MyDigitalpoint

I just found out about Pro Writing Aid where you can check your text for overused words, grammar and spelling. You can also use it to eliminate redundancies, cliches, as well as vague, abstract and complex words. You can find out more about it at this link right here: http://prowritingaid.com

Never heard of this site before, but I was trying it yesterday after writing a lengthy article that was significantly improved by using  the tool on this site.

Thank you so much for sharing it

What I have seen is that American native speakers do not only laugh of non-Americans who make grammar mistakes or language pitfalls, but also they do hurting criticism rather than helping such people pointing at what their mistakes are.

This is really sad because Americans seems to be the only who act this way!

They don't call it a romance language for nothing. Actually the term "romance language" has a double meaning. The first is it's sex appeal and the other is that it come from Latin. Latin being a language from Italy and the capital of Italy being Rome. Rome and Romance are one in the same.

Agree, Spanish, as other romance languages are truly sexy sound sweet!

Definitely if love has a language, this is Spanish, which is also one of the most richer languages, if not the richest of all.

I believe it's easier expand one's vocabulary playing games, and this is a great site to do this, http://www.knoword.org/

They have also downloadable apps if you prefer to access the site this way.

I'm not actually downloading apps to my cell phone or tablet for a sole reason; I used to do it onto my computer and never use them, so why I should use the limited storage space of a mobile device (compared with a PC's HD size) with apps that I know I will not use?

Really, I remember great software that thought to be a great aid, but it was easier to me do a search for terms or doubts related to the learning of a language that launch an app.

I have a series of Albert Einstein's quotes that i would like to share with you this time:

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.

I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

I believe that learning multiple languages is always worth from a cultural standpoint.

But from a practical approach, they are useful as long as:

1. You really enjoy the learning and is useful to you understanding the matching culture.

2. You are in touch with people who speak the different languages

3. You need to make business with people speaking those languages.

Now if you learn them just because, to show off how many you can learn but with no real purpose for it, then it's not worth the effort.

In both Internet chatting and cell phone texting, omitting the apostrophe in contracted words is common, when the right thing to do would be using the two words without contraction to make difference clear.

However the limited size of texting had made that people do not only omit the apostrophe and keep using contacted words, but that make of many other nonsense abbreviations unless you know the meaning of them

Thank you so much Permidian!

I believe that many times we have problems finding an American native speaker that we can listen to learn the correct pronunciation, so this series of videos really come handy, since many times even knowing American speakers, time constraints don't allow you a live communication any time of the day, but videos are 24/7 and anyone can try at each one's pace

It is completely free and they have never tried to "sell" me anything.

Thanks for sharing this resource!

I always tried to do something like what you are describing, but most of the times the sites tried to sell me "slots" for each extra participant or any other service.

I will give it a go to Study Blue now

For instance, "but" can be used as a substitute for "however" at the start of a sentence. 

As in: "But the book meanders so much that as you read it you realize it needs editing."

I had always the same doubt about starting a sentence with a conjunction, but mostly tempted to use "but" among all others, but reading aloud my text gave me the hint that But is many times a good way to avoid repeat however and a few synonymous for this over and over through a given documents.

This is true! I have problems trying to talk with a different accent than mine despite I would like because it's funny.

However I just recalled that, while in college, we had two classmates from Texas, and after a few months people used to ask why all of us were talking that howdy party way.

Fun fact is that none of us at the classroom had released we got naturally the accent from them.

Agree with you. Mimicking accents is really amusing and I like to hear when someone does it.

In fact I would like to do it myself just for fun, but I'm really bad trying to mimic any accent  :pirate:

I am fluent in both, English and Spanish, so yeah, I'm bilingual and it's my pride write articles both of these languages and work on bi-directional translations as well

I read that this particularity of the German language, combine two or more words into one, has made some of the hardest and almost unpronounceable words you can think of.

Haz lo que debes.

And enjoy the weekend to start with energy the starting of this month.

I also believe that the idea is good, what I see really rather hard is finding the most suitable games matching the different languages that we have in Linguaholic.

On the other hand, free flash games often comes with embedded advertising that is pretty annoying, hence making the selection of games even harder, and probably non-affordable if going for paid versions.

What I didn't take into account when I commented first in this topic is one fact; some language institutes have music expressly designed to teach a foreign language, whether based upon a popular existing song with arrangements to suit the purpose of the course, or simply those songs all of us heard, but "optimized" to educate students' ears.

Like I said, sometimes the wording of popular singers is not the best, but this material is re-recorded by singers that put emphasis in the right pronunciation.

Mi gramática es mal ahorita, y necesito practicar mi vacabulario y mi estructura de sentencias. Hay algunes personas que pueden practicar español básico conmigo? Espero que practica en una forma como Instant Messaging o algo similar, tal vez Facebook? No tengo AIM o MSN, etc.

Ya había leido este mensaje antes pero no me habia dado cuenta de tu "vacabulario"

In Mexico this can be taken as the vocabulary of a cow because vaca=cow  :grin:

La forma correcta es vocabulario

Por otra parte Trellum, tiene razón sobre las diferentes formas de español y un ejemplo de ello lo puedes leer aquí mismo.

Ivanable está usando español de España. En México y latinoamérica no hablamos así, aunque todos nos entendemos excepto por algunas palabras o modismos.

Concha es una buena prueba de ello porque además de ser el nombre de un pan dulce en México, tambien es un modismo para indicar flojera

Ejemplo

"Que concha te cargas" que quiere decir "Que flojera tienes"  y no precisamente quiere decir que alguien esté cargando una concha (sea shell) o un pan dulce

Concha puede ser:

- Flojera (slang)

- Pan dulce

- Caparazón (any shell)

- Diminutivo del nombre femenino Concepción

Concepción sin embargo es un nombre unisex, pero cuando un hombre se llama Concepción entonces el diminutivo se convierte en masculino y en vez de Concha, le decimos Concho.

The following link leads to a series of Spanish proficiency exercises produced by the University of Texas at Austin that you may like to try.

Spanish Proficiency Exercises is a compilation of brief video clips in which native speakers of Spanish from various locations throughout Latin America and Spain demonstrate various language tasks. The objective of the exercises is to provide students of Spanish with the necessary tools to be able to talk about the same topics in Spanish.

In order to do, this Spanish Proficiency Exercises contains five major components. First, there is a simplified video clip. This simplified version is scripted, the native speakers talks slower, and he or she uses simpler words and less slang. Second, there are video clips of native speakers who also perform the proficiency tasks. These clips are not scripted. What the native speakers say is what they really said. Some may talk fast, others talk slow, and some have specific regional dialects.

The content of these exercises cover the following

A complete index of video interviews and podcasts, as well as related grammar, vocabulary, and phrases contained in this site is listed below.  A topical grammar index and podcast help are also available.  Click on blue links to access site components.

1. Tasks: Beginning Level

2. Tasks: Intermediate Level

3. Tasks: Advanced Level

4. Tasks: Superior Level

5. Grammar Index

6. Additional Podcasts: Organized by Proficiency Level

7. Podcast Help

And this is the link to go for them,  http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/siteindex.php

Some universities have free Spanish grammar worksheets that anyone can download.

Here are some links to get you starting,

http://community.tncc.edu/faculty/longe/worksheets.htm

http://www.expanish.com/resources/free-spanish-study-guides

http://www.penfield.edu/webpages/evito/resources.cfm?subpage=796142

I would suggest two links for the top apps aimed to learning Spanish.

These are for the iPhone, http://www.expanish.com/blog/2011/04/top-10-iphone-apps-for-learning-spanish/

And the are for Android, http://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-apps-learning-spanish-96464/

Idioms are truly funny, but certainly if they have a sense, it's necessary dig up in the origin of a given phrase.

However agree in one thing; idioms do not necessary have to make sense, but its intrinsic meaning.

This is an online tutorial for effective writing practices aimed to improve one's English grammar;

The purpose of this tutorial is to help students quickly review common mistakes made in English grammar, punctuation, organization, and writing styles. It is not meant to be a comprehensive resource on writing practices. The tutorial is intended for self-paced learning by students. Faculty can use it as an educational resource to supplement their classroom discussions on effective writing practices.

The tutorial is best viewed at 1024 by 768 screen resolution using a Java-enabled Internet Explorer browser. Users should review the "About the Tutorial" section to familiarize themselves with tutorial requirements and navigation details and must disable any popup blockers on the web browser before navigating the tutorial.

This tutorial was funded by the Committee for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education, and Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at Northern Illinois University....

Here is the link to go for it, http://www.niu.edu/writingtutorial/

So is it more common in other languages for the sentences to be structured the other way around? That's really interesting!

Yes, in example, in Spanish grammar structure is in the inverse way and adjectives never go before the noun, but after, opposed to the English way.