I want to learn Spanish, and while I wish I could just move somewhere
and be immersed, that is not feasible at this juncture. So I am reaching
out to the open source world to help me along. The first step was to get
a flashcard-like system that would provide me with a way to test my
vocabulary and keep track of my progress. To that end, I have installed
[[http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/][Mnemosyne]]. Read all about it because
it is a pretty groovy program for flashcard learning. I then downloaded
and installed the [[http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/category/2/6/17][four
Spanish card packages]] available through the site. As you can see on
the left, the site has many languages supported, as well as a variety of
other topics to study (including Swedish road signs). This gives me my
base of vocabulary and expressions. Second on the list of tools is the
[[http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html][Firefox]] plugin
[[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2257][ImTranslator]].
This is a great plugin for doing on the fly translations. So when I
browse a site in Spanish, or come across something I want to know how to
say in Spanish, this plugin gets me going in the right direction. Using
the default media player in Ubuntu,
[[http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/][Rhythmbox]] and its ability to
play online radio stations, I've searched for and subscribed to several
Spanish music and news sites. So now I get to hear music, news, and
commercials in several different Spanish cities (Madrid and Barcelona
stations currently, though I plan to get some Central and South American
stations since that's where I'll likely travel to first). And, for some
extra vocab, I signed up with the
[[http://www.spanish-word-a-day.com/][Spanish Word-a-Day mailing list]].
I've really enjoyed the emails as they have a word, pronunciation guide,
synonyms, the word in a sentence, and usually some Spanish trivia, like
a joke, expression, or conjugation table for a verb/tense. The most
important piece, however, is actually conversing with native speakers,
and I am lucky to have a
[[http://maps.google.com/maps/place?oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=araceli+near+22664&fb=1&gl=us&hq=araceli&hnear=22664&cid=12477859020494140599][Mexican
restaurant]] across the street with several native speakers who I've
gotten to know. Any other tools you suggest? I think my next one will be
finding folks who speak both English and Spanish and chatting with them
via GChat or Skype.