Ping: Anyone who has taken Spanish recently
 

I am taking spanish 101 and a good portion of the homework is done online. The problem I am having is I am getting the words correct and the spelling correct but alot of words in spanish, como for example, have that little accent above the o.

I can't figure out how to get the accent ( what's it called?) over the o. Since I don't have the accent thingy over the o the program isn't giving me credit for the correct answer.

Anyone know how to do this or what the proper name is for the accent?

Can you paste one in from word?

I thought of that. I don't have word ( allthough I may need to get it) and there has to be an eaiser way.

Can you paste one in from a website?

Are you on a PC or on a Mac? If you're on a PC, do as this page says: http://www.spanishnewyork.com/spanish-characters.html

Remember, when you enter those numbers, you MUST use the numeric keypad to enter them. If you try to use the numbers along the top of the keyboard, it won't work.

Yeah, I am on a windows XP laptop. That site looks great but I am using my laptop which doesn't have the keypad. I really don't want to have to do my homework on my desktop at home but it looks like I may have to.

You can use your "Fn" key to help you emulate the keypad. I don't know exactly what other key you'd need to press on your laptop, but it might work. Try holding down "Fn" and "alt" then type one of the numeric codes. See if that works?

Accent is called "acento" in Spanish, pretty close :)

A quick google search showed a few options to solve your problem:

http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/spanish/spkey.html

Lathum, If it's a Dell laptop, you should be able to use the "Fn" key to emulate the numpad.

it would be the keys:

789
UIO
JKL
M

for

789
456
123
0

dola

It works with the ALT key in order to enter foreign characters.

like so:

fn-alt-J-O-U (basically alt-1-6-4) = ñ

That seems to be a pain in the ass. The class didn't tell you that you needed this before hand? Or any pointers on how to do this?

http://www.spanishdict.com/accents.cfm

This is what i usually used, either tried to remember the keystrokes or copied from that page, though thankfully when i needed to do homework online there was a box with all the accents that I could click on and have it inserted into the word I was typing, made things much easier. I also found this very useful for conjugation.

Goodluck with learning spanish. I'd never taken it before college and it was one of the hardest classes I'd had to take. I managed to get through 1004, but absolutely bombed the proficiency test that used to be required to graduate.

I found out that we can also do this today. It was never explained in class I had to go to the foreign language office. The instructor basicly sucks. It is Spanish 101 and she barely speaks English and is very poor at explaining things. Most of the kids in the class seem to be as confused as I am.

Good luck. My first time taking Spanish 1001 I had a teacher who was a native english speaker and got a D and had to take it over. I found that the class really isn't geared towards people who'd never taken spanish before, but for people who hadn't taken classes in it for a few years. In hindsight I should have stuck with Sweedish which I'd taken originally before trying Spanish, Sweedish was a much easier language for me to learn. Anyway, I'm through with it now, though after 2 years for learning it having just finished this past fall I feel I know almost nothing and that needing the 2nd language requirement was basically a waste of time.

All Programs -- Accessories -- System Tools -- Character Map
will let you select and copy them, it will also give you the keystroke to use to get the special characters, if applicable.

The normal western accent marks (the ones in Spanish, French, German, etc.) are all towards the front.