Spanish and English Program
Flash Cards, MP3 Creator, Student Testing
This program is free. Bookmark now. Works on Windows PCs, but not Mac or Unix. Computers with non-european character sets may need to use control panel to switch to the English language pack.
If you downloaded before January 19, 2006, install this patch wg_new.exe for new features.
spanish1000.exe 3.5 MB. Contains the program and the 1,000 most common Spanish words.
spanish.exe 30 MB. Big file! Same as above but contains 9,100 Spanish sound files. Install the patch at the top of this page after installing this.
english.exe 27 MB. This installs the 8,000 English words spoken in my southern english accent. Install this if you want to use the program with your MP3 player OR you know Spanish and want to learn english OR you want to hear the English words with the Spanish words so you can listen without looking at the computer screen. Hint: I was able to learn Spanish much faster without the English sound files and just looking at the computer screen, especially for learning to read Spanish.
The English and Spanish words have been used to make a Hangman game
Where is this program deficient? The word lists are too big and not broken down into categories like numbers and you can't make your own word lists unless you edit the txt files in the language folder and save them as a different txt file (this is for the computer savy). There are not yet sentences and phrases.
Where to go next? Verb conjugations in Spanish are hard. After you're completely bored with the program and have learned 2000 to 5000 words, find a Spanish-English bilingual Bible. The phrases are translated from the King James Version down to each comma and semi-colon with fear-of-God exactness. You have to find one with the verses side-by-side that looks like this and the Spanish version should be Reina Valera which has 1960, 1995 and Antigua versions which are all good, but 1995 should have the most modern Spanish. If the verses are jammed into paragraphs, your eyes can't jump back and forth to find where you're at. I use one published by Holman Bible Publishers in Nashville. The Gideons also have one. Or you can go to www.biblegateway.org which has all Bible translations. After 300 pages of slow, brain-racking study, and writing down clues (view it as a puzzle to figure out), you should have an intuitive feel for verb conjugations and the use of "de", "la", "que", "para", etc. You can then start using ReadPlease Plus to READ ALOUD Spanish text as it HIGHLIGHTS each word. See the bottom of that page for the Spanish voice. Using ReadPlease, you will see rapid progress. So you copy and paste words from BibleGateway to a text-editor, remove the numbers, and copy and paste to ReadPlease Plus. You keep your King James Version Bible in your lap to follow for the translation. Here is Exodus. Switch back to WordsGalore for a while if it gets boring. After 1/3 of the Bible using ReadPlease, you will be able to listen at normal speed and follow almost everything. But you will be only 2/3 of the way to listening to everyday Spanish. And 1/2 way to speaking it with skill. Once you've listened to the whole Bible and learned all of WordsGalore, you'll be able to read and listen really well and speak so-so. It's not easy. This process can take two years of your spare time. DVD's with Spanish subtitles help a lot. They're useless though unless you can follow the subtitles which will occur after about 1/3 of the Bible. After you've finished the Bible, buy your first book on Spanish, an intermediate course in grammer. This process is very much like working-out: the biggest challenges are doing it every day no matter how little, not laying off more than a week, and not getting bored.
Portable MP3 players: The program's function to create mp3 files for your portable mp3 player is not useful unless you also download the English and Spanish. Otherwise, you just hear Spanish words without the English translation.
Features:
It's free.
9,000 spanish and english words with sound
Any language can be added
Edit, record, search, and print word lists
Flashcards with adjustable settings
Remembers the words user has learned
Good student testing feature
Can be used over a network for students
Can create user-adjustable MP3 files
Removes silence from beginning and end of recordings
