Word: estudiar
Pronunciation: ess-too-DYAR
Meaning: to study, to observe
Example: Los médicos estudian la relación entre el mercurio y la infertilidad femenina.
Translation: The doctors are studying the relationship between mercury and infertility in women.

Hay una relacion entre el murcurio y la infertilidad?

Sorry, but no tengo one of those front question marks!

Today is your lucky day. The front question mark is achieved by holding down the alt button while typing 173 on the ten-key. ¡ ¡ ¡

¡Bueno! ¡Gracias!

But it looks like the front exclamation point, not like "¿"

Quel es el numero por el "¿"

alt 130 = é
alt 160 = á
alt 161 = í
alt 162 = ó
alt 163 = ú
alt 164 = ñ
alt 165 = Ñ
alt 168 = ¿
alt 173 = ¡

Time to install a Spanish keyboard, I guess...

You don't insert all those characters when you need them, do you Shane?

I don't normally put the accents on my letters. I use the punctuation marks and the enye (ñ)

I took a spanish I class a few years ago, and made a B in it. I have gone to used book stores and bought books on spanish. I don't study them as well as I should. It helps a lot to know the basics and to know some verbs, and how they are used and their conjugations and so forth. But man, there is such a big difference between the spanish you learn in a class or in a book, and the spanish that is spoken on the street. Sometimes at work I'll hear someone hispanic say something, and even before they say it, I will already know the phrase and what it means, and they will say it and I still don't pick up on quite how they said it.
knowing the basics helps, but the only real way to learn it is to live in a totally spanish speaking environment, or to be married to someone that speaks spanish.

Spanish is spoken differently by different groups of people. Even within Mexico those in the north speak differently than those in the capital. It is similar to differences in English. In the United States the word bloke is not used. In England a man that is pi--ed is drunk and in the US he is angry. In Spanish such examples are even more plentiful.

Vulgar language especially varies in Spanish and makes it difficult for some preachers. Some words are are completely nonoffensive in some areas and are completely vulgar in other areas.

In the United States the Spanish that is spoken is sometimes called "spanglish" or in Texas "Tex-Mex" This involves the mixing of the two languages. A truck in Spanish is "camion" but in spanglish is "truca". And there are several other examples. Many Spanish speakers raised in the United States actually learn the spanglish as their first language and can neither speak English or Spanish correctly. I work with many in that category on a daily basis.

Speaking of spanglish, here is a correct Spanish word that one is likely to never hear in the Western hemisphere.



Word: el ordenador
Pronunciation: ohr-den-ah-DOHR (Note that the Spanish r here, in both instances, is pronounced with a tap of the tongue against the front of the palate - like the "d" in ladder is pronounced)
Meaning: computer
Example: Este documento muestra cómo conectar su ordenador Linux a un servidor.
Translation: This document shows how to connect your Linux computer to a server.
Warning: In much of Latin America, it is very common to use la computadora instead of el ordenador.