day eight

I’ve been given a great gift today to help me with my Spanish studies. On Friday I wrote a blog post titled “You can call yourself an entrepreneur when….” . The idea is that many people want to be entrepreneurs and start their own businesses. The benefits of doing so are enormous. But only after hard work, persistence, mindless frustration and pain, and great personal agony. So I wrote about some of that agony in the post.

A Spanish blog, volkanrivera.com, wrote about the post and then even translated it, for which I'm very thankful. Gracias! Here’s his post.

This, of course, has been my Spanish lesson for the day. First off, he describes me. Then he translates the post for me. Even though it might not be part of the 100 most used words in Spanish, I wanted to know what words he used to describe me because clearly those are “the 100 most used words in Spanish to describe James Altucher”. So they are important to me.

For one:

- “empresario” is “entrepreneur. Good to know.

- “un personaje pintoresco,” – a colorful personality. So, if I were to write my resume in Spanish I could say: “tengo un personaje pintoresco”

- “ parece que nunca se peinara” – never seems to comb his hair. So of the first three things he can say about me, the fact that I don’t comb my hair ranks up there. I do think I need to cut my hair very short so as to do away with this constant need to comb my hair. Or rather,” me peinara”.

- “habla con un extraño tono de voz” – “speaks with a strange tone of voice” . WHAT? I didn’t know I have a strange tone of voice. Now I’m feeling self-conscous. But nevertheless. “habla” must be “speaks” and “extrano” must be strange. “tono” tone, and “voz” voice. I’m reeling the words in today and I will DEFINITELY remember them.

- “es increíblemente optimista sobre la economía” – “Is incredibly optimistic about the economy” . “optimista” – optimistic, “sobre” - about, “la economia”, the economy. I’m going to forget “increibliemente” because it seems hard to say and its probably one of those thirds person imperfect subjunctives past tense again and I can’t handle those now. Suffice to say “soy optimista sobre la economia”. And why is “the economy” a woman? Is it because she is so hard to predict?

- “Algunas veces dice cosas que me parecen una locura” – “Sometime he says things that seem crazy”. WHAT!? Ok, so I knew “cosa” is “thing”. “Paracen” must be like “parace” except he’s referring to himself “seems to me” , “una locur” - “crazy”. As in, “it seems to me he is loco” . “Algunas veces” seems like a weird way to say “sometimes” but there it is. I need to learn the verbs around “dices” but haven’t gotten to it yet. So my main takeaway is “locura” for “crazy”.

- “Pero el día de ayer en su blog "The Altucher Confidential", publicó un interesante post” – “but yesterday on his blog he published an interesting post”. I didn’t even have to look that one up. I knew “pero” already. “el dia de ayer” must be "yesterday" (question: can’t he just have said “ayer”?) , “en su blog” = “in his blog” and “publico un interesante post” – “published an interesting post”

He then translates the post, which is interesting and I plan on going through it outside of this blog but perhaps the most important thing I need to remember is the phrase:

"Por supuesto, que es legal." == Of course its legal!