May
18
May
18
Sábado Gigante gets a facelift
Last week in Los Angeles, the U.S. television networks unveiled their schedules for the 2008-2009 television season. Amid all the confirmations [Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been renewed, yay!] and cancellations [New Amsterdam got the axe; boo, hiss] was a little bit of news that caught my eye: the revamping (finally) of Sábado Gigante.
This wacky, tacky throwback of a variety show has been a staple of Spanish-language TV since 1962 (!). It airs every Saturday night for three hours and its host, Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld, better known by his stage name Don Francisco, is in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the longest-running host of a TV show in history. Take that, Oprah!
Univision, the network that broadcasts the Miami-based program, said the show is finally going under the knife, so to speak, for a little digital nip/tuck. Univision execs were mum on the changes in the works except to say that the 68-year-old Mr. Kreutzberger will continue as the host but that the show would be “more quicker” and showcase a “more modern look,” reported the New York Times.
I’ve tried on numerous occasions to watch Sábado Gigante but couldn’t watch it for more than a couple of minutes. It’s just so bizarre and cutre, with the big-breasted, scantily-clad chicas, lame humor and cringe-inducing contests. Yesterday’s episode included a segment called “Abuelos con amores gigantes” and was a contest of young people looking for dates for their grandparents. Eww. Yes, I know Granny and Granddad need love too, but this type of matchmaking is played for laughs.
Don Francisco is a cultural icon in Latin America, so he must be doing something right. Can anyone enlighten me and explain what the appeal of Sábado Gigante is? (That’s not a rhetorical question. I really would like to know. Anybody?)
May
14
Six months and counting
This month marks the sixth (almost seventh) month that Voices en Español has been in existence. So far, so good. But now, after 30 podcasts, 162 blog posts and 396 reader comments, probation is over and it’s time to step back and take stock of how I’m doing. So, dear reader, this is where you come in. I would like your evaluation. Whether you’ve been reading this blog from the very beginning or you’ve just stumbled across it recently, I would like to hear from you.
What works? What needs fixing? What areas would you like to see me focus on going forward? If you were my boss, and, in a way you are since a blog is nothing without its readers, what would you suggest I get rid of, change or add? What questions do you have about learning or using Spanish that the blog could address?
This is your chance to let it rip. I’ve created a survey over at Survey Monkey where you can give me your detailed feedback.
You can also leave your suggestions below in the comments section, if that is easier.
Either way, I’d love to hear from as many as you as possible so that the next six months of this blog can be even better than the first. ¡Gracias!
May
13
El Camino
I’ve heard a lot about El Camino, about how it changes people and really gets into their psyche. El Camino de Santiago is the annual pilgrimage in northern Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where it is believed by some that the remains of a former apostle, St. James, are buried. But until you actually do it or know someone who has, it’s just an abstract concept.
Reading the very personal and moving account of Rocco Rossi, a self-described “recovering capitalist,” it’s clear that El Camino is not a trip for poseurs or travelers solely looking to have another exotic travel story to brag about to the folks back home.
Rocco writes about how he started the trip hoping to recharge his batteries and clear his head, but El Camino had other ideas in mind. It turns out that Rocco needed to learn how to let go and release his attachment to so many things in his life. He had seen others do that on the trip and while he admired them, he was unable to do likewise until El Camino presented him with a test.
Ahead of me was a small boy of about 10 or 12 who was banging away at the side of the road with a hoe. When I reached him I said, “Good morning. How are you doing,” in my best Spanish.
He looked up at me and grunted. His face was somewhat distorted and it was clear that he was mentally disabled in some way. He looked me up and down, dropped his hoe and grabbed my walking stick.
I had bought the walking stick on my first day in Spain and it had been with me for almost 900 kilometers. Two days before, in Finisterre, following tradition, I had burned my hiking clothes to symbolize the birth of “the new man” at the end of the pilgrimage. Several of the other pilgrims had burned their walking sticks as well. I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I had become attached to it and wanted to bring it back to my father, who loves to carve wood, as a present.
Instinct took over and I wrestled with the boy for the stick. It took all my strength to pry his fingers loose. Just as I was about to “win” it dawned on me: What was I doing? I stopped struggling, put his hands back on the stick and said, “Regalo para ti.” (Present for you.)
The boy was justifiably confused. He looked at the stick and then at me for a few moments, and suddenly he smiled. “Para ti,” I said one last time as tears filled my eyes, and I knew then that my pilgrimage was done.
Read the full article here.
May
10
Going 2 America
David, el Cántabro, is back. Although he’s got a great job working for a Swedish multinational company that allows him to travel a lot for business, he had never set foot in North America…until now. In this podcast he talks about what he’s looking forward to seeing on our trip to the U.S.
When I ask David about stereotypes that exist among the Spanish regarding the United States, he has no shortage of (bad) things to say about mi pueblo. 
Fortunately, he knows how to verbally backpedal and so he redeems himself by the end. 
Video of Times Square, New York City. Photos of Grand Canyon and Washington, D.C. All licensed from iStockPhoto.com
May
8
Extranjerismos
Formula 1 auto racing is not my cup of tea and I have zero interest in it, especially after the Lewis Hamilton incident, but there was something very amusing that popped up on my computer screen today.
La Fundación del Español Urgente (Fundéu BBVA, for short) put out a report stating that extranjerismos, [words and phrases from foreign languages but we know that in this case that the burr in the saddle is English], are taking over auto racing. Why is this amusing? Because some people in Spain marvel at the amount of “Spanglish” that is spoken in the U.S. and many like to believe that “real Spanish” (i.e. Spanish from the Iberian peninsula) is somehow immune to succumbing to the same malady, thanks to the Atlantic Ocean. Get real. Chalk it up to globalization but the use of English words in Spanish is a fact of life.
May
3
Q&A with SpanishDict
We are so fortunate to live in the times that we’re living in. At least when it comes to learning a foreign language.
Before the internet, specifically before Web 2.0, learning a foreign language was a tall order. You could study a foreign language in college, enroll in an extremely expensive Berlitz course or, if you were lucky, find an opportunity, either via school, work or volunteering (i.e. the Peace Corps) to be immersed in the language overseas for an extended period of time. But even then there was no guarantee that you’d be able to retain what you learned, since there used to be so few readily-accessible ways to continue using the language once you stepped outside the classroom or returned home to your non-Spanish speaking environment.
Today, thanks to the World Wide Web, we’ve got an embarassment of riches (Coffee Break Spanish, Notes in Spanish, Skype, SharedTalk.com, WordReference.com, etc.) that can help us develop and master our foreign language skills.
One Spanish-learning web site with a rapidly expanding community is SpanishDict. This Spring it went through a relaunch and Christopher Cummings, the guy behind it, recently did a Q&A with me about it. Chris is a first-year Harvard Law student and SpanishDict is actually a hobby for him. Click “more” to continue reading about this internet Spanish-English dictionary and online community that is at 7,563 members and counting.
May
2
You might be addicted to Spanish if…
Peace Love Happiness Friends 63/365
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography
Here’s a little (tongue-in-cheek) quiz to measure just how enganchado you are on the Spanish language. Apologies to comedian Jeff Foxworthy for riffing off his signature phrase. 
May
1
Spanish art in Boston
To all who are in the Northeastern U.S. or have summer vacation plans to visit Boston, there’s a massive art exhibit currently at the Museum of Fine Arts. First up is the exhibit “From El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Phillip III.” But the current MFA Boston exhibition that caught my attention was the one for Antonio López García, who at least one art critic considers Spain’s greatest living painter. His paintings are so real and lifelike that they appear to be photographs. López is reportedly such a stickler for detail that he can spend years completing a single work. A painting he did of an open refrigerator took three years to finish. Now, at the age of 72, López is getting his first solo museum exhibition in the United States.
To tell you the truth, I had never heard of him before reading the Slate piece, but he sounds like a down-to-earth, passionate artist who isn’t pretentious nor caught up in trying to impress art collectors, gallery owners and museum curators.
“Painting gives me the feeling of love,” he says in a Boston Globe profile. “It allows me to relate to my surroundings. Studio painting is very different from my way. There is that relation with the world, that Velázquez had, that is something wonderful and marvelous. To work as a painter is lonely but that takes you out into the world.
“No, for me,” he says, “the process is more important than finishing the work.”
Here’s an audio slideshow about Antonio López García and his art.
Apr
29
Why is Spanish taking so long to dominate the Web?
Spanish is one of the world’s most widely-spoken languages with roughly 400 million speakers, but the Spanish language’s cyber-presence continues to lag behind other Western languages. Both French (with 130 million native speakers) and German (with 100 million) have more web pages in their respective languages than Spanish.
Project Gutenberg, which offers free electronic books, reportedly has a 180 titles in Spanish available. Sounds decent until you hear that the number of e-books available in English is 21,453. Yes, you read that correctly. OK, so perhaps it’s not a priority for Project Gutenberg to publish e-books in Spanish, but it sure seems as though the Spanish language is getting short shrift on the Web, especially when compared to English.
The Instituto Cervantes and Fundéu BBVA are trying to turn things around but it doesn’t seem like enough. Universities in Spanish-speaking countries aren’t picking up enough of the slack. According to Webometrics, which tracks the number of university articles visible on the internet, there is no Spanish-language university among the top 50 universities. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is at No. 59 while Universidad Complutense de Madrid, considered one of Spain’s best universities, is at 173.
What’s it going to take to get with the program? Where is the Spanish content and why isn’t more of it being produced?
Some random facts and figures about Spanish in cyberspace that I read here:
12. Number of languages that dominate the World Wide Web. There are more than 6,000 languages spoken in the world.
3.8. Percent of internet pages written in Spanish.
60. Percentage of Google web searches that are done in Spanish come from Latin America.
351,000. Number of articles available in Spanish at Wikipedia. There are more than 2 million Wikipedia articles available in English.
.005. Percent of scientific papers that are published in Spanish and available on the Web.