Spanish Sports Project

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Spanish Teachers Chatboard

Spanish Sports Project

by Ryan

Dec 13, 2015

Anybody have any ideas for a project involving Spanish sports? We are taking a unit test on Tuesday and our last day before break is Friday. I really do not want to start something new before break as they will forget it, but would like to do something meaningful with them.

Any thoughts? I need to fill up 2 hours worth of time and would like to limit it to in class.

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Al On 12/13/15, Ryan wrote: > Anybody have any ideas for a project involving Spanish > sports? We are taking a unit test on Tuesday and our last > day before break is Friday. I really do not want to start > something new before break as they will forget it, but > would like to do something meaningful with them. > > Any thoughts? I...See MoreOn 12/13/15, Ryan wrote: > Anybody have any ideas for a project involving Spanish > sports? We are taking a unit test on Tuesday and our last > day before break is Friday. I really do not want to start > something new before break as they will forget it, but > would like to do something meaningful with them. > > Any thoughts? I need to fill up 2 hours worth of time and > would like to limit it to in class.

Of course soccer is by far the most popular team sport in the Spanish-speaking world, and I guess jai alai is the most characteristically Spanish (ultimately Basque) sport, but I think that you'd get the most mileage, and the most engagement in an American classroom, with béisbol. (Like soccer, it is ultimately a British import, so I see no legitimacy or authenticity issue, comparatively speaking.) It's primarily popular only in Central America, southern Mexico, and the Caribbean -- you can't have everything

You can go to <[link removed].

Like the team names, the other terms of art are a mix of loans and translations. Word-by- word loan translations like Salón de la Fama are cute, but my favorite translation is jardinero for fielder. I imagine someone running to the warning track, trying to keep a fly ball inside the park by raising a rake. Where sports terminology is a figurative extension of ordinary language (like "sweep") I find the translated form (like "barrer") envigorating.

The loanwords with domesticated spellings, like béisbol itself, are useful in what they demonstrate about the sound correspondences. (I seem to recall homrón or the like was once a common term -- at least in Honduras -- but it seems carrera is now more common. The impression I have is that there is more variety of terminology, either because national media in C.A. and island countries are practically local media, or perhaps because the loans-vs.-translations thing still hasn't shaken out completely.

Incidentally, béisbol is often spelled without the accent, and it seems to be more than just the usual sloppiness. A few years ago I asked a few Mexicans and central Americans how they pronounced it, and I concluded that the most common pronunciation should be written "beis bol." That is, each syllable gets its own stress. In single words of two syllables, even stress tends to be perceived as stress on the ult, hence the spelling beisbol.

Anyway, in answer to the specific question about possible projects, I imagine that after some preliminary introduction you could project an appropriately selected sports story on a screen and let the class work out a translation.

FWIW, Universidad de Monterrey, about 100 miles from Texas, has a strong collegiate equipo de fútbol americano. (I hadn't realized until now that this is contrasted with "fútbol estadounidense" -- US soccer.) Anyway, UDEM plays against other Mexican teams, so there may be a league of some sort.

Dec 14, 2015

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Al On 12/14/15, I wrote

> You can go to espndeportes DOT espn DOT go DOT com FORWARDSLASH beisbol

but it doesn't display that way.

Dec 14, 2015

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