la única persona que no está allí para razones profesionales..... Tendré que dejar en el segundo plano ("in the background"??) en muchos casos.......

[aleCcowaN]

"permanecer en segundo plano"

"ser la única persona"

Excellent! If you speak the way you wrote that, it'll be perfect. Those little differences are very easy to process from a native point of view. It's almost like an accent; you (=we) can filter it without even being aware of it.

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

"permanecer en segundo plano"

"ser la única persona"

Excellent! If you speak the way you wrote that, it'll be perfect. Those little differences are very easy to process from a native point of view. It's almost like an accent; you (=we) can filter it without even being aware of it.

Gracias!! Y claro - enseño muchos alumnos que son "ESOL" (English Speakers of Other Languanges), quienes son nuevos estudiantes en los EEUU y a hablar inglés. Entiendo más y más "broken English", porque muchas veces necesito enfocar en las matemáticas y no tengo tiempo para enseñar el inglés en el mismo tiempo....

No estoy preocupada de hablar ... sé que puedo hablar con suficiente fluidez para que los otros puedan entenderme. (Gracias a mi tutora!!!!!!) Sólo estoy preocupada de MI capacidad a entender y seguir sus conversaciones............

[aleCcowaN]

You may say "¿me lo puede repetir más despacio?". In the States, to my despair, many times I said "I don't understand", they changed the sentences! so it started all over again. They were so nice that they put me in a worse situation.

[laepelba]

Thanks! That's good advice. "No entiendo" y "repite/a, por favor" will hopefully yield different results!!!

[Caballero]

Originally Posted by chileno

You cannot do that with a movie though, it sounds horrible...

Pero es posible hacer con un podcast o otra grabación. Yo tengo Audacity (un editor de archivos de wave), y es posible cambiar el "tempo" sin cambiando la intonación de música o el tono de la voz. Con películas es aún más fácil. Se puede activar los subtítulos en castellano y se lee el texto.

[chileno]

Originally Posted by Caballero

Pero es posible hacerlo con un podcast u otra grabación. Yo tengo Audacity (un editor de archivos de wave), y es posible cambiar el "tempo" sin cambiar la intonación de la música o el tono de la voz. Con películas es aún más fácil. Se pueden activar los subtítulos en castellano y se lee el texto.

[Beto]

Sounds to me like you're doing the right things. I have been studying Spanish for over 15 years and have two liabilities--bad hearing and started when I was 50 years old. Nevertheless, I've done all of those things you have been doing and more and slowly, slowly it comes, although the spoken word has been the last to arrive for me. Keep on keeping on.

[chileno]

Originally Posted by laepelba

Thanks! That's good advice. "No entiendo" y "repite/a, por favor" will hopefully yield different results!!!

You are going to need a third phrase too.

(me) lo puede explicar de otra manera? (todavía no entiendo)


Been there, done that.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by chileno

Can are going ...

Pardon?

[poli]

If all else fails you can say, "Perdona pero no puedo decifrar sus últimas ideas. ¿Me pueden explicarlas en inglés?"

[chileno]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

Pardon?

I have no explanation for that...

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by poli

If all else fails you can say, "Perdona pero no puedo descifrar sus últimas ideas. ¿Me pueden explicarlas en inglés?"

I'll remember that ... I hope I won't need to use it, as many (most?) of the people I'll be with won't be able to speak any English, and those who do aren't going to be there to help me with my Spanish, but will be working on professional things for which I'm just going to be an observer. Typically, I am able to roughly understand things that are re-explained to me in Spanish using different wording.....

[chileno]

Originally Posted by poli

If all else fails you can say, "Perdona pero no puedo decifrar sus últimas ideas. ¿Me pueden explicarlas en inglés?"

LouAnn made a correction already.

It would be better if she says "Perdona pero no puedo entender..." o "Perdona pero no entiendo ..."

and "lo último que dijo" instead of "últimas ideas", the latter would be ideal for example in a conference or something like that.

[Caballero]

Perdona is an imperative form of perdonar, right? Then what is "Perdón"?

[Rusty]

Perdón is a noun.

Que le pidas perdón (a él).
Ask him for forgiveness.

It is also an interjection which means 'pardon me', 'excuse me' or 'sorry'.

[aleCcowaN]

If you want to practise Argentine Spanish, I recommend the movie "Un cuento chino", with Ricardo Darín and Ignacio Huang. It's a 6.5 or 6.7 points dramatic comedy spoken in Spanish, the whole range of Chinese -which you are not supposed to understand- and Russian in the credits. It has a slow pace, not too much dialogue, and it's visually aiding and self-explanatory most of the time -what avoids you feeling like you are losing three quarters of it-. The bitter-sweet narration revolves around a character who lives frozen in the sixties and feels foreign in his own country, and the circumstance of he meeting someone who has shipwrecked in alien lands. It has touches of Italian surrealism, Chinese symbolism and some Bollywood tale air (the title is literally A Chinese Tale, but it means "a cock-and-bully story" in Spanish).

[laepelba]

After some research, I have discovered that "Un Cuento Chino" is not due for release in the US. Maybe I should try to look it up while I'm in Argentina next month.........