I received an email today from the Mozilla Add-ons group that Barra de Español has been approved to be in the public listing on addons.mozilla.org! This means that it no longer has the “experimental” label and can be installed without the user needing to check a box. For those of you who forgot what Barra de Español is, check out the original announcement. If you haven’t installed it yet, do so today!

Our good friend Ramses has just launched a wonderful database of Spanish-English sentences at http://sentences.spanish-only.com/. I insist that you go there now and bookmark it. I’ll wait.

This thing is great for the Spanish student! How many times do you learn a new word but you don’t have a sentence for it to put in your SRS? This happens to me all the time. Now you can go to the Spanish-English Sentence Database (SESDB? Am I allowed to make acronyms for something I didn’t create?) and search for the word and find a sentence containing that word. You may browse the database  by the first letter in the sentence, if you like, too.

Ramses has a lot more detail about his creation at his blog, read it for more details.

The bold statement that is the title of this post should really read “Why You Should Be Using the US International Keyboard Layout If You are Studying Languages that Use the Roman Alphabet and Especially If You are a Software Developer,” but that makes a monster of an already long title. So keep in mind this post is not aimed at anyone studying languages that use non-Roman-derived writing systems.

It all began so innocently…

On June 13th, I received this tweet from @darmorrow which thanked me for creating Barra de Español and asked me how to type the “@” key. That was followed by a comment she made here on babelhut, explaining that she had transformed her whole computer to Spanish but was still figuring it out. I realized that she had begun using the Spanish keyboard layout exclusively, but I was still primarily using the US English keyboard layout and switching to the Spanish layout only when I needed to type in Spanish. Oh no, I thought. My immersion experience is incomplete unless I use the Spanish layout full-time!

The quest for the holy grail a more complete immersion experience

I decided right away to switch my keyboard layout to a Spanish layout full-time, but I was concerned that learning where the various punctuation keys were would be a nightmare. I briefly considered purchasing an actual Spanish keyboard, but instead found a more frugal solution. Stickers! I bought three sets of stickers which I put on my keyboards at home and at work. The first keyboard I did I put every single sticker on the keyboard, which took some time. On subsequent keyboards I only put on the stickers on keys that were different between the US and Spanish layouts. Once the stickers were in place, I switched all of the computers that I used to the Spanish layout.

Codito ergo sum

With this setup I was doing fine writing emails and surfing the web. But I’m a software developer, and one who deals with a lot of HTML and XML. I very quickly realize there was no easy way to type the greater-than and less-than signs! “<” and “>” were seemingly unobtainable! On my Linux computers at home I discovered an obscure key combination that produced those characters, but on my Windows machine at work, nothing worked. Greater-than and less-than were not my only problems though. When I write code, I need to know where all the various punctuation marks are. The Spanish layout has them moved all over the place, and although I planned to just learn the new layout, many of the keys seemed like there were in very inconvenient places. I was frustrated.

The US International Keyboard Layout

I then remembered a comment made by my friend Ramses suggesting that I try the US International keyboard layout. I set it up and I immediately knew this was what I needed. The layout has all of the punctuation marks where I expect them. I can easily type áéíóúñ¿¡ just by hitting the Alt key on the right side of the space bar and the corresponding key. I can also get those accented vowels by hitting the ‘ key first. I am able to type äëïöü with the “ key, even though only ü is used in Spanish. I can do all that without having to switch keyboard layouts or being mindful of my current keyboard layout.

Like everything else, there are some drawbacks. In order to produce a ‘ or ” or ~ or ^ you must hit the space bar following those keys. I’ve had this layout setup for over a month now and I’m finally hitting the space bar automatically after those keys. Overall, I feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and I intend to continue using the US International keyboard layout.

Have you experimented with other keyboard layouts, or are you considering it? Write about it in the comments!

Listening and understanding Spanish is a big weakness for me. I can read Spanish much better than I can listen to it. So, to get better at it I’ve been spending more time listening to Spanish music and podcasts. Since I last wrote about finding music you like in your language of study, I have discovered Pandora. Pandora is great because you start with an artist or multiple artists you like, and it starts playing similar artists. As you listen, you can give thumbs up or down to each song, and Pandora will adjust what it plays next based on your choices, essentially learning what you will probably like to hear. Another great thing about Pandora is that it will often play artists in your target language that are difficult to find in your home country, even stuff that I’ve found difficult to find on Amazon.

In English I listen primarily to metal and hard rock, but in Spanish I’ve noticed that while I still like some metal, I’ve been leaning more towards rap, even though I can’t stand most rap in English. I’m not entirely sure why this is yet, I’m still getting a feel for what’s out there. I’ve also been listening to a couple of podcasts, these are also to practice listening to Spanish.

Here are some of the things I’ve been listening to:

• Hamlet
• Skunk DF
• Skizoo
• A.N.I.M.A.L.
• Molotov
• Control Machete
• News in Slow Spanish
• VOA en Español – Buenos Días America
• SSL4YOU

Definitely check out Pandora for yourself. (Update: Thomas tells me that Pandora only works within the US. It may be possible to get around this using a proxy.)

What have you been listening to in your target language?  Tell us in the comments!

I’m sure the question on your mind right now is: So, who won the free copy of 601 Spanish Verbs? Was it me?

Well if you are mrcneff, then the answer is yes, you won! I will be contacting you for delivery information shortly.

For everybody else, I’m sorry. Maybe you will win next time. You could always purchase a copy for yourself.

¡Felicidades, mrcneff!

Update: The deadline for entering the drawing has been extended, see details at the bottom of this post.

A couple of months ago I received a copy of 601 Spanish Verbs for me to review. I incorporated this book into my Spanish studies to see how well it fared. Read on to find out what I think of it and how you can win a free copy for yourself!

The Verb Guide

The Verb Guide section at the beginning of this book is pure gold. I’ve had trouble with the more advanced tenses in Spanish until I read this section. The descriptions of each tense are the clearest and most easily understood of any Spanish book that I’ve come across. I know some of you have heard “Screw Grammar!” from my friend Ramses, and to some extent I agree, but I think you still need to know when and how to use your verb tenses. You don’t need to memorize the rules but you do need read about them, and more importantly study sentences in your SRS that demonstrate these rules. This book has enough example sentences for each of the verb tenses that you will learn how to use them well.

This book also does an excellent job of explaining many of the exceptions that you must deal with in Spanish, and identifies the patterns you will see with irregular verbs, as well as the cases where there is no pattern, like that fui/fuiste/fue/fuimos/fueron can be either ser or ir, which I did not know before. I can honestly say that my Spanish has improved a lot just because of this section of the book.

The 601 Verbs

The bulk of this book is the reference section for the 601 verbs. This section is neatly laid out, with one verb per page. The verb’s infinitive form and meaning in English are at the top of the page with all the possible conjugations laid out in charts neatly over the rest of the page.  The charts are very easy to read, with the suffix changes for each conjugation in bold. Some verbs in this section are highlighted as “must know verbs.” These pages have a light blue background instead of white, so that there are easy to see as you flip through the book. As a reference section it’s very well done, there’s only thing I think it lacks. In other verb books I’ve seen there are a few example sentences for each verb demonstrating the use of that verb in a several different tenses. Unfortunately this book does not have that.

Other sections

The book has a few more smaller sections in the back. The first is an activity section which is basically just a little test of how well you can use verbs in a sentence. Some of the questions are multiple choice and some are fill-in-the-blank. I haven’t tried quizzing myself with it just yet, but I intend to because this is another good source of sentences that show how the verbs are used.

The next section is a list of 75 “must know verbs,” which are the same 75 verbs highlighted in the main reference section. Following that are a list of tech verbs. The list is pretty short, and if you’ve already setup your computer for Spanish, you’ve probably seen most of these already. Following this is a section on text message abbreviations in Spanish. This is an interesting section, and maybe useful to those of you who text message with Spanish speakers. I can’t verify its utility though, as the only Spanish speaker that I send text messages to doesn’t know any of these abbreviations, although to be fair, we are in Texas and not in a Spanish-speaking country.

The next little section is a test preparation guide which are useful tips for students in academic settings, and they’re applicable for tests in subjects other than Spanish as well. Following this is the answer key to the earlier activity section. After that is the last section, which lists over 2500 more verbs. This section is actually great because if you could not find your verb in the main reference section, you can find it here with a short English definition and a page number which refers to a verb in the main reference section that conjugates in the exact same way. They really could have named this book 3101+ Verbs because that’s really what you get with this section.

The CD-ROM

Like many educational books, this book included a CD-ROM. Don’t waste your time with it. It contains an e-book for the iPod of useful phrases in Spanish. It only works with the iPod, and not any other music device. I don’t own an iPod so I borrowed one from a friend to review the CD-ROM. The installer program on the CD is very clunky and requires you to changes all sorts settings in iTunes that you may not want to change. Once installed on your iPod, the e-book is located under “Extras -> Notes.” The whole experience feels very kludgy and you’re really better off with a real travel guide if that’s what you’re after. There are actual mp3 files on the CD if you want to listen to Spanish pronunciation of the phrases in the e-book.

The Verdict

Because I find that numeric ratings are pretty useless, I like to give a score of either buy, borrow, or avoid. I rate this book as buy for any student of the Spanish language.

The Pros:

• Description of verb tenses are clearest and easiest to understand of any Spanish book I’ve read
• Covers typical verb stem-change patterns well
• Good example sentences demonstrating the various tenses
• The reference section is laid-out well
• Low price: the cover price is only $15.99
• You really get over 3101 verbs

The Cons:

• In the verb reference section there are no sentences for each of the verbs
• The CD-ROM is not very useful

Giveaway: Win a free copy of 601 Spanish Verbs

I have an extra copy of 601 Spanish Verbs that I will give to a randomly selected entrant. There are two ways to enter the drawing. The first way to enter is to leave a comment on this post. The second way is to send a tweet via Twitter that contains both the text “#babelhut.com” and a link to this article (it’s okay to use a url-shortener like tinyurl.com or bit.ly). The drawing is open to everyone. You may enter exactly twice, once in the comments on this post, and once on twitter.

The winner will be selected on Monday, June 22 June 29 and notified either by email or by a direct message on Twitter. Good luck!

Update: The deadline has been pushed by a week to give people more time to enter the drawing.

I’ve just released an update to Barra de Español, version 1.1. The new version has some new features that I believe make it a necessary upgrade for those of you currently using version 1.0. You can get the new version from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/12029.

Here is what’s new in this version:

• Wrapped “loose” variables and function in a javascript object to meet addons.mozilla.org’s standards.
• Added http://www.cinetube.es/ to video sites
• Fixed unicode text in search history being stored incorrectly. This change may cause you to lose your previous search history.
• Replaced CNN en Español with CNN Chile, since the Chile site actually contains news.
• Words selected in text areas can now be defined with the right-click menu.
• Added a menu to insert the punctuation characters: upside-down question mark and upside-down exclamation mark.

For those of you who aren’t yet using Barra de Español, it’s a Firefox toolbar for students of the Spanish language. Find out more from the original release announcement.

Every once in a while, we all run into a word that deceives us about its meaning. Often it is because the word looks similar to a word in your native language, which happened to me today on twitter. I had just discovered an excellent blog called ReVerbSpanish and I had tweeted about it. The author of that blog, Eleena,  sent me this tweet:

@peterjcarroll ¡Muchas gracias por tu voto de confianza! Espero que no te decepcione.

Decepcione? I read that and thought to myself, “Why would she hope to not deceive me?” It was clearly dictionary time. It turns out that the verb decepcionar means to disappoint. I felt silly, but I’ve learned a new word and I won’t make that same mistake again!

Are there any false friends in your language of study that have deceived you before? Tell us in the comments!

Ladies and gentlemen, Spanish students across the globe, I’d like to introduce you to my latest creation! It’s a Firefox add-on called Barra de Español. It lets find word translations and definitions using wordreference.com by typing the word in the toolbar, or by highlighting the word and right-clicking on it. It helps insert the special characters that Spanish uses that may not be on your keyboard.  It provides links to native Spanish web sites which can help you in your study of the language, including news, reference, and video sites. But the best part is that it’s free!

Phew! I’m done with the sales pitch now. Seriously though, check it out. You can download it from addons.mozilla.org. It’s currently considered “experimental” on their site so you have to check a little box that says that yes, you really want to install this. Don’t worry though, I’ve tested it thoroughly and I use it myself daily. It is definitely release-quality, and hopefully the reviewers at Mozilla will upgrade the add-on from its experimental status shortly.

Why would I create such a thing? Well, why wouldn’t I? I’m studying Spanish and I know how to program a computer. The natural conclusion is that I would write this, right? The truth is, I didn’t think of it until I saw this article on Tofugu.com talking about a Japanese toolbar. I began to wonder why all the cool Japanese studying kids got the cool tools, but I had nothing like that to help me with my Spanish studies. I think this shows that jealousy is not always a bad thing.

If you interested in more details about the creation of Barra de Español, I wrote about the process on my personal blog. Also, I want to thank Ramses from spanish-only.com for checking my Spanish on the project site.

So what are you waiting for? Try it out, and then leave a comment to let me know what you think about it!

Learning a language is like having a pet.  You need to feed and water it everyday.  You can’t miss days.  Many people who try to learn a language do really well at first.  They are really motivated.  They daydream about being a master of their target language and it gives them all this purpose and energy.  Oh I’m going to learn Spanish!  Here I go!  But after a while that motivation begins to fade, they get bored and then they stop.  People are like this.  We get bored and we want to do something else instead.

Imagine you go to a pet store and see a puppy.  It’s little, it’s cute.  It sticks it’s tongue out and wags its little tail at you.  It nips at the ears of its puppy friends.  It runs around clumsily, stomping on the puppies sleeping in the basket over there.  Oh, this puppy is for me!  So you take it home.  You are very excited about your new puppy.  Everyday you feed him, give him water, clean up after him, take him on walks, play with him.  He’s your best friend!

But after a couple weeks you get tired.  This dog poops too much!  He brings fleas into the house.  He barks at night and wakes me up.  He jumps too much!  He licks my pizza before I can put it in my mouth.  How annoying!  So you take a break.  You take a 3-day vacation away from the house.  I just need a little time to recharge, you say.

What happens when you get home?  What a mess!  Your dog has torn your house up!  You weren’t there to feed him so he ate the stuffing in your couch!  You weren’t there to play with him, so he played with all of your stuff instead.  Everything is on the floor, covered in dog slobber and teethmarks.  You weren’t there to take your dog outside so he peed all over your carpet.  It stinks!

This is what happens when you take breaks away from your language.  When you come back, you’ll have a big mess to clean up.  You’ll forget all the words you just learned.  You’ll have lost the plot in the drama you were watching.  You’ll forget what happened in the comic book you were reading.  You’ll have 1000 cards due in Anki!  Oh no!

Now you have to spend time relearning everything.  You can’t just pick up where you left off.  You have to go back to before you left and do everything over again!  Cleaning up big messes is no fun.  If it’s not fun, you might even decide to put it off even longer!

There’s dog hair all over my toothbrush.  Stupid dog!  Don’t blame the dog.  You were the one who left!  And why didn’t you pack your toothbrush with you anyway?

If you take frequent breaks from your language it’s even worse.  Then you don’t even have a chance to catch up.  You’re gone from the house so much that your pet won’t even recognize you.  If you have a pet monkey and you only come home to feed him once a week, is he going to be happy to see you?  No!  He’s going to throw poop at you!  Get out of my house, human!  Frequent, extended periods away from your target language will cause your language foundation to crumble.  The bits and pieces will slip through the cracks and fall into the gutter where they will dissolve in the rushing water.  Good luck finding them then!  I can’t think of a slower way to fluency.

And if you are gone for too long, you’ll come home and your pet will be dead!  Ever take off a year or two from a language?  Bad idea!  Just start over!

Some of you may be thinking: oh this analogy doesn’t hold up.  When people go on vacation, they get a friend or a neighbor to watch their pets for them.

It’s still the same.  If you give your friend your Spanish books.  Here, you read these.  Give him all your Spanish DVDs.  Watch these for me, will you?   Who’s going to get better at Spanish?  Not you!  You might as well give him your plane tickets to Spain too.  You won’t know what the hell is going on over there.  If you give your pet monkey to your friend, they’ll bond while you’re away.  They’ll climb trees and eat bananas together, scratch their armpits.  But then if you show up expecting to join in, the monkey will just scratch its head and steal your sandwich.

I’ve been talking about dogs and monkeys, but really a language is a much more high-maintenance pet.  It’s more like having a pet hippo.  With a dog, it only takes a minute to pour dog food and water into his bowl.  If you take him on a 15 minute walk once a day, play with him a little, pet him while you watch TV and take him outside every now and then to do his business, you can get by.  An hour a day.

A hippo is a different story.  A hippo requires much more food than a dog.  You’ll need a shovel to scoop it all into her mouth.  That might take an hour in itself.  And you’ll actually need two shovels, because a paper towel won’t cut it when it comes time to clean up hippo poop.  And after you’re done hauling those big black trash bags to your front lawn, get out your brush because it’s bath time and a hippo can’t reach her backside with those stubby little legs of hers.  You can train a dog to follow your commands, but a hippo does what it wants.  When you take your hippo on a walk you’d better bring a big stick to go along with your shovel or you’ll have angry neighbors breathing down your neck wondering where their tree went or why their car is upside-down in the pool.  “Sit” and “Here girl” won’t work with a hippo.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that a pet hippo is an all day commitment.  You can’t take your eyes off her for a moment or you’ll find yourself with a ticket for obstructing traffic and a weekend lost while you rebuild the fence.

Learning a language, really learning a language, is like having a pet hippo.  You need to give it all of your attention.  As much as possible, every waking moment you have should be spent in your target language.  And you can’t skip days.  All day everyday.  A few hours a week with a pet turtle isn’t going to cut it.  Trust me, I turtled Japanese for a long time and it got me nowhere very slow.  It wasn’t until I hippoed up that things started happening.  Everyday.  All day.  Think of a hippo in a river.  Immersion.  Stop writing blog posts about monkey shit and go watch a Japanese movie.

It’s possible to learn two languages at the same time.  Just because you have a hippo doesn’t mean you can’t have a turtle too.  But one of them has to be a hippo language.  Two turtles aren’t going to win you any races.  And you need to feed both of them everyday.  Don’t go back and forth, loving your hippo for a week, and then loving your turtle for a week.  Spend time with them both, whenever you get the chance.  Here’s some terminology:

1. Hippo language: 4+ hours a day (Hungry Hippo 4-8, Happy Hippo 8+)
2. Monkey language: 2-4 hours a day
3. Dog language: 1-2 hours a day
4. Turtle language: Few hours a week
5. Rock language: Look at it a few times a year.

I hippo Japanese full time and dog Thai on the side.  I feed them both everyday.  By feed I mean watching movies, watching TV, reading books, reading comics, reading news, doing SRS reps, playing video games, translating video games, translating magazine articles, reading children’s books, watching mouths and mimicking voices.  And it’s working.

But don’t get carried away.  3 languages?  4?  5?  at the same time?  Unless you’re turtling them, where are you going to get the money for all that food?  You’ll just end up with a house full of dead animals.