Increíble!...

[alexpgp]

There I was, listening to the second Spanish CD last night when Michel Thomas works his students up to the following:

¿Qué puede decirme de la situación política y económica en México hoy?

Which, if I perceive correctly, is: "What can you tell me about the political and economic situation in Mexico today?" (I realize I am missing a prepended inverted question mark; I am too lazy right now to figure out the HTML encoding for same. UPDATE: Figured it out; it's an &#191.)

I am far from capable of assessing the quality of the Spanish phrase, but it is a heck of a sentence for hour two of a beginner's course, no? Or are my standards too low?

Cheers...

Comments

[vuzh.livejournal.com]

funny, i thought you already spoke Spanish.
that is a big sentence for the second hour, fer shure,
only excepting that some of the words are very close to their English counterparts.

a good answer to the maestro's question, incidentally, might be "Muy corrupto, muy pobre para la mayoridad, y muy rico para los corruptos."

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, although in a recent post I alluded to my sixth grade teacher's attempt to get us jump-started in Spanish by using a paperback titled See It And Say It In Spanish as a textbook in our last year in elementary school.

I did French in junior high and high school, and Russian in college. I suspect the French gave me something of an "ear" for individual words in Spanish, so that between Miss Smith's efforts and the French lessons, I could always understand a bit more than what a 'gringo' was supposed to in Spanish.

Thomas makes no bones about how cognates (situation ~ situacíon) give English speakers something of a head start in learning the language, and you're right about how there's a lot of them in the sentence I presented. There's a number of them in your answer, too. :^)

Thanks for the comment.

Cheers...