I’m in an uber geeky and intense and chatty mode today. Who am I talking to? Mostly myself. Husband is not much of a fan of language (he’s a math and physics geek), two of my daughters are having fun painting rocks and oldest daughter is reading up on why Harry Potter was banned in some parts of the United States and the U.K.
Because it’s a lazy summer day and I am avoiding doing housework while drinking my afternoon cuppa coffee, I decided to search some language sites.
Oldest daughter will be learning Greek and Latin prefixes in 4th school and I have a friend who really loves linguistics.
On factmonster.com, I found tables for Latin and Greek word elements (prefixes, suffixes and roots).
I found this great link to How to get foreign and phonetic symbols in windows.
| with “English U.S. (101)” layout | with “U.S. International” layout | |
| á acute accent (la tilde) | Ctrl + ‘ (apostrophe), release, then desired vowel | right-alt + desired vowel |
| à grave accent | Ctrl + `, release, then desired vowel | ` + desired vowel |
| â circumflex accent | Ctrl + Shift + 6, then desired vowel | Shift + 6, then desired vowel |
| ä umlaut or dieresis | Ctrl + Shift + ; (semicolon), release, then desired vowel | shift ” + desired vowel |
| ç cedille | Ctrl + comma, then c or C | right-alt + , (comma) |
| ñ (la eñe) | Ctrl + Shift + ~ , then n or N | right-alt + n or N (Or use ~ (shift `) + n, N, or for Portuguese ã õ, + a, A, o, O |
| ß (German ess-tset) | Ctrl + Shift + 7, then s | right-alt + s |
| ¿ (initial question mark) | Ctrl + Shift + Alt + / | right-alt + / |
| ¡ (initial exclamation mark) | Ctrl + Shift + Alt + 1 (one) | right-alt + 1 (one) |
| Romance quote marks « » | right-alt + [ ] | |
| euro € | right-alt 5 | |
| pound sterling £ | right-alt $ (shift 4) |
If I decide to learn some basics of French (and learn what an acute, grave and circumflex accent are), I could peruse Australia’s Project Gutenberg’s Basic French. Sigh, I’m really not good at foreign languages (I was all right at Spanish…but now I wish I had taken German). I wish I had a friend that could teach me for free.
I got a free download of D’oge’s Latin for Beginners from Textkit.
And I can learn some basics of German here at Duestch-Learnen.com. But, I still have no idea how to actually pronounce some of the words. 😦
I found some nifty language games at The Wordplay Website. Chock full of anagrams, palindromes, spoonerisms, Tom Swifties and much more.
Guess I have some things to keep me busy. And my coffee is done, so I’d better get working on some housework.
The Sprightly Writer 
Learning to speak other languages is quite fun! I had the opportunity when younger to travel and stay for extended periods in Europe and South America, and the constant exposure and immersion are without a doubt the best way to approach it. Second best way is to find someone to practice with, both writing and speaking. The key is to get to a functional capability with a one foreign language before attacking another, otherwise you’ll be in a perpetual state of confusion. I’m looking to add German next, and have a big hankering for wanting to learn Japanese or Mandarin. Way too little time though.
Thanks for the tips. I can’t decide which I want to go for. Right now, I’m just doing some preliminary investigations into which I might like to learn first. I had a dual translation of Hermann Hesse’s Demian which was interesting and I passed it along to a friend who could read German.
I don’t have any hankering to learn Japanese or Mandarin. The closest I am probably going to get to anything Japanese related is re-reading The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire: 1936-1945. It was used as required reading for my high school history class and I have been struggling to remember the title for YEARS and I recently came across the book at my local thrift shop. I was so excited. I started reading it and realized I really remembered nothing, lol.