espanol

Want to learn Spanish?

The spanish and random_spanish perl scripts will :-

    1. act as a poor mans translator : spanish to english or english to spanish,

    2. interactively provide random vocabulary testing from almost 3000 commonly used words and phrases (in Castilian or Latin-American dialects),

    3. automatically test your vocab at regular time intervals and can be taught to stop showing you words you already know.

It has been tested on linux, mac osx and windows.

(Note that part of the spanish script was based on the excellent resource "Easy Spanish Step-By-Step" by Barbara Bregstein.)

linux (FC8)

    • copy spanish & random_spanish to your bin directory

    • chmod 750 spanish random_spanish

    • spanish

    • to automate place the command "random_spanish 1 1000 &" in your .Xclients or .bashrc file.

mac osx (10.3.9)

    • copy spanish & random_spanish to your bin directory

    • chmod 750 spanish random_spanish

    • spanish

    • to automate place the command "random_spanish 1 1000 &" in your .bashrc file.

windows (winxp & MSYS)

    • Install MINGW and MSYS from here

    • copy spanish & random_spanish to c:/windows

    • run MSYS

    • spanish

    • automate by adding -c 'random_spanish 1 1000' to the to the end of the login -i lines in the msys.bat file and

    • put msys.bat in the windows startup folder.

As you learn each chapter you can update the chapter argument to random_spanish by larger numbers, and eventually, when you have studied all 15 chapters, you can remove the .spanish_ignore file and replace the chapter argument by ALL.

Ralph Buchholz 2009