Category: Cram Session
Hi all, I am taking the second half of a Spansih course at the college level. I need help with conjigating spanish verbs, as well as stem changing verbs. How can you isolare the stem and when do you know if you need to drop say the a r ending? Also, i know the in Spanish, you have to put an accent mark on some letters. My professor and I are at a total loss on how to do this with a screen reader and in braille. How can I do this so that in the future, my homework assignments aren't marked wrong by the online system we use?
Can't help with the verb conjugationn: it's been way too long ago.
If you use jaws, pressing insert+4 on the numbers row will bring up a list of characters you might use as an accent.
Hope this helps,
Bob
blbobby, thanks, didn't know about insert + 4. I feel so special now!
Glad to help.
You are special. We are all special in our own ways. (end-of-sermon)!
Actually, there are some real drawbacks to insert+4. The symbols are hard coded so that no more symbols can be included until freedomscientific decides to do so, (which I assume they never will).
But it's a simple way to add characters to text.
Oh, I forgot, end-of-sermon.
Bob
A few things here:
First and foremost, there are Braille symbols for the accents in Spanish, and they don't change. The insert+4 list suggested here will throw up a problem because I believe it only uses acute accents, and I don't believe Spanish uses acute accents. In short, I'm not going to be able to help you with how you write accents.
As far as stem-changing verbs go, can you give me an example of the sort of infinitives you're playing with? Some stem-changing verbs are regular, some are not. Decir, for instance, is considered irregular.
Generally, the thing to remember is that there are two types of regular stem-changing verbs. In the first, e becomes ie. In the second, o becomes ue.
Example: poder is a stem-changer. To determine the stem, take off the er. That leaves pod. Since we know poder is a stem-changing verb, take out the o and substitute ue. This leaves you with a stem of pued-
Then you add your endings. Remember: for nosotros and vosotros forms, you do -NOT! use the new stem.
It is not "nosotros puedemos", it's "nosotros podemos".
This should help, at least. If you need more specific advice, just ask. I'm a touch rusty at Spanish, but conjugations are something I've always gotten the knack of without too much difficulty.
You will probably have to observe and remember which Spanish verbs change stem and which don't.
There's an easier way to type all kinds of accent marks and it doesn't matter which screen reader you use:
You can use the U.S. international keyboard layout.
Hello, I can help you out if you'd like. Just PQM me, so that way I can explain things to you better and answer questions instantly. Greg explained it best. It really depends on which ones you are using... :)
We are working on ereggular verbs.
Decir:
Yo digo
Tu dices
El dice
Nosotros decimos
Vosotros diceis
Ustedes dicen
That's one irregular verb that changes its stem. But to be honest, most irregular verbs do this to an extent.
Ir becomes v
Volver becomes vuelv-
Querer becomes quier
tenir becomes tien - except in the Yo form, which is tengo
Speaking of which, there are a lot of irregular verbs that are pretty normal except for Yo forms. A few examples:
Conocer: yo conozco
Salir: Yo salgo
Poner: yo pongo
Decir: Yo digo
Traer: Yo traigo
Conjugation is a matter of both memorization and speech. You'll know what sounds right the more you hear it, the more you read it and the more you speak it.