Posted by adir ferreira
Alejandro Javier González Legrand, “Coco Legrand”, is a Chilean comedian and his debut was at the Festival de Viña del Mar in 1972. The festival is known for its very demanding audience, called “El Monstruo” (The Monster). His humor is filled with social criticism towards the people of Chile and his texts always focus on the weaknesses and strenghts of the human being.
Coco Legrand also acted in comedies like Humor al Contado, Ría por la Razón o por la Fuerza, No Vote por Mí , among others. In 1990 he opened his own theater company called Circus ok.
Here’s a video of Coco Legrand in a sketch for Chilean TV:
Nos vemos prontito.
Posted by adir ferreira
We know that refranes are popular sayings and that in Spanish there are lots of them so, instead of giving you guys a list with their English equivalents, today I’m going to give you the refrán and you will have to match it to its explanation, en español.
Shall we give it a try?
1. Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.
2. El hombre propone y Dios dispone.
3. El que a buen árbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija.
4. El que de joven no trotea, de viejo galopea.
5. Más vale un pájaro en mano que ciento volando.
6. Mucho ruido y pocas nueces.
7. No hay mal que por bien no venga.
8. Perro ladrador, poco mordedor.
9. En el país de los ciegos, el tuerto es el rey.
10. Quien mal anda mal acaba.
a. Quien amenaza mucho no tiene valor para llegar a la acción.
b. Hay situaciones en que la apariencia grandiosa no corresponde a la precariedad real.
c. Es mejor mantener lo poco que se tiene que arriesgarse a la ambición de lo que no se tiene.
d. Las intenciones del hombre no se realizan sin intervención divina.
e. Las compañías de una persona definen su carácter.
f. El resultado de las malas acciones es siempre funesto.
g. Tener contacto y amistad con personas ricas o influyentes trae beneficios.
h. Cuando el entorno es malo, cualquiera se destaca con muy poco.
i. Se debe trabajar para construir patrimonio en la juventud, para no pasar dificuldades en la vejez.
j. Las cosas malas de la vida existen para que otras mejores puedan realizarse.
Take care!
Posted by adir ferreira
Pablo Neruda was born on July 12th 1904 in Parral, Chile and died on September 23rd 1973 in Santiago de Chile. His real name was Neftalí Reyes Basoalto and, besides being a poet, he was a translator and a diplomat. He won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1971 and his writing has strongly influenced Latin American writing and acquired universal value. He wrote one of Chile’s most varied and rich literary works.
He wrote a self portrait titled Autorretrato and it is a very rich source of Spanish language learning. Read it out here.
You can also listen to and read Neruda’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize here
Here are some of his quotes:
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn’t play has lost forever the child who lived in him and whom he will miss terribly.”
“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”
See you next time!
Posted by adir ferreira
In the early days jokes were not told openly and, if there were people of the opposite sex present, they were told in whispers.
To designate these stories, at first obscene ones, the word chiste was used, derived from the verb chistar. Chistar meant “to whisper, to speak in a low voice” or also “to utter a sound with the intention of speaking”. Chistar is an onomatopoeic form that comes from the sound sst or chst, used to ask people to be quiet. The first appearance of chiste was in the 13th century used by Gonzalo de Berceo, in the form chista. From the context, we can tell that it referred to obscene stories:
Mostrad el Pater Noster a vuestras creaturas. (Teach Our Lord’s Prayer to your children)
Castigad que lo digan yendo por las pasturas, (Punish them to say it over the fields)
Mas vale digan esso, que chistas e locuras, (It’s better for them to say it instead of jokes or nonsense)
Ca suelen tales mozos fablar muchas orruras (Because the words of such young lads are often vulgar)
Nos vemos prontito.
Posted by adir ferreira
Mario Benedetti was born in Uruguay and is not well known in the English-speaking world, but he is considered one of Latin America’s most important living writers. He lived in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Spain from 1973 to 1985, during a military dictatorship in Uruguay. Nowadays he divides his time between Montevideo and Madrid.
Benedetti has always been politically-oriented and, in January 2006, he joined other renowned figures such as Gabriel García Márquez, Ernesto Sábato, Thiago de Mello, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Monsiváis, Pablo Armando Fernández, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Pablo Milanés, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Montero and Ana Lydia Vega, to demand sovereignty for Puerto Rico and join the Latin American and Caribbean Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, which approved a resolution favoring the island-nation’s right to assert its independence.
If you want to read some more about Mario Benedetti’s life and work, check out the following website.
Palabras Verdaderas
His profile on the Cervantes Virtual Library
(http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/mbenedetti/)
Some of his short stories, in Spanish
Nos vemos prontito!
