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Within the last few months, I decided that I am finally going to get some international travel under my belt. I’m going to save my money, and I’m going to Japan. The actual trip probably won’t happen until next year, but it’s going to happen, and I’ve already made good progress in saving up for the trip. Why Japan? Mostly because Thomas, my friend and fellow Babelhut.com writer, lives there with his wife and child. What better way to travel internationally than to get someone you know to show you around?

Because of this decision, my girlfriend and I have decided to start learning Japanese. Spanish is still my primary language of study, and that won’t change, so we plan to only study Japanese for one hour a week. We don’t intend to become fluent speakers, we just want to be able to get around. We just started this and have only studied twice now, but so far we have been having fun.

We are focusing mostly on learning to communicate verbally, and in our first sesssion we sampled both Carl Kenner’s free Japanese audio course, and the Michel Thomas Method Japanese for Beginners. Carl Kenner’s course teaches writing along with speaking, while the Michel Thomas course is focused entirely on speaking. We found that Carl Kenner moved a little to quickly for us to keep up, and decided to stick with the Michel Thomas course for now.

I was surprised at just how much fun learning a brand new language together with my girlfriend is. We both laugh at our silly mistakes, while simultaneously being very encouraging to each other. During our second session, we needed to say “kore o kudasai, ” which means something like “please may I have this?” My girlfriend couldn’t remember how to say it, so I held up a piece of mail and said “correo” which in Spanish means “mail”, but sounds very similar to the Japanese “kore o.” This got a laugh out of her and now she remembers that “kore” means “this” in Japanese.

I hope we continue to have this much fun with Japanese, because we are both looking forward to our next Japanese session!

One last thing. I know it’s been very quiet around here. Thomas and I have been working on something big, and soon we’ll be able to tell you all about it! I’m actually very excited about this, but I can’t say more yet! Stay tuned…

Welcome to the first post of a new series at Babelhut.com, Spanish Verb Highlight. This series will highlight a different Spanish verb in every post, and provide several example sentences showing how the verb is used in different tenses.

The first verb highlighted is oír, which means to hear, or to listen to. Oír is an irregular verb, and one that I personally have trouble remembering how to conjugate. You have probably seen or heard oír in the form of ¡oye!, which is used to get someone’s attention in the same way that we would say “hey!” in English.

Let’s look at some example sentences, some of which I have pulled from the Spanish-English Sentence Database:

He tenido que dormir con tapones para no oír tus ronquidos.
I’ve had to sleep with earplugs so I wouldn’t hear your snores.

Oigo las sirenas muy cerca.
I hear sirens very close by.

Se oyeron unos gritos de dolor.
They heard some painful screams.

¿Has oído lo que han dicho las noticias?
Have you heard what they’re saying on the news?

Creo que oiga algo.
I think I hear something.

¿Qué estás oyendo?
What are you listening to?

Te oyó la primera vez.
He heard you the first time.

Add these sentences to the SRS of your choice so that you don’t forget how to use this verb!

Photo credit: CarbonNYC

Here’s a language learning tip that has worked really well for me: learn to cook.  And when you do, use recipes in your target language.  Great way to learn language.  Here’s why:

1. Recipes are short – most recipes fit on one piece of paper, and that’s including a big picture of the end result.
2. Recipes are easy – recipes all follow pretty much the same format: picture, ingredient list, instructions.

   The ingredient list itself will provide you with half of the information you need to read the instructions.

   And the instructions are short, logical and sequential:  Cut this into this size pieces.  Cut that into that size pieces.  Put them in a pot.  Add this ingredient.  Cook it over a flame of this strength for this many minutes.  Add this seasoning.  Garnish with this.  Voila!

3. Cooking is hands-on – when you cook you will be using all five senses: touch, sight, taste, smell, sound.   This enhances the experience and you will remember it better.

   The more senses you use the better it is for recall.  Imagine sitting at a desk and looking over a vocabulary list of fruits in Swahili for 5 minutes.  Then imagine someone throwing fruits at you for 5 minutes, calling out their names in Turkish while you try to dodge.  Which set do you think you’ll remember better at the end of the day?   Assuming you don’t get hit in the head with a canteloupe.

   Senses matter.   Instead of studying words in a language you are creating an experience in the language.  That experience will imprint itself in your mind in ways that a chair and a sore back can’t.

4. Double reward – when you cook you get to eat the food at the end.  When you cook in a foreign language you get to eat the food and feel good about yourself for doing something in your target language. 

   That’s double the return.

   And if you mess up and the food tastes horrible at least you have a funny story to tell.  “Check this out.  I was trying to make some cake but the recipe was in Arabic…”

5. Foreign food – part of learning a language is experiencing another culture.  You can’t separate the two.  And food is a big part of any culture.  You need to learn the tastes, smells and names of native foods.

   How many Spanish people in Spain can talk about Spanish food in Spanish?  All of them.  (Replace the underlined words to match your language situation).

   Learning food will make your language experience more complete.  And it will help you read menus when you visit the country.

Execution

Ok, I hope I convinced you that it’s worth a try.  It’s very easy to get started.  Here’s how you do it:

Paper Method

1. Figure out the word for “recipe” in your target language.
2. Put that word into Google.  That should bring up a ton of recipe websites.
3. Find a recipe that looks good.
4. Print the recipe out.
5. Cook it.
6. Eat.

YouTube Method

Same as the paper method, but replace Google with Youtube, and of course you watch the video instead of printing out the recipe.

Using YouTube to find recipes is great because you get some listening practice in too.  Plus you get to watch somebody else cook the recipe before you do.  It has repetition built into it too because you’ll find yourself running back and forth between the kitchen and your computer to watch the video again.

I’ve been learning a little Spanish and I cooked dinner one night (actually two nights now) using this:

I’m a complete newbie at Spanish but I was able to follow this more or less after watching it a few times.  The end result didn’t quite look the same, but it tasted great.  And when I was finished I was better at Spanish than I was when I started.

Bonus Tip

If you already live in the country where your target language is spoken, here’s a bonus tip for you:

You’ve probably walked into a grocery store before and seen food that you had no idea what it was, how to eat it or what to do with it.  Instead of passing it up, buy it.  Take it home.  Here’s why:

Most recipe sites have a search box.  Enter the name of your mystery food into the search box.  Bam!  Now you have a bunch of recipes that tell you how to use it.

You may have to take another trip to the store to get more ingredients, but its worth it because you will get to try something you’ve never tasted before.

Here in Japan I often come across food I’ve never eaten before, like the day I saw a shelf full of tougan (冬瓜 – とうがん). I searched for とうがん on cookpad and found a recipe for some delicious Chicken and Tougan soup.

Try it!

Do you have any language learning tips? If so, please share them!

Other language learning tips:

• Start A Translation Project
• Read Children’s Books

Today I received yet another envelope from Time Warner Cable addressed to “Peter Carroll or Current Resident,” which was seconds from being thrown in the trash can when I decided to open it. This is what was inside:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

I was surprised to receive the advertisement in Spanish. I don’t think the neighborhood I live in has a high concentration of Hispanic people, though I could be wrong about that. All my previous dealing with TWC has been in English. Still, it was nice to read it before I threw it away, and realize I understood most of it without any trouble. I did have to look up sorteo though, which looks odd to me the way it was conjugated, but I’m no expert.

Has anyone else ever received mail in an unexpected language? Talk about it in the comments!

The latest version of Barra de Español is now available from addons.mozilla.org! Those of you who already have an older version installed should see an update notification in Firefox soon, if you haven’t already.

What’s new in 1.2? The biggest new feature is the ability to find pronunciations of Spanish words. You can select a word on any web page, right-click on it, and choose “Pronunciar,” or you may type in the word into the toolbar’s search box and select “Pronunciar” from the dropdown to the right. The pronunciations are found on forvo.com.

Version 1.2 also adds support for Firefox 3.6, and drops support for Firefox versions below 2.0. Inserting the accented characters now works in rich text email editors such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. I’ve also added a new video link to fomny.com.

Check it out and feel free to leave feedback in the comments!

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!