Payasos

¡No tengo miedo de los payasos! I'm not scared of clowns! Now this is fun. I can actually translate this as "I have no fear of clowns". Nice.

You get a great feeling of satisfaction when something like this clicks, don't you? Congratulations!

I attended my Spanish Class at the Senior Center this morning and we started with basic conversations. The instructor will start a few sentences and each of us will talk about ourselves back to the instructor. What was interesting was she prefers to say "Mi nombre es Victoria" rather than "Me llamo Victoria". The difference is "Mi nombre es Victoria (My name is Victoria), while "Me llamo Vicky could be any way you want to be called. It kind of made sense to me but I always learned it as "Me llamo Aurora". Any thoughts? Maybe "Me llamo" is just the first name and " and "Mi nombre" is the first and last name. According to someone, maybe from the forum, "Me llamo" is used in informal and social situations. "Mi nombre es is used in very formal situations and in filling out forms, etc.

I believe that both forms are correct, though saying "Mi nombre es Victoria" sounds more formal. I also was taught to answer the question "Como se llama?" with "Me llamo Robert." I suppose you could also ask "Que es su nombre?" but that just sounds weird to me.

Here is what I think, and I could be way off base. Pretend for a moment that Aurora, Robert, Ricardo, Steven, and Dan meet at the first annual Rocket Spanish get-together. Despite the fact that we are all wearing those cheesy little name tags, and we should be speaking to one another in Spanish, we begin introducing ourselves in English, "Hi, my name is Dan," "My name is Aurora." "I'm Robert." I am Ricardo." My name is Steven." Both formats are correct, and we (probably unconsciously) use one or the other just so we don't all sound like we are copying one another. I suspect that a group of native Spanish speakers would do the same thing: some would choose "me llamo.." while others would say "mi nombre es". But I also suspect that if a native English speaker introduced him or herself to a native Spanish speaker by saying, "mi nombre es..." the Spanish speaker would immediately thing "gringo." We learned "me llamo" as the "more correct" way, and we would probably be on safer ground sticking with it. Again, I could be way wrong about this, but I would love to hear other opinions.

Hola todos, I can only offer my opinion as a gringo student, but I think Dan is right. I was the one on the forum that said one might be asked ¿Cuál es su nombre? if opening an account, booking a flight etc. I could be wrong as well, but "me llamo" ¿ Como te llamas? or "se llama" seems to be what is commonly used. I think in the case of an instructor introducing her self or someone else in a similar situation they might say: "Mi nombre es Elvis Presley y quiero cantar una canción para ustedes". Saludos, Ricardo