Beginner Spanish Meeting Highlights

Tuesdays are for OKC Spanish meetings!

It's my group, so just trust me!

I stopped counting how many times I told our beginners to start thinking about levelling up.

My suggestion: If you are not struggling to create basic responses to the meeting content, and if you are focused on the nuance of the reading, start working on the intermediate content. Use the Beginner study guide and meeting content from the same month to help you along; then RSVP to the intermediate meeting. Solid preparation will get you 95% of the way there. Asking me questions will get you another 3%. Your car will get you the last 2% of the way.

I recommend this English-language guide through the past tense concepts. Just get familiar with the information, no need to study it at this point. Then start using the preterite and imperfect conjugation tables to work through the meeting content.

Levelling up is important to our group for two reasons: First, the better you get the more intimidating your Spanish becomes to lower-level speakers (of which we had a great example last night!), discouraging actual beginners from attending. Beginner sentences are expected to be simple, and pronunciation should not be very good. Your amazing contributions are amazing... because you are sharing them in a low-level group.

You are not asking simple questions! You are not creating simple discussion question responses! You are not struggling with basic pronunciation! You are crafting detailed sentences, speaking well, trying to learn nuance - and even speaking simple Spanish on the fly! You are not a little fish in a big pond anymore just because you can't say "independencia" easily 😄 You aren't fluent, but you do have skillz, yo. Time to level up.

When you bring complex questions and fluency to a Beginner meeting, that the meeting is no longer suitable for Beginners.

Secondly, by staying in the Beginners, you are a big fish confining yourself to a little pond. You might not know every nook and cranny of the little pond, but you seem fairly comfortable with it. Comfort kills progress! The learning path in OKC Spanish is not rigid. You will continue to enhance your basic skills as you swim upstream into bigger and bigger ponds.

You guys are doing amazing, but if you stay in the little pond too long not only will your progress feel less rewarding as time goes on, but you may potentially also be taking a seat from an actual beginner who needs to practice those basic skills.

I myself am still honing my own skills - I always let you guys know when my knowledge needs to be supplemented in order to answer some of your questions (that is a key indicator for you to level up!). Please take this as inspiration that you don't have to know things perfectly to move on. In fact, sometimes, moving up will be the exact exposure you need to improve those basic skills.

Take the Fluency Assessment to get a basic idea of where you are at - and feel free to revisit it every few months! I'll usually tell you when I think you should start thinking about it. The struggle is real if you are at the right level. If you are more curious than you are struggling, then it might be time to move on.

¿De qué hablamos?

The conversation with this group of people is always fun, lively, and engaging! Because we had a solid Intermediate participant (who seemed to participate with no preparation!), 3 pre-Intermediate Beginners, and one legitimate Beginner, we discussed a wide variety of topics. The content, sourced from a centuries old document, was familiar to everyone and the translations were all wonderfully done.

We discussed vowels and the rolled "rr" versus the single "r", "No sabo" kids, and if the English trend of using "actor" as gender neutral (as opposed to "actor/actress") translates into Spanish. After some brief investigating, it seems that Spanish is not following suite - Latin-based languages are heavily gendered, while English has a history of using gendered words to diminish contributions, skill, power, and presence.

¿Qué aprendimos?

One of our big conversations was about rolling and not rolling single R's. Emphasizing that the difference is not something to worry about at this level (😜), I tried to remember the rules I learned from the book I got from the Friends of the Metropolitan Library Book Sale several years ago: Ortografía de la lengua española, by Paula Arenas Martín-Abril. My advice in the moment was that for words beginning with r, roll it. I got a little muddled after that 😅 I have since referenced my book, and here is what I can tell you:

• Do roll it if it is the first letter of the word: Respeto

• Do roll it when it is preceded by L or N: alrededor, honrar

• Compound words where the second word starts with an r usually duplicate the r rather than maintaining the original spelling: pelirrojo

• In all other cases, pronounce the singular r with just a soft baby flip rather than a full roll. But this is not a basic, beginner skill my dudes 😉 This type of thing is usually acquired around intermediate level.

One of the last things that came up before we ended the meeting was how to express shame. My suggestion was: me da vergüenza and everyone ran away at the sight of the smiley face in the middle of the word (ü). I mistakenly called it an umlaut, which has a unique function in German. The Spanish word for this accent mark is diéresis, and it shows that the letter u is pronounced as its own sound:

• guitarra versus pingüino.

  • -gui is pronounced "ghee."

  • -güi is pronounced "gwee."

• llegue versus Nicaragüense

  • -gue is pronounced "geh"

  • -güe is pronounced "gwey"

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Al fin y al cabo

While writing up this blogpost, my phone buzzed at me - one of our pre-Intermediate Beginners shared a link in our Whatsapp Foundational+Beginner chat group, which talked about one of the questions from the meeting: how to use olvidar. I love the participation and teamwork vibe! Our Whatsapp chat groups are there primarily for members to practice, learn, and get help preparing for the meetings - and this is a perfect example ❤️ I'm your guide through Spanish, but I'm not your only resource. Share away!

A beautiful portrait of Mrs. Diéresis and her son

Don't forget to RSVP for our latin dance party on August 16th! It'll be good practice for the short dance portion of the OKC Spanish anniversary party!

I'd do this for a living if I could, but that's a work in progress. Til then, please consider donating a sandwich keep my Spanish fueled!