Feb 15 2008
The Shockwave version of the Spanish Numbers program was written with Director MX 2004, and since Adobe has been having a few compatibility issues with their current release of the plugin, I’ve written a self-contained downloadable version that should work on most Windows machines.
There is no install required. Just download this program to your computer and run.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me.
Feb 12 2008
| Want is the third word / phrase in our essential Spanish mini-series. Want is self explanatory, so without any preamble here we go: |
| I want the fish plate, please. |
| Quiero el plato de pescado, por favor. |
| I want to go to the museum. |
| Quiero ir al museo. |
| Do you want to go to the market with me? |
| ¿Quieres ir al mercado conmigo? |
| Do you want a ride? |
| ¿Quieres un raite? |
| Be careful if you want to go swimming. |
| Ten cuidado si quieres ir a nadar. |
Feb 06 2008
| Have (tener) is our second word / phrase base in the essentials catagory when it comes to basic Spanish communication, as being able to ask if something is available is of vital importance to the traveler.
Here is a link to the first of the “essentials” where: donde.
You will notice in the examples below that tener, being a verb, has different conjugations based on the "person" it refers to. What’s cool about this is that you don’t need to include the pronoun when speaking, it’s built into, or "implied," in the verb. For example, you don’t need to say, ¿Usted tiene una pluma? (Do you have a pen?) You would simply ask, "¿Tiene una pluma? We will be using Usted for "you" in the examples below because it’s polite when asking something of someone you don’t know.
Note that a few of the examples below use have / tener to describe how one is feeling. That is because in Spanish you do not say I am hungry or I am tired. You would say, I have hunger or I have sleepy. This took me awhile to get used to, but this usage actually makes more sense than its English counterpart.
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Jan 30 2008
There are a number of ways to create Spanish accents and characters on your computer. I find the easiest is by using the ALT key codes. Another way is to use the Windows Character Map utility. I won’t get into these methods, as there are thousands of pages on the web covering this.
I wanted to share an application with you that was originally built to help me type Spanish characters a little faster because I can’t remember all the Alt codes and I find the Character Map too slow. I call it spanish-character.exe, but my wife objects to grouping the whole under terms like characters and accents, but to me that’s what they are. She says that some are accents and some are letters of the Spanish alphabet. If I have to use codes to access them, they are characters. So, here is the link to the program: Spanish Characters. (Windows only - no install required.)
To use it just select the character you want to use and it will be copied to the clipboard. Then go to the application you’re working in and paste or Ctrl+V to insert the character, Spanish accent, letter, or whatever you want to call it.
As I originally built this for myself and have only tested it on one OS, any feedback would be appreciated.