Horrible Person Teaching Spanish

Mauelito   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:30 am GMT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VI_-GICE2A&NR=1

Que es tu nombre? I would never say this sentence
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:45 am GMT
Mi nombre es una palabra de ocho letras que me identifica :)
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:54 am GMT
Typical chicano spanglish.
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:23 pm GMT
That was pretty good for not being a native speaker, just another proof that spanish phonetics are a piece of cake, she only got the first question wrong, instead of "Que es tu nombre" it was suposed to be "Cual es tu nombre"
zatsu   Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:44 pm GMT
No, that's actually a really big mistake.
"What's your name" is like the sentence everyone learns on the first day.

It just shows that most people think they're really fluent when it's not true.
I don't get why everyone seems to find the phonetics a piece of cake, but then hardly anyone speaks well in an everyday basis.
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:09 pm GMT
She just made that mistake, changing "Cual" for "Que", besides that her pronunciation was way better than a lot of Chicanos, again she's just able to do that because Spanish phonetics are really easy.
Skippy   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:10 pm GMT
I thought you would say "como se llama?" or "como te llamas?"
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:15 pm GMT
Cuál es tu nombre is the direct translation of "What is your name?". In Spanish it's more natural, as Skippy said, to say "Cómo te llamas?". "Cuál es tu nombre?" is also right, but it's less used and probably many English speakers are translating word by word the English expression, which is a wrong habit when learning leanguages . For example this leads to say "Que es tu nombre?".
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:21 pm GMT
Se puede preguntar con 'como' o 'cual' .
¿Como te llamas? = how are you called?
¿Cual es tu nombre? = What is your name?

but not 'Que'.
Guest   Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:27 pm GMT
I think that cómo te llamas? is much more frequent than Cuál es tu nombre, but they both are ok, I guess.
Gabriel   Tue Apr 22, 2008 12:08 am GMT
Since we're at it:

What do you do for work? -> ¿De qué trabajas? or ¿En qué trabajas?
*¿Qué haces de trabajo? is simply not native Spanish.

Where do you go to school? -> ¿A qué escuela/universidad vas?

Do you have a boyfriend? -> ¿Tienes novio?

And, even though her pronunciation is pretty good, she gets the intonation wrong in many of those questions.
zatsu   Tue Apr 22, 2008 12:19 am GMT
Well, maybe we should also look at it from another viewpoint.

If someone ever asks in English "Which is your name?" instead of "What's your name?", I don't think you would say "it's pretty good for a non native, it's just a small mistake and just shows how phonetics are easy", would you?
Guest   Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:35 am GMT
Yes, if she said: "which is your name" with a nice accent, is way better than is she said "What's your name" with a bad accent.
Guest   Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:12 am GMT
Maybe. But she shoudln't be teaching Spanish and pretending like she actually knows the language.