Spanish for Costumers!
I guess this is perhaps not entirely topical, but i wanted to post a quick overview of something that i consider obliquely related to work in large urban costume shops: surmounting a language barrier.
Unless you intend to live alone on a desert island, take it for granted that you will, in the course of your career, work with colleagues whose primary language is not your own. In the US, far and away the most common other tongue spoken in costume shops is Spanish (though as i said in a previous post, at Parsons this summer we had a few Russian and Greek coworkers, and even Slavic and Turkish folks as well). I got on a rudimentary-Spanish-learning kick toward the end of my summer, in the hopes that i can brush up on a few phrases for future jobs. I don't have a background in Spanish--i took German in high school and Greek in college--and i'm not shooting for 100% listening comprehension.
With this kind of study, the goal is not to become instantly fluent; the goal is to know some words and terms as a courtesy. A language barrier can be very difficult to surmount, but if you put forth some effort to learn a few terms in your coworker's language, it fosters goodwill and shows you are willing to try to find ways to communicate with them better using more tactics than simply, "YOU need to learn MY language."
I thought about what sort of things would be useful to know within the context of a work environment, and how i might best learn them. I knew i wanted to get acquainted with some social basics--greetings, farewells, polite phrases--but i also wanted some useful vocabulary relating to the work we do, such as numbers, body parts, and articles of clothing. I decided that auditory learning would be best--hearing someone speak the words and phrases, as opposed to learning via the printed page. All the communication i want or need to convey to a Spanish-speaking coworker is verbal, not written. Lastly, i knew i didn't have a big budget, monetarily or timewise, so CD/DVD series of classes weren't going to be what i wanted.
I decided to look into Spanish language podcasts, free or inexpensive learning tools that i could listen to during the workday or the commute.
Here's a look into what i turned up:
My Spanish Connection with Dave Spencer
Dave Spencer is a US highschool Spanish teacher who records a free podcast on a generally once-a-month or thereabouts basis. His podcasts were, IMO, kind of hit-or-miss. When they are good, they are really excellent--"Numbers 1 to 100" and "Learn Body Parts with 'Simon Says'" are a couple of my favorites. When they aren't good, it's because Spencer gets really long-winded with the kind of digressions that are fine for talk-radio but not for a language podcast where the listener is going to play it over and over and over, learning by repetition. (An example of this is Spencer's "Shopping for Clothes," which has a lot of great vocabulary, but it's interspersed with too much jibber-jabber to fast-forward through in subsequent listenings.)
Discover Spanish with Johnny Spanish is another series of podcasts. Johnny is a native Spanish speaker, and his co-host Cristina is Australian. The podcast supplements longer interactive lessons you can subscribe to online. I found the more predictable, scripted structure of these podcasts to be more helpful than Dave Spencer's more casual, unstructured approach, but the Discover Spanish podcasts don't include any garment-related vocabulary.
If the prospect of subscribing to self-paced online language tutorials is more appealing to you than podcast learning, i found a few sites that offer this sort of service, all of which offer both free and paid options.
SpanishPod.com: Lessons are rated by difficulty level, set up by themes with dialogue to start. Dialogue translated. You can register for a free account.
LingQ has a basic free account, but allows users to upgrade to paid levels where personal tutors are available to help you.
Spanish Pod 101 also has a basic free account, with the option to upgrade to paid levels for more features and materials.
Do you have another favorite site for language-learning which is not listed here? Please comment and let me know!
I'll leave you with some useful terms to know:
clavar prender - to pin
cortar - to cut
coser - to sew
lavar - to launder
pegar - to glue
planchar - to iron
ETA additional vocabulary courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
medvssa:
'A pin is "el alfiler" and a needle is "la aguja".'
Oh, and in other news, i'm going to be involved in hosting the USITT Costume Commission Fabric Modification Symposium this coming weekend, and i'll be blogging about all the exciting events and classes from that!
Unless you intend to live alone on a desert island, take it for granted that you will, in the course of your career, work with colleagues whose primary language is not your own. In the US, far and away the most common other tongue spoken in costume shops is Spanish (though as i said in a previous post, at Parsons this summer we had a few Russian and Greek coworkers, and even Slavic and Turkish folks as well). I got on a rudimentary-Spanish-learning kick toward the end of my summer, in the hopes that i can brush up on a few phrases for future jobs. I don't have a background in Spanish--i took German in high school and Greek in college--and i'm not shooting for 100% listening comprehension.
With this kind of study, the goal is not to become instantly fluent; the goal is to know some words and terms as a courtesy. A language barrier can be very difficult to surmount, but if you put forth some effort to learn a few terms in your coworker's language, it fosters goodwill and shows you are willing to try to find ways to communicate with them better using more tactics than simply, "YOU need to learn MY language."
I thought about what sort of things would be useful to know within the context of a work environment, and how i might best learn them. I knew i wanted to get acquainted with some social basics--greetings, farewells, polite phrases--but i also wanted some useful vocabulary relating to the work we do, such as numbers, body parts, and articles of clothing. I decided that auditory learning would be best--hearing someone speak the words and phrases, as opposed to learning via the printed page. All the communication i want or need to convey to a Spanish-speaking coworker is verbal, not written. Lastly, i knew i didn't have a big budget, monetarily or timewise, so CD/DVD series of classes weren't going to be what i wanted.
I decided to look into Spanish language podcasts, free or inexpensive learning tools that i could listen to during the workday or the commute.
Here's a look into what i turned up:
My Spanish Connection with Dave Spencer
Dave Spencer is a US highschool Spanish teacher who records a free podcast on a generally once-a-month or thereabouts basis. His podcasts were, IMO, kind of hit-or-miss. When they are good, they are really excellent--"Numbers 1 to 100" and "Learn Body Parts with 'Simon Says'" are a couple of my favorites. When they aren't good, it's because Spencer gets really long-winded with the kind of digressions that are fine for talk-radio but not for a language podcast where the listener is going to play it over and over and over, learning by repetition. (An example of this is Spencer's "Shopping for Clothes," which has a lot of great vocabulary, but it's interspersed with too much jibber-jabber to fast-forward through in subsequent listenings.)
Discover Spanish with Johnny Spanish is another series of podcasts. Johnny is a native Spanish speaker, and his co-host Cristina is Australian. The podcast supplements longer interactive lessons you can subscribe to online. I found the more predictable, scripted structure of these podcasts to be more helpful than Dave Spencer's more casual, unstructured approach, but the Discover Spanish podcasts don't include any garment-related vocabulary.
If the prospect of subscribing to self-paced online language tutorials is more appealing to you than podcast learning, i found a few sites that offer this sort of service, all of which offer both free and paid options.
SpanishPod.com: Lessons are rated by difficulty level, set up by themes with dialogue to start. Dialogue translated. You can register for a free account.
LingQ has a basic free account, but allows users to upgrade to paid levels where personal tutors are available to help you.
Spanish Pod 101 also has a basic free account, with the option to upgrade to paid levels for more features and materials.
Do you have another favorite site for language-learning which is not listed here? Please comment and let me know!
I'll leave you with some useful terms to know:
cortar - to cut
coser - to sew
lavar - to launder
pegar - to glue
planchar - to iron
ETA additional vocabulary courtesy of
medvssa:'A pin is "el alfiler" and a needle is "la aguja".'
Oh, and in other news, i'm going to be involved in hosting the USITT Costume Commission Fabric Modification Symposium this coming weekend, and i'll be blogging about all the exciting events and classes from that!