{"id":645,"date":"2016-06-07T22:53:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T02:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/sla2016\/?p=645"},"modified":"2016-06-07T22:53:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T02:53:29","slug":"buenos-aires-secrets-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/2016\/06\/07\/buenos-aires-secrets-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Buenos Aires’ secrets revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week was my first one\u00a0at ‘La Universidad de Belgrano’. Classes started on Monday after a two-hour orientation. I was placed into the Advanced Level and the first day, it felt like it was a jump from Intermediate II (the last class I took at Notre Dame), but it’s getting easier. We have classes\u00a0for 5 hours\u00a0everyday from Monday to Friday. It’s intense. There’s only 5\u00a0people\u00a0at the Advanced Level,\u00a0so\u00a0Prof Yael makes\u00a0all of us talk, which is great! Class is usually reading texts and answering questions about history, culture and art, working on some vocab, and doing advanced grammar. We really\u00a0go into the technicalities of the language, which I surprisingly enjoy.<\/p>\n

I’d also like to use this post as an erratum to my previous one, with respect to the accent here. Basically, the\u00a0sh<\/strong> replaces the\u00a0y<\/strong> sound here,\u00a0i.e. whenever there’s ll<\/strong>,\u00a0y <\/strong>and\u00a0j<\/strong> in foreign words only. For example, they would pronounce may<\/strong>o<\/em> (May) as mash<\/strong>o<\/em>,\u00a0 ell<\/strong>a<\/em> (she) as esh<\/strong>a<\/em> and j<\/strong>azz<\/em> as sh<\/strong>azz<\/em>. Argentines also have a tendency to not pronounce ‘s’ in the middle of a word or a sentence. They call it aspiraci\u00f3n de la ‘s’ <\/em>(aspiration of the ‘s’).
\nWe also went over the differences between Spanish spoken here and in other countries. It turns out Argentina has a lot of different words for stuff, like frutilla<\/em> for strawberry<\/em> (instead of fresa<\/em>) or palta<\/em> for avocado<\/em> (instead of aguacate<\/em>). Most of them have to do with food.
\nAnother big difference here that I mentioned in my previous post is the use of ‘vos’ instead of ‘t\u00fa’. ‘Vos’ is conjugated exactly like ‘t\u00fa’ except for\u00a0the Present Indicative and Imperative.\u00a0I also read a\u00a0couple things about this and talked to some local\u00a0people and found really interesting that the conjugation of ‘vos’ is not taught in school. Kids learn how to conjugate ‘t\u00fa’ and ‘vosotros’, but in everyday conversation only use ‘vos’ and ‘ustedes’.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Argentines use a lot of slang and abbreviations when they talk. Now that I know a lot of them, it’s easier to hold conversations with the locals. My roommates and I often find ourselves practising ‘sobremesa’ after dinner. ‘Sobremesa’ is\u00a0probably my favourite Spanish word to this day and\u00a0describes conversation that people have\u00a0at the table after a meal. It is very common here to spend hours at the dinner table talking even\u00a0after all\u00a0the food is gone. It’s also a very good a way to practise speaking!<\/p>\n

Culture-wise, I had the chance to go to a Milonga<\/em> last Wednesday night. A milonga is a place to which locals go to meet people and dance tango. Although it was mostly older people, I thought it was really fun! Also, tango looks really hard.
\nI\u00a0took a trip\u00a0to MALBA (El Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires<\/em>), where I saw works of famous artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Fernando Botero, among others.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN3734\"<\/a>

Me at MALBA trying to explain what a sinusoid (behind me) is. It’s just a sine curve #mathmajor<\/p><\/div>\n

A highlight of this past week is that my roommates and I got better at navigating the city, taking the bond\u00ed<\/em> (slang for bus), the subte<\/em> (metro)\u00a0and the train.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa,<\/a>

Alexa, Jaimee and me in downtown Buenos Aires<\/p><\/div>\n

I already have my first exam at the end of this week. Hopefully it goes well.
\n\u00a1Deseame buena suerte!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week was my first one\u00a0at ‘La Universidad de Belgrano’. Classes started on Monday after a two-hour orientation. I was placed into the Advanced Level and the first day, it felt like it was a jump from Intermediate II (the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118507],"tags":[124073,12583,12687,39631],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argentina","tag-buenos-aires","tag-culture","tag-language","tag-study-abroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}