Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

seven-day-weekend

noodledoodle47 wrote:

Hi
would love to live abroad and thinking of moving to Italy.
anyone out there with any advice.

Hi noodledoodle, welcome to the thread.

Sorry I don't know anything about Italy but hopefully someone will be along soon who does!

seven-day-weekend

Hi gunnyand bob.

We've got the Michel Tomas CDs already. Our neighbours don't know what we are talking about when we speak 'proper' Spanish, their accent (although the language is Castillian Spanish) is I suppose the equivalent of Geordie or Glaswegian.

It is good when you make headway on the phone though!

Mrs_pbradley936

Hello Noodledoodle,

I don't think there are many people living in Italy on here but welcome anyway and you can tell us all about it.

fatnan

Hi all!
Re the Michel Thomas disks, IMHO they are fantastic for teaching you to speak Spanish, BUT I´m up to disk 5 and can´t understand a word anyone says back to me! Does anyone else have this problem? What I need is to have regular conversations with the locals....not so easy to do where I live.

seven-day-weekend

fatnan wrote:

Hi all!
Re the Michel Thomas disks, IMHO they are fantastic for teaching you to speak Spanish, BUT I´m up to disk 5 and can´t understand a word anyone says back to me! Does anyone else have this problem? What I need is to have regular conversations with the locals....not so easy to do where I live.

Same here! We're up to disc 5 as well.

The trouble is, our neighbours speak Alpujarreno -which, although officially Spanish, is not understood by most other Spaniards. They miss most of the consonants out. So, for example, 'pescados' (fish), which should be pronounced as it is spelt, like most Spanish, becomes 'peckOW' in Alpujarreno dialect.

In the summer some tourists from Madrid came to the village and they had a hard time understanding the locals as well. So what chance have we got?? We understood the Madrilenos a lot better than we do our neighbours!

( I must say here that both Alpujarreno and Madrileno should have the 'n' with the squiggle over the top to make it say 'ny' but I don't know how to do it, sorry) - MadrilenYo and AlpujarrenYo).

What part of Spain do you live in?

droopsnout

seven-day-weekend wrote:

both Alpujarreno and Madrileno should have the 'n' with the squiggle over the top to make it say 'ny' but I don't know how to do it

Hold down the ALT key and type 164 on the numeric keypad: ñ

For the capital, same thing, but 165: Ñ

Mrs_pbradley936

droopsnout wrote:

Hold down the ALT key and type 164 on the numeric keypad: ñ

For the capital, same thing, but 165: Ñ

How do you know that and what else can you do with the numeric keypad?

droopsnout

I know it cos I read it somewhere, and as a linguist I had to know it!

You can use the same means to do all accented characters, oe diphthong, other foreign characters, etc.

Just have a practice/experiment in an empty email or Word doc, and start from 128 (which will give you Ç) and go through to the 170s or until you get bored!

I have found a web page which will also tell you more than you need to know! (And uses different numbers, too!)

http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

My method (messing) is the fun way. The webpage (didactic) is the sensible, boring, way!

ampersand

seven-day-weekend wrote:

One way to 'eat cheap' in Spain (at least in Andalucia) if you don't have to drive anywhere, is to go to a bar and ask for a 'cana' (Sorry, the n is supposed to have a squiggle over it, don't have one on my keyboard - the word is pronounced 'canya')..

Hola,seven-day-weekend,
I've followed your happy posts intermittently over the months. Just found them again and wondered if I could help if I experimented a little with the Character Map I use. This is on my computer, as detailed below, but I was also able to find it, with options for versions, by Googling 'character map'.
I'm sure you'll find it easily and be able to incorporate it into your writing - as I do, but for French! - I live in the Sacred Hexagon cerebrally, virtuall,y much of the time, while exisiting here.



Using Character MapYou can use Character Map to copy and paste special characters into your documents, such as the trademark symbol, special mathematical characters, or a character from the character set of another language.

Open Character Map.

Notes

To open Character Map, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map.
For information about using Character Map, click Help in Character Map.
For more information, click Related Topics.
Related Topics

droopsnout

Indeed. It's a bit slow, though, if you're typing a letter or longer piece.

If you use MS Word, you can access more weird characters than you can shake a circumflex at by going to Insert>Symbol. You can play around with fonts and all sorts. It's not good for productivity, though!