More handy Spanish words when travelling

 Palabras En Español - Palabras En Ingles - Spanish - English words

hola - hello

llegare pronto - I will arrive soon

reunion - meeting

oficina - office

senor - sir / mr

senora - madam

senorita - miss

sombrero - hat

soy - I am / my name is

estoy - I am (right now or temporarily, eg at the station or in the office)

ayer - yesterday

manana - tomorrow / morning

Useful websites on other languages

duolingo.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_South_America

https://www.spanishdict.com

https://www.spanishdict.com/lists/4924632/es-words

https://spanishvip.com/vocabulary/spanish-words-with-s/

https://worldhelloday.org/

https://www.wikihow.com/Say-Happy-Birthday-in-Spanish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde

 Useful Websites on accents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_accent

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic

Simple Spanish Words & Challenging Spanish Words

Hello, friends, in Spanish.

 Spanish - English

ayer - yesterday (notice the ye in both languages)

colegas - colleagues

el documento - the document

documentos - documents

en - on

importante - important

informacion - information accent on the o

internet - the internet

una noticia - some news  not one news

mala - bad

mala noticia - bad news - not notice#

oficina - office

una parte - one part

proyecto - project

tu - you, like thou

Challenging words

el archivo - the file, not the archive

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Spanish, Portuguese And Italian, False Friends word translation

 

Quick reminders from Wikivoyage phrasebooks.

False Friends

I have put the Spanish first and underlined, and added my memory aids.

Beware of false friends if you speak or learned Portuguese or Italian. Examples include 

 Spanish embarazada (pregnant), 

but Portuguese embaraçada (embarrassed) like the English

Spanish oficina (office), like the English

but Portuguese oficina (workshop)  \

(The Italian for office is ufficio.)

Spanish burro (donkey)  I remember a beast of burden for donkey rides

Italian burro (butter) like the French buerre. 

Spanish carta (letter).' like the English postcard

Italian carta (paper) like a thin piece of card 

On the other hand, on the plus side, if you are English when you learn Spanish, afterwards you already know the look of the Spanish word, you just need to change a couple of letters and you have an easy to remember different word in Portuguese or Italian.

So, now we know four words of Spanish, two of Portuguese, and two of Italian. Eight foreign words. And an amusing conversation starter with anybody speaking or learning Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.

What is the Spanish for embarrassed? avergonzado

What is the Spanish for workshop? taller

what is the Spanish for butter? mantequilla

If you are looking at the buffet in a hotel, the Spanish word for margarine is margarina. Easy to recognize.

The Portuguese for butter is manteiga. The word for margarine in Portuguese is margarina. The first two letters are the same as English, and Spanish.

What is the Spanish for paper? papel

For learners, like me, that is eight new words of Spanish.

Useful Language Websites

duolingo.com

translate google

Wikivoyage phasebook Spanish

Wikivoyage phrasebook Italian

Wikivoyage phrasebook Portuguese

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Book To Buy, Borrow, Lend

Embarrassing Moments by Angela Lansbury

on \

Amazon.co.uk and 

Lulu.com

Spanish made simple

 I have been learning Spanish on Duolingo. 

Here are some easy words:

Spanish - English (Easy to recognize and remember)

come (verb) - eat (like the Enlish word, noun, comestible)

contento (m adjective) contenta (F adjective) - contented/happy

en - in

hombre - man (think of human, or homo sapiens, or the French word which is written the same but pronounced differently)

mucho - much

no - don't

oficina - office

siete - seven

usted - you (formal)

Yo - I

English - Spanish

contented/happy - contento/a

desk - escritorio (place where scribes sit to inscribe)

don't - no

eat (verb) - come (like the English word, noun, comestible)

I - yo

in - en

man - hombre

much - mucho

office - oficina

seven - siete

you - usted (formal)

Useful but harder or confusing words

Spanish - English

abrigo - coat

ella - she (not a girl's name, but you could think, 'Ella, she ....'

English - Spanish

coat - abrigo

Useful Websites

Duolingo

Wikipedia

translate google

Visit A Fan Museum in London or California. Travelling to somewhere hot? Stuck in a hot office? Fun DIY fans for Fancy Dress Parties

 

Angela Lansbury. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

For a fun photo, add a matching fan.

 Pick a colour from a multi colour dress. Match the shoes to your accessory colour. I have added red lace gloves.

London has a fan museum. In Greenwick, South London.

Conference Fancy Dress Party Hire

At the Writers' Summer School in The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Derbyshire, England, UK, we had a themed Twenties Fancy Dress evening. Several people hired outfits from a local party shop (Currently closed due to Covid-19 and operating online with a local delivery and collection service to the conference centre. At party shops and dress hire businesses you can buy or hire complete outfits including an accessory such as a headband, hat or fan and shoes.

DIY Fans

Fans come in two basic shapes. concertina or circle.

DIY Concertina Fans

If you have an old fan, which is bedraggled, you could take it apart to see how it is made. Then copy it. Or reconstruct it, repairing the damaged parts.

At a Chinese New Year and Mid Autumn Festival events included an outdoor dinner in open sided marquees around the swimming pool at a condo in Singapore, all the guests were provided with paper fans. The morning after the event, lots of torn paper fans lay on the ground.

One such event was before Covid-19 when I was not so cautious about touching anything which had been touched by anybody else's hands. The pink and purple paper for the fans had glittery gold edges. I thought, that is lovely paper which can be used for greeting cards. 

However, after cutting off the torn parts, I found to my delight that I has sufficient paper so I could construct a smaller fan. Alternatively, I could stick the paper from two fans together with a vertical join to make a new fan.

The classic concertina fan has reinforcements like a lollipop stick on the two short outside edges. The lower third is fixed at the base or a third of the way up. If you were in a hot room without air conditioning you could take any piece of paper such as a spare program/agenda sheet and fold it, or an unwanted large envelope and concertina it. You could use a piece of white A4 paper and draw on it. Or print it in colour to match your outfit. Fasten the fan at the base.

Cutting Semi-circles

Cutting semi-circles is easier yet harder than you think. Look around for something circular. A plate or cup and saucer. An egg cup or wine glass base for the fan shape for a child's small dolly. A fan with advertising to be in a shop window. A fan with a child's name to be held by a toy doll or teddy as a Christmas gift.

A strip of lace or braid can be used on the upright. A fan can also be framed as decoration for a bedroom. It is also amusing for a costume party or fancy dress party or a birthday or anniversary or school or holiday reunion on a them. Fans were the thing in the Roaring Twenties (1920s).

The finest fans are made from lace or delicate fabrics, and decorated with braid. If you have a spare piece of lace or find fabric, or the offcut from a dress you have shortened, or a fabric belt, or a ribbon of lace, think how you could use it on a fan. If it is too fine for the main fan material, it might be used in the circle or straight edge across the top.

Circular Fans

Circular fans are often given away as promotion, by travel companies. Or destinations. You find them at travel fairs. They consist of a circle of stiff paper.

I have used a fan as an accessory for a speech, or stand up comedy turn. I write my notes or prompts on the back of the fan.

If you find fans fascinating, visit the Fan Museum in Greenwich, south east London. I went there and had allowed an hour. But they have 5,000 fans. Not all on display. The staff were chatty and helpful when I was there and Tripadvisor confirms this has been the case for other visitors. One helped a birthday party there. Visitors speak highly of the tea in the orangery tea room. You could also visit the Maritime Museum nearby. For a quick lunch I recommend the steak sandwich at the Lodge in Putney. (See my previous post.)

Novelties in the Fan Museum include a fan with a built in earpiece and another with a built in repair kit. Whatever next!

Next is a look at Fan museums and fans worldwide. One or two in the UK in major tourist destinations such as London's British Museum, and Waddesdon Manor, a day trip which I took recently. 

USA Fan Museum 

Over in the USA there is a fan museum in California. At the Healdsburg Hotel complex. They display a huge number. They have 2,500 fans. 

Healdsburg has a Marriott hotel in the Sonoma wine country. If you want to make a special trip to the area.

Further fans pop up in museums all over North America.

If you are looking online, to avoid links to electric ceiling fans, use the words hand fans.

Useful Websites

DIY FAN

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Fan

UK Fan museum site:

thefanmuseum.org.uk

USA Fan Museum, Healdsburg Hotel complex, California

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_Fan_Museum

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hand-Fan-Museum/

https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/stsri-hotel-trio-healdsburg

Worldwide Fan Museums Collections (USA list)

https://fanassociation.org/fan-fundamentals/museums-with-online-fan-collections/

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The Smart City with green malls, driverless transport and offices on the move

Worldwide experiments are being made with driverless cars.Singapore already has driverless trains. .On the MRT stations you can see plans for the future. Get out at Farrer Park (not to be confused with Farrer Road) and above you is City Square Mall. It looks much like any other modern mall. However, you can read posters inside and out telling you how the building collects and recycles water and a host of other ideas, which were innovative at the time they were inaugurated.

ERP
Electronic Road pricing.
Definitely an improvement. You don't have to keep buying payment stickers. The money you owe is deducted from a card, with automatic time of day, day of week or seasonal increases and reductions made automatically, so no hunt for machines and change or shops open and stocking coupons and no fines for getting it wrong.

Singapore's seasonal decorations for Diwali on the underground train. In the UK in England and Wales special trains run with a character dressed as Santa on mainlines and special lines, particularly steam trains. But holograms could also be added on trains, perhaps sponsored in major cities by Madame Tussauds.

MRT station Downtown Line display of vision of the future by local schoolchildren.

An exhibition on the smart city of the future at one of the stations showed a phone kiosk turned into ta miniature office where you could sit down, type into a computer and print off a document. You would have to pay, like using a business centre in a hotel. But you could even do without an office if you were constantly travelling, and use an office briefly when needed, the way we used to use public phones on a pay as you go basis.

So many people want to do their homework on cafes, write their novel over a cup of coffee, or even have a business meeting in a pub or cafe, it's time that rooms or areas were set aside, perhaps business  booths, separate from others who might overhead.

Instead of restaurants banning phones, they might offer seating with phone plugs. We already have internet cafes, but they are basically internet, with a cup of coffee. Instead we could have something more like a miniature meeting room.

Cars and Vehicles

Rock stars have caravans kitted out like mobile homes combined with rehearsal rooms and offices. 

?Why aren't cars and taxis set up like offices on the move.

Conferences have press rooms with refreshments, even if it's only water or coffee, and desks with computers. Tables for meetings are set up for sales to be made behind booths. 

How do you expand your city? That depends on the terrain. Down to basements one and two with . underground walkways and malls sheltered from the weather. Up to skyscrapers with linkways from one to the next. Rooftop gardens. Greenery providing warmth or cooling, or soothing, or shade or even food. Parks or swimming pools in the sun with a view on rooftops. 

The latest planning departments in Singapore are specifically designing satellite cities, with inputs from adults and students and children and the disabled. For example, to see how long it takes a person in a wheelchair to cross from a busy road from a car park to a shopping mall.

All over the world, all sorts of ideas are emerging and being pooled. For example:

Shanty towns being painted in rainbow colours.

Water supplies.

Unemployed Mafia type gangs and hooligans stopped from destroying business by employing them or their wives and children to work in the business.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker, trainer.

Travel shoes - comfort and style

Last time I took a flight we had to remove out shoes at security. This is not a good time to be wearing shoes with three buckles, or lace ups from toe to thigh. Trying to watch three trays of coats and bags and cameras and belts with metal buckles, metal pendants, while struggling with tripe buckled shoes is not my idea of fun.

I like to travel in shoes with velcro or 'snap and close' fastenings. They detach fast. They fit when your ankles swell in-flight or after a long flight, or going from home country to cold and vice versa.

Pineapples
I was in a branch of Office shoes looking at their sale items. I liked a pair of slip on flat canvas shoes with a pattern of pineapples. The first problem is white shoes will get dirty quickly. The second problem is you have to co-ordinate them with plain colours. I hate mixing one pattern with another. It used to be the sign of a disorganised person. Designers tried to make it a new fashion trend. But you have to be extremely elegant to carry it off.

Like torn jeans, it looks great if everything else is immaculate, freshly washed hair, perfect make up, fancy nails, brand new designer bag, and you have the figure of a model girl. If you have been up all night on an overnight flight, with tousled hair, baggy eyes, three pieces of luggage, one polka dot, one orchids, two patterns on the suitcase tags, pineapples on your shoes, palm trees on your skirt, striped Breton t-shirt, sorry, it looks a mess.

You would be better off all black or all white with just one item in a colour of pattern. So if I travel all black, or all white hm ....

Touch and close shoes:
This year's shoes from Hotter include the Glow design in two co-ordinating colours.
Clarks (currently sale)
Cushion-walk
Easystep
Free-step
Hotter (currently sale online and in store)
Josef Seibel


Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker.

Making a travel diary from any notebook

You can make a travel diary and/or dictionary from any notebook.

The bigger the notebook the more space you have to write. A large hardback notebook could go in a backpack.

However, a big notebook can be heavy to carry around. Sometimes, when I am away for a weekend, or taking a weekend or day trip by plane or train or ferry, I travel light with just a small notebook in my pocket.

Bulk Buy for Savings
Where to buy a notebook? I buy in bulk, sets of three notebooks.  In a cheap shop such as Poundland. Notebooks with ribbon markers.

Same Colours or Varied Colours?
A set of same colour notebooks, for one long trip, or different colours show which country is which.

Flag Cover
You could mark each travel notebook with the flag of the country. Print out the flag if you have a colour printer. (Flags on Wikipedia for that country or under flags.) Or print in black and white to save ink and go over the coloured section with a felt tip pen.) Your home diary has your home country flag. Very quick even to send somebody else to look for your home diary or travel trip diary.

Fancy Covers - Guard Against Loss
Fancy covers are ideal for a notebook to take to a conference, where so often somebody leaves behind their clipboard or notebook or both. So if I leave mine behind on a desk, as I leave a room I glance back and I can spot it at a distance, on the desk or under my chair. I immediately know its mine. Even strangers will remember that I was the lady with the notebook with the peacock or rainbow or cats on the cover, and return it to me, or tell me the room where they saw it left behind.

DIARY BOX AND PHOTO BOX
The First thing I do is label the front and back covers and the spine with the country and date.
Prepare your show box to store the diary and label your shelf so the shoe box always goes back the same place. You might keep your diaries alongside the dictionary and travel guide. Or a photo box. Label the photo box on all sides with the name of the country, and date and possibly also season.

COVER/TITLE, INDEX, PAGE NUMBERS
Your travel diary needs a COVER, TITLE, INDEX and PAGE NUMBERS.
Start with a box for a title, possibly underneath a box for a flag or photo. Alternatively print a flag or photo as background, inserting a box for the title. You can write in the title by hand or print it.

Use the font of your choice and enlarge it to fit the front cover, horizontally. If you print it too big, it may fit long ways or even diagonally.

Label the back cover and spine, if any. Or use a box as cover. Or reinforce the cover with white card stuck on or folded over and attached with glue at the spine, or just with a ribbon like a restaurant menu.

Make an index at the front and another contents at the back. At least write the words index at the top.

Count the number of pages. Ideally you should have that number of lines, one for each page. If the number of pages is, for example 50, but you have only 25 lines per page, you have a choice. Make the inside cover the index and draw lines in pencil.  Divide the index page into two vertically and write - or print - small. Continue the index on the back inside cover or back page.

It's important to start the index before you start writing. The first time I wrote a travel diary in a notebook, I forgot the index and then had too little room at the end of the book for a contents list, which was longer than the inside back cover.

PAGE NUMBERS
Rather than counting pages, then numbering pages, number pages, then you get the word count.

If there are a large number of pages, number pages 1 2 and 3, then only the odd numbers. You could write numbers top right. Unless you like to turn down or tear off page corners. I usually number pages in erasable pencil the first time, then go back and write neatly in pen. You might decide to start numbering after the index, rather than have pages 1-3 listed as index.

TITLE PER PAGE
You might write a title on each page - especially if it's a loose leaf notebook, a Filofax, or a ringbinder.
You could write out generic headings with dots such as
Date .............................
Country .......................
City .............................

Printed DIY Diary
You could print your own diary. Some companies will print a dairy for you with a title and cover photo.

Or print pages with headings and dotted or solid lines, boxes for photos or drawings, page numbers. Print a cover. Use a stapler which does up to 6 pages. Or carry the pages in a folder. Later punch two holes and tie it all together with ribbon.

HONEYMOON AND VIP TRIP GIFT BOOKS
For a special journey such as a honeymoon, anniversary, trip to see grandchildren in Australia/overseas, print a book with photos and text. Use your handwritten notes to print off the day's event's each day.

BLOG BOOK
Write a blog on your trip and create a blogbook. Do not reveal you are away if your home is empty. Even if it isn't, you don't want granny, plus children, housesitter, flatmate, neighbours, cats, dogs and budgies, surprised by phone calls and knocks at the door day or night.

You might write up your blog after the event, for example, the Monday and Tuesday after a weekend away. You could even reminisce a month later, or produce a book a year later, or when you retire.

RETURN ADDRESS
You might put your address and return to details on the back cover. For security you might prefer your address on the inside cover, in which case you will probably want your index starting on page 1 and not on the inside cover.

For security, instead of revealing your home address when away travelling, you could give the address of a relative or neighbour or your office - or your hotel.

Angela Lansbury BA Hons, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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