Home Thread for Copo de Algodón | Final Week

Spanish Reading Book Clubs
21
Week 4

Ok, so one thing jumps out in week 4. It’s not Hernan Cortes, one of the most famous characters in history. It’s not the playing out of one of the most strange conquests in history, as a group of 400 soldiers take down a powerful city state, who are locked into thinking that this is the return of their god Quetazlcoatal in the form of a Spanish guy with a beard.

It’s Malinalli. A girl so gifted with languages that she has learned Spanish just by hanging out with the Spanish soldiers. No Duolingo, no Natively, no SRS, no textbooks, no teacher. Just brilliant at language learning. Oh, and she’s picked up fluent Mayan too. I’m completely not jealous…

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22

Week 5 has opened.

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23

Interesting use of the word tigre at the start of week 5. I was confused initially as surely tigers are from Asia not Americas. Turns out tigre can meet jaguar as well.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Tigre o Tiger o Tigris puede hacer referencia a:

  • Tigre, nombre común del felino asiático Panthera tigris.
  • Tigre, nombre común del felino americano Panthera onca, más conocido como jaguar.

Reading week 5 the Spanish seem just as cruel as the Aztecs. They despise human sacrifice but quite happily burn people alive, which seems crueler than the Aztec deaths!

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24

Opening up week 6 a bit early, as I’m traveling.

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25

Wrapped up this book today. Thanks @eefara for nominating and setting up the reading group. It was a good way to learn a bit of Aztec history - it’s sparked my interest to read more about this period in English.

I’ve popped my general thoughts about the book into a review of the book’s Natively page rather than putting here.

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