Comments by "Jeni10" (@Jeni10) on "American Reacts to Aussie Girl's Answers to the World's Questions" video.
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@mrwaverider5537 Apology accepted. As for your Spanish, try listening to Spanish songs. Do you have any Spanish speaking friends? I learned a lot of pronunciations from listening to songs in Italian especially when I had the lyrics in front of me. I also have Italian friends who helped me. Obviously there’s a difference between singing and speaking but it gets you started on the right track. So does listening to interviews in Spanish that have English subtitles, although subtitles are usually abridged. I’ve even noticed that when watching an Italian movie with English subtitles, and say to myself, “That’s not what he actually said!” But it all helps you think.
By way of an example, my Italian friends own a restaurant so I often ate there and was around when family members were speaking in Italian. Not that I understood everything that they were saying, but you can pick up on gestures, intonations, familiar words or phrases, and some of it is absorbed into you. So one hot evening, my friend stood in the open doorway and said, “Ahh, fresco, como vino bianco!” He became aware that I was at one of the tables and turned and asked me, “Jeni, did you understand what I just said?” “Yes. Fresh, like white wine.” “Very good!” As I said, every little bit helps. When I was younger, the local corner shop was owned by a Greek family. One day when I was in the shop, the daughter was at the counter waiting for me to choose what I needed. Her mother came in from the residence at the back, and began a conversation with her in Greek. After they finished, the mother went back into the residence. I said to the daughter, “Why don’t you do as she asks you?” She said, “Wait, you understand Greek now?” “No, but I got the gist of it, she just wants you to keep your room tidy so she doesn’t have to do it.” I didn’t understand the words at all but a mother and daughter conversation can look the same in any language. LOL!
Edit: You might be studying at a more advanced level than you’re ready for, maybe try something more basic. I used to teach English to a classroom full of elderly adult migrants from different countries! Talk about tough! Most of them had learned English through government organised classes but they remembered very little. One Chinese man explained to me in broken English that the classes were for business people and used strange words. Clearly that was useless for these students so I went back to basics and discovered they were all suddenly very interested!
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