You Got a Perty Mouf, Boy

The title - a reference to class 14's discussion about double negatives and their acceptance and requirement in Spanish as opposed to English where they are reserved for characters in Deliverance.

This class continued our nice run of informative classes and gave me déjà vu about a recent experience of mine. Once a week, I take part in an "intercambio (language exchange)" with a porteña who is looking to practice her English. I was telling her about how we are keeping our children on an American schedule (early to bed, early to rise) rather than exposing them to the late nights of Argentine kids. She was intrigued and asked me to describe a typical day of mine. For the most part I think I did ok, but there were parts I struggled through. David and Jimena did this same exercise in class 14 and it was very helpful to hear how they described a typical day in their lives. I'm sure I'll have a chance to discuss my daily schedule again and next time I'm hoping it will sound flawless (and more advanced now that I learned a few more words to temporally arrange things).

One of my favorite parts of class 14 was learning the word for "to get (conseguir)." I never realized how much I used this word until I arrived here and I found myself constantly trying to translate it into Spanish. I feel like a thesaurus, constantly trying to thing of a good synonym for it that I know how to say in Spanish. For instance, I would translate "I got the food you asked for from the store" into "I bought the food" or "I have the food you wanted." I won't bore you with more examples, but there are millions. Finally, another word I can stop talking around. Thank god.

The other big concept that class 14 covered was sentence structure - particularly when to use "a" to signify the object of a verb, and when you need to proceed a verb with an indirect pronoun (when using a verb signifying something being sent or given to someone else). I know for sure that I have made this mistake when telling people about emails I have sent or making a trip to the post office. Just another example of not picking up on word usage patterns that Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish has illuminated for me.