Conversational Connectors - we could all benefit! --- (English-español-français)

From fluentczech on youtube Fluent Czech 002 - Conversational Connectors - YouTube

He shares his conversational connectors over Anki and I exported them into a spreadsheet, so we could have them in other languages.

Here you can take a look at the spreadsheet on googledocs—> http://tinyurl.com/cpynyb7

Anyone with the link can view and edit it (you don’t need a gmail account or anything of that sort, you don’t even need to have a spreadsheet editor on your computer because it’s web based, no need to install any plugins either).

------->I’m translating them into Spanish, maybe someone would be kind enough to fill in the French translation, or maybe you’d like to add another language to translate to.

This conversational connectors are short sentences useful when we want to talk and express what we think.

Example: You should know that … = deberías saber que…

Fell free to edit the spreadsheet.

cheers!

1 Like

Question: Did you only translate those that would be commonly used in Spanish, or are there some that, while understandable, would stand out as translations from English?

This is a common question for me: I know how to say the words in Spanish, but will they sound like an anglecism…

Jingle I’ve tried to use Spanish phrases in all of the translations. That was a big concern for me too, so I’ve tried to use Spanish phrases in all of them.

Although some may seem to be anglicisms they’re not, it’s just that we use the exactly same phrase :stuck_out_tongue:

¡Maravilloso! Thank you for taking the initiative on this and thank you for the results.

Well, I’ve started to work on Yiddish. I say that we just keep going with as many languages as possible! :smiley: I’d love to see some of this stuff for Dutch.

Berta, thanks! I supposed that was what you did, but I wanted to make sure. It surprises me how many phrases like this are the same in both languages. I guess I just need to relax and say what comes to mind!

That’s great, Berta. :slight_smile: I look forward to the French versions of these phrases as well.

Although there are heaps of those phrases (in English) that I simply don’t use, I think this will be a great resource to help us find the foreign language equivalents of some of our favourite/most used phrases.

By the way, I changed the language references from Czech to English (using Ctrl + F). I just thought it would make more sense if we did it the way you did for Spanish. Feel free to change it back, if you prefer it the other way.

This is looking great, thank you all!!! Yiddish and German on the way!!!

Peter I’m also looking forward to the French version and lmyirtseshem for Dutch too :wink:

I added 2 “English” columns so it’s easier to fill the new languages up.

I can do some of the Dutch, but I’ll have to leave some things to a native speaker though! haha

Berta, I didn’t get for what this is for. What do you want to do with these translations? Is there a special purpose despite that it is helpful to know them? Is it a project of you?

It reminds me on some ‘travel’ language books wich have lots of these phrases that you can combine with other phrases or single words. The problem is how you learn and memorize them. In this case learning from texts including these ‘connectors’ and pointing them out that the learner recognize them is probably more helpful to memorize them, at least for me.

VeraI, see http://bit.ly/rJA6E1

I think it’s a good idea to learn/review such conversational connectors.
You will rarely find/learn those within LingQ lessons, and if there are you’ll seldom save them as useful building blocks.

I built something similar for German/French: http://bit.ly/sXPj4N (table) or http://bit.ly/vd3jBm (PDF). Corrections of mistakes are welcome, please put them here ( http://bit.ly/u9iBIR ) as a comment.

I’ve found that dictionaries don’t really have these phrases - at least none that I’ve seen. For that purpose alone, this is a good little project. Nobody says “dictionaries are useless because they don’t give a method with which to learn all the words”. There is no problem here…

mmm Vera it’s not really a “project” of mine, I just find it useful to know them. The plan would be to put them into Anki and revise them there, and try using them in my conversations.

Like Anthony says it makes your conversations much richer and gives you time to think up of an answer.

I came up with the idea of making it a “collaborative project” just yesterday, so we can all give and take.

Thank you for the explanation, Berta. Now your purpose is clearer. And thank you hape for sharing your links. Some of the audio courses that I’ve bought come with something similiar and it can be helpful to know some common phrases.

This is an excellent idea, Berta, very useful indeed. I could have a go with Italian but I would make so many mistakes that I prefer to stay away unless there is a native italian to check what I write.

“En lo que a mí concierne” sounds a little odd to me, even when it’s clearly correct. I would say “en lo que a mí respecta” instead, I think it sounds more natural. Just trying to help.

Diego feel free to change any sentence you see fit to change! you’re more than welcome. (You’re right, “respecta” sounds more natural to me too).

Let’s see if any of our italians wouldn’t mind checking what you write. Or any dutch for lmyirtseeshem.

I’d be happy to try my hand at a good number in Japanese if a native wouldn’t mind double-checking them.

I started to fill in Cantonese…

I think this is a great initiative, Vera, and thanks to you Berta . Creating this list engages the community. It can be fun to contribute to the list. It can be fun to read the list and see it grow.

Reviewing this list is like reviewing our saved words and phrases, in my view. We may not remember them just by reviewing them, but reviewing them helps us notice them in our listening and reading. Probably, if we don’t come across them again, and more than once, it will be difficult to remember them.

If these are common expressions then we will come across them again and again, and start to notice them and eventually use them. In fact, Hape, the LingQ lessons are full of these expressions and I and other learners often save such expressions. Having this list may help us notice them better.

Maybe some members can record the list, just the part of the list that corresponds to their native language, and provide it as a lesson in LingQ. Ideally they would put a link to the whole table in the Resources section.

I started translating a few of the phrases in Dutch… I would happy to see them in Russian :slight_smile: