Oraciones

This doesn't have much bearing on anything (for you: it does for me), but I wanted to say that when I read in Spanish I can hear the author's/narrator's voice. It was a surprise to find quite early on that this was possible. I can hear the voice, yet I cannot judge between a good sentence and a bad. Sure I have some feeling for how you may and may not express things and I'm sure I could tell if someone had done a too-literal job of translating from the English, but that's about all. I can't look at a sentence and declare, 'You can't say it that way' or remark on its 'clunkyness' or elegance. For I'm the one who says it the wrong way. It's a strange stage I'm in - able to say so much but frequently faltering on basic things (how to conjugate a verb, remembering to make the endings agree with the gender or plurality of the noun - "errores tontos," "silly mistakes" my teacher says) and making a hash of complex constructions. An important stage - I'm guessing that over the next six months the language will become more automatic and habits, good or bad, will start to stick. It's a good time to be all angsty and aware, to say "perdón" and self-correct. And perhaps one day I will read you a Spanish sentence and tell you what it is like, what it is doing and how successful it has been, if it is correct, if it is good.