Hi, ¡Hola!

Hi, ¡Hola!
 

Hi,

I've just registered at this forum. English is my native language, but I've always wanted to learn Spanish.

I just purchased Rosetta Stone for Latin American Spanish, and I'm also hoping to use this website as a resource. So far, I'm learning a lot from the software, but I'm looking for a place where I can interact with real people who speak Spanish.

I'm a computer scientist, and I have learned over 12 computer languages. I learn them very quickly. I seem to be good with languages. So I decided to try my hand at learning a new human language, and so far, it's going really well. I'm picking it up really fast.

I'm open to any suggestions people might have about learning Spanish.

What does Tomisimo mean? Google translator says it doesn't mean anything.

Welcome to the forums!

Tomísimo is an invented word. It is described in this thread, but I'll augment.

The suffix '-ísimo' was added to the noun 'tomo' (which is 'tome' in English), even though this is a suffix only allowed on adjectives.

By the way, there's an 'Accents' drop-down menu just above the text box. From it you can select all the special characters you'll need to type in Spanish.

Thanks for telling me about the accents bar. I have the Spanish language pack installed on my computer, so my keyboard can type some of them.

The language pack (made by Microsoft) says it's US Spanish. I assume that's the same as Latin American Spanish. Then problem is, they don't have some of the accents I need.

Is there an easy way to type in Spanish on the computer? In Word documents, or on the internet?

I tried looking for a Spanish keyboard on Amazon.com, but I didn't have much luck. All I found were some stick-on letters.

I write technical documents on computer science and DC electrical sciences. My main reason for learning Spanish, is because I want to be able to write some of my publications in Spanish. I need an easy way to type in Spanish. Even with the language pack I have, it's a pain at times.

US Spanish and Latin American Spanish differ, but not in spelling. You'll find that many native speakers of Spanish will omit accent marks and opening punctuation marks when they write stuff, but these should never be omitted in formal writing.

As far as keyboard help, there are some good ideas presented in this thread.

Hola, Rusty:

Perdone la intrusión; pero aprovecho su respuesta para preguntarle cuál diferencia existe entre tales denominaciones. Estados Unidos, en global, no es, propiamente, una zona primigenia de habla hispana donde haya habido una evolución independiente. ¿En quñe se basan a la hora de distinguirlos?

Me aventuro a especular que esa diferenciación radica más bien en una postura política que realista en sí o, quizás, ¿se refiere a un español con angliscimos?

Manito, fixea el freezer.

Un saludo cordial, camarada.

It seems like everything is built around English. There must be an easy way for native Spanish speakers to use a computer.

I copied down the ASCII codes. Those will help a lot.

"Manito" no es anglicismo. ;)

Pero por supuesto el "enclave" del español en Estados Unidos genera usos de palabras con mucha influencia del inglés; no hablo de las palabras adaptadas o inventadas a partir de una lengua en la otra, que es ya spanglish y que, para mí, es una tercera lengua en gestación. Además existe una mezcla de acentos, regionalismos, coloquialismos, de los hablantes de español de muchas nacionalidades que se encuentran en Estados Unidos, que lleva ya muchos años de existir; por lo tanto el español en ese país, tiene naturalmente una dinámica y un desarrollo propios. :)

Julvenzor:

Microsoft isn't a political entity, it's a business. Like most businesses, it doesn't do anything that doesn't support their bottom line. As the US has a little more than 38 million native speakers of Spanish and a few million more second-language speakers, it makes sense to support their needs for access to Spanish-specific characters while maintaining local rules for formatting dates, times, money amounts, general numbers (group separators, decimal separator, negative number format), default measurement systems, and designation of the first day of the week. As Microsoft's usual format for specifying language and culture is "Language (Country/Culture)", the language and culture targeting Spanish speakers in the United States is "Spanish (United States)".

In other words, I don't see the existence of the language and culture setting ""Spanish (United States)" as a political matter; it's a practical matter that supports the needs of a particular population of native speakers of Spanish that is larger than the populations of native speakers of any other country except for Mexico (110 million), Colombia (47 million), Argentina (39.5 million) or Spain (38.6 million first-language speakers, with more like nearly 47 million total speakers). I got my numbers from this wikipedia article.

No hay de qué.
Lo ha dicho bien Malila. Me refiero a un español que no se encuentra en otros lugares hispanos, una mezcla única que no consta de una sola cultura. Sí es un idioma con anglicismos y me atrevo a decir que me he percatado de otro 'ismo' - lo de no saber cómo usar el idioma en su forma materna. Hablo de los hispanohablantes que han pasado la vida entera, o la mayoría de ella, dentro de las fronteras estadounidenses, "aderezándose" de nuestra cultura. Cada vez más van perdiendo el conocimiento que se pasa de generación en generación.

Welcome buddy

Thanks.

Ya sabe, no se guarde ninguna duda que tenga. Por cierto, ¿participa en la creación de software? ¿Trabaja para alguna empresa?

Un saludo sincero.

I don't work for any company. I'm a computer science student at a university. I'm in my 6th year, and still have several more years to go.