Spanish has always beckoned -- a language with a large following, a rich literature, and a vocabulary that overlaps English; with regular plurals, only two real genders, scarcely any declension even for pronouns, and much syntactic work performed by a few tidy prepositions. Hard to resist -- especially for one relocating to Mexico. Luckily, spoken Spanish abounds on the Web, often with visual aids; and, here in the U.S., often on television:
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TV ON THE WEB
Broadband-Television.com Stations from Spain and the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps an even bigger selection at
FindInternetTV.com
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ON YOUR CABLE TV
UNIVISIÓN The big Spanish-language cable network has scheduling and lots of other info online here. On its TV lineup, there are telenovelas, daily dramas, news, talk shows, kids shows, and lots of music.
Our Seattle Univision station,
KUNS-TV, seems to have lost some of its local production staff during a change of ownership, but still has weather reports, for instance.
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TELEVISA, a Mexican network and a big supplier of content to Univision, also has a U.S. website.
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| TELEMUNDO is the NBC-owned rival.
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LARGELY TEXT
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WordReference.com English to French, Italian & Spanish -- and vice-versa. And now, German and Russian (!) as well.
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| Looking for ways to include those diacritical marks? Check
starr.net's Keyboard Help Page. My favorite for simplicity and portability is the Alt Key method.
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| Wondering about the origin of a Spanish word? The
Real Academia Español has two big dictionaries on its site that sometimes provide etymologies. There's also a less-rigorous Chilean Diccionario Etimológico.
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If that's not enough, an
Online Latin Etymological Dictionary
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Deutsche Welle offers a lot of Spanish, and parallel material is available in about thirty other languages, for those who are native speakers of less-common tongues.
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The
Spanish Language Page at About.com. Besides helpful tips, there are articles about linguistic history etc.
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| Online Games and Lessons from
download-free-games.com.
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| Book reports: Alex recommends Complete Spanish Grammar, by Gilda Nissenberg (McGraw-Hill), a workbook in 26 units. For a handy reference work, there's Routledge's Modern Spanish Grammar.
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