09/26/02: Aprendiendo Español

[juju]

It's required for my degree that I take three semesters of spanish. I've already been through 2 semesters of it, and i've so terrible at it that i've started all over this semester and gone back to the first class. I know that's bad, but this is the one thing that I just can't seem to learn. It's really depressing, but I know the only reason i'm doing badly is that I have no motivation to study it.

Last night and today I spent some time in some spanish irc channels. To my surprise, I was able to hold conversations for extended periods of time. I helped people with linux problems, which I enjoy doing.

I cheated, of course. I used google's translation page. It's useless for full sentences, but it works perfectly for short phrases and combinations of words, and it's quicker than looking something up in the dictionary. Combined with my rudimentary knowledge of the language, I was able to communicate quite a bit.

This gives me good experience with actually using the language. I'm really excited about being able to do this. I hope i'll feel motivated to do it more often in the future. It felt really good to actually feel like i'm using what i've learned, especially after doing so badly in the subject for so long.

I also learned to use xmodmap to remap the keys on my keyboard. I made it so that my left windows key is a modifier, like control or shift. For example, if I press it and 'n', I get 'ñ'. Windows_Key + 'a' = 'á'. You get the idea. This way I can get the accent marks I need. Anyway, I thought that was super-cool, that you can just change your keyboard around however the hell you want.

I met a guy last night that spoke a little English. We mostly stuck with Spanish, but I had a heck of a time explaning to him what 'neat' meant. Also, he had no idea what a Best Buy was.