At the beginning of last year, as a 2017 New Year Resolution, I vowed to learn Spanish as a second language. And, for the past year and a half, I’ve enjoyed time almost daily with DuoLingo, the free on-line language tutor! Originally, I experienced a little irrational exuberance, believing I could become fluent in a year.
While navigating lessons, I had mostly ignored accents while trying to get through the lessons as quickly as possible. DuoLingo accepted my answers, but also reminded to "pay attention to accents." I recently learned why!
While communicating via email with a friend who speaks Spanish very well, I had sent a picture of Reuben, one of my cats, and thought I had described his age. However I learned without the proper use of a tilde (accent) over the letter “n”, I had been declaring my cat had five buttholes instead.
In short:
"Mi gato tiene cinco años." = "My cat is five years old."
"Mi gato tiene cinco anos." = "My cat has five buttholes."
Because it can be time consuming to keyboard in proper accents, a friend suggested I use a “Spanish keyboard.” I spent time searching Amazon for one to buy, before learning it is something you can either download, or you can use a Spanish keyboard on-line instead.
The Spanish keyboard should help provide accents and tildes where needed, and hopefully I won’t accidentally say "butthole" in Spanish again!
Comments(34)