Listening!

The purpose of this post is to do some listening exercise. You listen to the song while you write in a paper what it is being said in English, and then, when you get it all, you write it in a comment.
Don't read the comments before writing yours!
The song chosen is a Motorhead song, with interesing and very understandable lyrics. The song is accompanied by subtitles in portuguese, which i think that helps a lot. Enjoy it!

I am not following this great blog

Hi folks!!

I want to apologize because how I say in the title I am not following this great blog but, only to the moment. I don´t have time for anything but this blog looks me very useful, so, when I had time for it, I will spend it some sptupid and Santi´s writtings.

The reason are my cokery classes in the afternoon and, the hour of English with Judith but, especially, the PER exam, for getting my boat licence. It is very difficult and I need to spend a lot of time in it.

I apologize for my spelling mistakes too.

Thank you everybody!

The importance of foreign languages

I'm not going to defend the importance of having a good level in English (I haven't, but I will!), for example, because it's obvious that it will improve drastically your social abilities, referring to your chances to interact with people from all around the world.

I'm going to expose a theory which focuses on languages in a very different way, its called Whorf-Sapir hypothesys. It says that the language configures your percepcion drastically.

When you are a child, and you begin to interact with your environment, you inmediately start to create mental categories where you classify your perceptions. Simultaneously, you begin to speak/understand a language, so your abstract mental images became concrete words, and the grammar structures, the vocabulary particularities, became a key part of your mental conceptions. And it will have a big influence in your further learning processes. The interaction between enviroment and language is mutual. It means that your language determines the way you asimilate your perceptions, and it means that the evolution of a language is determined for the enviroment where it developes too.

I can give you some examples. The Eskimos can name more than 20 kinds of snow, so they can distinguish between them. You can hardly name 2 or 3 (if you can), and, even if you try hard to study and distinguish dozens of them as Eskimos do, it's extremely probable that you will not achieve it. The snow plays a very important role in Eskimos environment, so they have all those categories for it in their language, and in their minds. When a child is born, and he begins the learning process, the snow is always present in his everyday life. So, he begin to create mental structures to undertand and classify it, while he is learning the verbal equivalent in Eskimos's language. In your case, that mental structures about snow have not been created, so if you begin a proccess in your own language, it will be very much harder, if not impossible.

Another example could be the impossibility to translate some words from one language to other, even if you know the meaning of them, your language has not created any precise word for that, because your language doesn't posess that concept. For instance, morriña (Galician) is not the same as nostalgia (Spanish), or zeitgeist (German) hasn't any particular translation in any language that I know. What its more, I understand the concept of Zeitgeist, but when I try to explain somebody his meaning, I never find the wright way of doing it. I am sure that everybody knows some example of this (a word in a foreign language that has no translation to your own language).

To translate means to twist. There is no comparison between reading a book, or watching a film in his original language, you lose the original meaning if you don't, and you take a new one given by the translators. Sometimes it is very accurate, but sometimes it's awful. Not to mention the actors work, which is 50%, or even more in my opinion, his vocal interpretation. How the hell can everybody say that Robert the Niro is a great actor, if they have never heard his voice. So, acting is only to make faces?. It gets me mad.

In short, the more languages you know, the more you develope your general understanding of the the things happening, or surrounding you. Also this theory supports the relation between language and cultural identity, so I recommend all "Galicia bilingüe" people to think a bit about it.

Human Castles: The beating heart of Catalonia

Hello folks,

I would like to explain briefly this Catalan tradition to you because it fulfills a lot of positive and profitable values such as solidarity, discipline, effort, run risks to achieve the objetives of the group, etc. It has much more than it seems. For instance, the force has to be divided to make possible this difficult human constructions. The "colla" (group of "castellers") is made up of people of all ages, from little kids to grandfathers. There are many kinds of "castells". Normally, the three main parts of a castell are: 1) Pinya: it is the base of the castle and it has the goal of giving stability for the rest of the castle. It is necessary to have a big group of people to have a solid "pinya". 2) Tronc: it is the central column of people, in stages of two, three, or four people. 3) Canalla: it means "children" in Catalan. On the top of the castle is where children can "carregar" this human castles, it only happens when the "anxeneta" (the little child in the upper part) raise his/her hand. Then, if the castle resist and the "tronc" does not fall down, the castle is being taken down and it counts as "descarregat", and it means more points for the "colla" in an unofficial contest between all Catalan groups of "Castellers". I am explaining this because I am really enjoying this experience. Amunt Castellers!

Curiosities of the English language

Hi everyone,

well, I would like to enter here some translations into English which can create confusion among Galician speakers. I will try to show you the correct way to say this common things in English through their translations.

-Depending on the time of the day: dependendo da hora do día

-She is rude with her employees: ela é maleducada cos seus empregados.
Impolite (with actions) / Rude (with words)

-We have plenty of time: temos tempo de sobra
Plenty of = More than enough
Plenty of (is NOT many, a lot of)
There are plenty of chairs: hai cadeiras de sobra

-Partner (1 person)
Couple (always 2 people) (NOT My couple)

-It is a piece of cake: está chupado
It is a walk in the park: está chupado

- To honk / To honk the horn: tocar o claxon
To hit the horn: tocar o claxon
To blow one’s horn: tocar o claxon
To sound one’s horn: tocar o claxon

- The more the better: canto máis mellor

- For ages (met.): for a long time/for very long
She’s been waiting for the bus for ages: Estivo esperando polo autobús mil anos/séculos
She’s been trying to lose weight for ages: Estivo tentando perder peso mil anos/séculos

Take care,
best regards

Escher in Het Paleis

My English teacher encouraged me to make a review about some museum I have visited, in order to practice a possible exam writing exercise, and I thought it would be a nice idea to share with you my review.

I was travelling around Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany in May with two friends, and I have a vivid memory of one museum in Den Haag that we visited, because I was really impressed by the artist's work. The name of the artist is Maurits Cornelius Escher, a well known dutch painter, and the museum is called Escher in Het Paleis, which means (i think) Escher in Het palace.


It is not a very famous one, far from the luxury of other Dutch museums, but, for me, it is the most interesting in terms of contents.
For those who are familiar with Escher's work, his style is easily recognizeable, with his incredible accuracy, and his impossible and shoking perspective experiments, not to mention his geometric, jigsaw-like compositions.

On the first floor, you can see his early work, most of it carried out during his stay in Italy.


These are mainly realistic paintings of Italian landscapes, greatly influenced by a youthful visit to the Alhambra of Granada, where he developed an obsession for Maths that remained as a key element of his art during the whole of his career.
On the second floor, they show his most important and famous works. If you are an Escher admirer, the visit is definitely worth the time and money spent on it, because the museum owns more than 95 per cent of Escher's legacy.






























And the third floor is a funny, interactive-focused area where you can experiment with dimensions, and points of view, with attractions inspired by Escher's work which should help you to increase your understanding of this artist's approach to art.
I highly recommend everyone to visit it. You will find, in one building, all the work of a different artist, and I bet you will enjoy it as much as I did, even If you are not an habitual museum visitor.

Hi!

Hello guys! I'm just writing to support the awesome idea of sharing our English Freak thoughts with everyone else. I hope you all guys start to do something around here.

Cheers!