Languages

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

I had once assumed that if I were to learn a constructed language, it would be Esperanto. It seems to be the most popular conlang out there, with several studies done on its effectiveness on improving language-aquisition skills. But last week my brother reminded me what assuming does and convinced me to start learning Lojban with him. Lojban is described as a logical language with unambiguous grammar, so it should be easier to learn than a natural language.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

This past Christmas, I received Huevos verdes con jamón, which is the Spanish translation of Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. I’ve read the book a few times now, but I just read it again, this time adding quite a bit to my SRS as I went. By total coincidence, this post is in time for Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

I’ve been trying to improve my listening skills in Spanish. So far I’m terrible at it but I’m picking up more words the longer I listen. I’ve discovered part of the reason I have difficulty understanding words is because Spanish speakers like to compress their words together when consecutive words end and begin with a vowel sound.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

Photo by [nati]

One of the great challenges of learning a new language is immersing yourself in the new language enough so that you can almost absorb it through osmosis . In addition to putting index cards up around your house, setting up your mobile phone and your computer in your target language, watching movies in your new language, or installing a new shower curtain, you can also listen to music in the language you are learning.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

It is said that the best way to learn a foreign language is through total immersion. So why should your shower be any different? Someone who was Christmas shopping for me found this wonderful shower curtain, which contains 250 Spanish words and their English definitions. It’s also available in French.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

I recently discovered that I could switch my phone’s display language from English to Spanish, and in doing so I was blown away by the new vocabulary that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. This, along with an excellent series of posts from Ramses, has inspired me to help others by sharing what I have learned.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

As I mentioned at the end of my article, Setting up a Spanish keyboard in Windows Vista , I am primarily a user of Linux and the KDE desktop environment. In an small effort to immerse myself in a little more Spanish, I changed my desktop from English to Spanish. To do this, I opened the KDE Control Center. Under “Regional & Accessibility” I selected “Country/Region & Language.” I added Spanish to the list of languages, and made sure it was at the top of the list. After clicking on “Apply,” the new settings only apply to programs that start after the change. So in order to make the whole desktop in Spanish, I had to logoff and log back in.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

Can’t figure out how to type “¿Dónde está el baño?” on your keyboard? If you use Windows Vista, this article will tell you how to setup a Spanish keyboard so that you can type all those characters that aren’t standard on your keyboard. Users of older versions of Windows (XP, 2000, etc) won’t be able to use the directions exactly, but you should be able to get a general idea of how to setup a Spanish keyboard.

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

I was on the phone with my friend Patrick, who has been my friend for about 12 years, and one of the things we discussed was our study of Spanish. Patrick has gone a little further than I have and I found his description of his study habits interesting. He doesn’t use an SRS program like myself or Thomas, but through his use of Rosetta Stone he has had some similar results to what users of SRS programs have seen. I asked him to write a brief description of his study methods so that I can post them here:

This post was originally posted on Babelhut.

I recently purchased a book called Spanish Verbs And Essentials of Grammar to strengthen my understanding of Spanish grammar and conjugation. I didn’t feel I was getting enough of this from my existing study materials. It’s funny how some themes seem to occur at the same time. On Friday, Ramses at Spanish Only posted Studying Grammar CAN Help. He discusses how much grammar has improved his study progress, which is what I am hoping for with my recent purchase.