text:
User talk:Jimbo Wales

Leave messages for me here:

en talk page

Message at en.wiki
Well, just in case you don't see, I left a message at WP.-- LV (Dark Mark) 16:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleting modules
Please delete the modules that you want to delete properly. Deleting only the cover pages isn't enough. Moreover, if you are waiting around solely in order to provide time for people to copy the content, don't. If anyone has a GFDL wiki that they want the content transwikified to in the future, I can temporarily undelete the modules, transwikify them, and re-delete them. Uncle G 16:16, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Jokebook — Special:Allpages/Jokebook
 * Getting a date — Special:Allpages/Getting a date Special:Allpages/Getting a girl Special:Allpages/Getting a guy

Actually I wanted to just delete the front page for now, I don't want to cause too much trouble for anyone. Yes, the temporary undeletion thing could be done, but I'd hate to have you have to go to all that trouble.--Jimbo Wales 16:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not an enormous amount of trouble. I have tools that make such transwikification relatively easy that I use, which I deliberately designed to be readily adaptable to arbitrary wikis; and I've already been through this specific process with the Body Parts Slang list, which I temporarily undeleted at Wikipedia in order to transwikify it to Wiktionary (for incorporation into WikiSaurus, which is now proceeding). Actually doing the work itself didn't take very long at all. A manual transwiki would be tedious and require a fair amount of effort. But my transwikifications are semi-automatic. (I don't copy, paste, and reformat author histories by hand any more. ☺) I could readily set up a one-off script to transwiki the entire Jokebook to another GFDL wiki, for example. (I've been through that process before, too. I've just transwikified the all of the reader and editor Help pages from Meta to here under script control, as a matter of fact.) Uncle G 17:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

What a bookshop is
By the way, if you are going to continue using the "books one might expect to find in the non-fiction section of a bookshop" metaphor, you can clarify what you mean to everyone by specifying what kind of bookshop you are talking about. See Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks. Uncle G 18:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I'll start doing that.--Jimbo Wales 21:48, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for responding
I appreciate your comments left on my discussion page. I will email you tomorrow. I'm just beginning to learn my way around here. Frog One 04:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Misquote
I think I owe you a personal apology for misquote, I often do a lot of errors but not all cause misreperesentations, you did say It isn't an order at Staff lounge, but for a minute it read It is an order to me, an worse of all it made sense, I feel terribly guilty. --Gnomz007 02:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * no misquote on truth:
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=1398351&oldid=1373360 boxingwear the innocent lamb!

games people play...this message deleted at your wikipedia box
Hi there, Jimbo. Lets see, my story is pretty simple. I stood up to one "mongo" for better than a dozen ad hominem attacks, and assorted seriously fallacious reasoning, including blocking somebody else for changing a pov term "conspiracist" (patent characterization, invalidation and republican talking point) to "Independant Researchers." I stood up to mongos obvious abuse of admin powers, and was blocked by tony sidaway without just cause indefinitely. The reason for the block? "Stupid." Thats the reason tony gave. He called me "stupid." Now that we know that tony had no valid reason to block me, and that he used an ad hominem as a justification, I am sure you will be happy to do the ethical thing and unblock me. However, if not, this is the way i see things.

I have posted several different peices to your talk page regarding the out of control abusiveness going on over at wikipedia. To wit, and to be specific, Mongo, Tony Sidaway, Inshanne, Fred Bauder, and probably other people are with certainty pov warriors with admin powers. (and in the case of bauder, arbiter powers.)

Nobody should be subject to this abuse, wikipedia has become abusive (extremely abusive) ad hominems are the standard fare of such as tony and mongo and inshanne, and editors are complaining and leaving for good reason.

Wikiepdia is in fact extremely abusive right now, and I'd like to fix it. I'd like to help you out. I'd like to see your adventure work out for the best. But if you can't get this three ring circus together for something other than animal cruelty, somebody needs to stand up to it, and that person is going to end up being me.

Let me tell you what I have in mind. I think I will start by starting a hundred different conversations on the net at assorted places talkign about how corrupt and abusive wikipedia has become. Then, I'll post questions on yahoo Q+A such as "Is mongo a pov warrior?" and show links to his assorted pov warring and abuse. Then I'll go chat up all the anti wikipedians i can find.

And to frame this for you in even more tight of a perspective, I have expert knowledge of sociology, Psychology, and Logic, So my argument versus the corruption and abusiveness is going to come from my depth knowledge. This isn't going to be like the people who mock you and aren't taken seriously. This is going to be 20 page essay, distributed to hundreds of different places on the net.

Now, I am sure that you and everybody else are saying "hey, now thats not nice, and, its against the rules, since its a threat."

People who are abusive, and corrupt must have consequences for their actions. The public needs to know that Wikipedia is abusive unless wikipedia can quit being abusive. You can call it a threat, you can call it a plea for help, you can call it whatever you want. The facts still remain; Wikipedia is corrupt and abusive. And the ethical thing to do is to warn people not to become involved in an abusive relationship.

"vanish witnesses and evidence"

 * http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/index.htm
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
 * http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
 * http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
 * http://www.fallacyfiles.org/
 * http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
 * http://www.adamsmith.org/index.php
 * http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
 * http://www.logicalfallacies.info/
 * http://creationsafaris.com/crevbd.htm
 * http://www.daltonator.net/durandal/creationism/fallacies.shtml
 * http://kspope.com/fallacies/fallacies.php
 * http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/lf.bl.html
 * http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/lf.extrapolation.html
 * http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Propaganda_techniques
 * http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Logical_fallacy
 * http://www.pnl-nlp.org/download/propaganda/index.htm
 * http://www.pnl-nlp.org/download/propaganda/page4.htm
 * Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation ~

 * Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil
 * Become incredulous and indignant
 * Create rumor mongers
 * Use a straw man
 * Sidetrack opponents w name calling, ridicule
 * Hit and Run
 * Question motives
 * Invoke authority
 * Play Dumb
 * Associate opponent charges with old news
 * Establish and rely upon fall-back positions
 * Enigmas have no solution
 * Alice in Wonderland Logic
 * Demand complete solutions
 * Fit the facts to alternate conclusions
 * Vanish evidence and witnesses
 * Change the subject
 * Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad
 * Ignore facts, demand impossible proofs
 * False evidence
 * Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor
 * Manufacture a new truth
 * Create bigger distractions
 * Silence critics
 * Vanish

 * Eight Traits of The Disinformationalist ~

 * Avoidance
 * Selectivity
 * Coincidental
 * Teamwork
 * Anti-conspiratorial
 * Artificial Emotions
 * Inconsistent
 * Newly Discovered: Time Constant

Your "wikipedia" has become flagrantly abusive, you have 48 hours to respond, or i will fullfill my obligation to the public to warn them about the abusiveness here.

You have never faced a person as rational, as smart, or as determined as I am regarding. -prometheuspan-

starting rough
thought i'd keep you appraised of the progress on what you now have about 24 hours to look foreward to appearing all over the net. (unless you can be civil and be bothered to answer and resolve this.) This is of course just a stream of consciousness rough... I still have 24 hours to work on it. --

I started my journey with Wikipedia several months ago. After using it on a few occasions as a handy resource, I became intrigued with it because it’s general conceptual Modus operandi matched my own personal objectives. Wikipedia exists to create an online encyclopedia, the largest and most complete ever. For many years, and since well Before Wikipedia, my personal goal has been to participate in a collaborative Textbook Writing experience, and to use good information and lucidity to end the age of propaganda and start a genuine age of information. As a child, I learned to speed read, And managed to read thousands of textbooks. This put me in a unique position to integrate the concepts from many different sources, and to try to solve apparently unsolved problems. As I explored Wikipedia, I found an article which was very poor in overall quality and Very skewed with patently bad information on a topic I am an expert in. The Wikipedia Article “psychonaut”. This article still stands as a good example of the problem with Wikipedia. Drug using self justifying people have written an article about Psychonautics Which frames Psychonautics as being about drug use. Psychonautics is not about drug use, it is about the exploration of the psyche. I made an effort to improve the article, and succeeded in getting the definition changed, but it became rapidly apparent that I was facing ignorant people who didn’t know what they didn’t know and who were prepared in any case to fight to defend their turf. After giving them a very complete outline, and starting a professional level conversation with them, all they could do was include A few minor points in a new version and otherwise tell me more or less to shut up and go Away. This alerted me to the problem, which I will now try to define.

The primary problem with Wikipedia is that it is in fact written by everybody collectively, and, THERE IS NO MECHANISM TO PREVENT DRIFT TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR. Expert level knowledge is irrelevant; because what goes into the article is what 10 uneducated people want in the article, not what is True, important, or most useful or informative to the general public. This ends up meaning that if you are an expert on a topic and want to participate in Wikipedia, your Real task is an uphill battle that may take months or years just over even a single Article. This problem could be theoretically dealt with if there were lucid rules to deal with content disputes. However, Wikipedia offers exactly the opposite. If you are in a conflict on wikipedia, there is almost no recourse for you if the other person is both abusive, but clever enough not to violate only a very few insufficient rules. You can be attacked and maligned at any time, and there is no real recourse for you. There is a rule against personal attacks, but it is really only enforced on Wikipedia by admins using it for Personal warfare purposes, and otherwise, you are more or less swimming alone. Wikipedia is thus completely vulnerable to the Tyranny of the majority. Wikipedias articles in general character are very low in quality, and the reason for this is simple; The people writing the articles are factually ignorant, and any interference from somebody who knows what they are talking about will only cause that person to get ganged up on and abused.

The next biggest problem on wikipedia is the way that it handles neutrality. Wikipedias definition of neutrality is that something is neutral if the “mainstream press” has said it. The problem is that the mainstream press isn’t neutral, and the mainstream press is by vast majority republican owned and operated. This skews wikipedia badly towards the right, which doesn’t stop the left from being represented. Wikipedias policy is that articles should be written from a “neutral point of view”. This is called the NPOV Policy. The problem with this policy and how it is actually applied in practice is that In the first place, “neutrality” is never rationally defined. Neutrality doesn’t just consist of neutral language, and it doesn’t just consist of giving equal time to different sides of an argument. It also requires a real understanding of the difference between opinion and fact. There is no method for pointing out the difference between opinion and fact. On Wikipedia. Wikipedia side steps the issue by calling something a fact if somebody else said it. It requires only references, not a cogent evaluation of those references. References are only required to be mainstream, there are no criteria and there is no methodology for determining if a reference is itself biased. The result of this is that “neutrality” as such Becomes incredibly vague and hard to pin down, and, more importantly, “neutrality” As such is only what the local administrator says it is. These admins are not required to understand logic, aren’t required to know how to evaluate fact from opinion, and, aren’t even required to follow the rules set for mere editors. It is factually common practice for admins to verbally attack others, and there is no recourse for the abused.

Wikipedia has thus become a battleground, not an encyclopedia. There are no real Criteria set forth to limit persons from becoming admins, and so eventually, those who seek power for nefarious purposes, including Trolls, can become administrators on Wikipedia. Once a person is an admin, they are essentially above reproach. Confronting an admin over abuse is enough to get people banned. (Or blocked.) Wikipedia essentially has become nothing more than several different point of view camps, which war with each other in never ending battles to twist the truth and facts Their way.

The proof that this is true is actually written all over Wikipedia. Any given exploration of a science topic will demonstrate quickly that the information presented is substandard and often not even factual, just well sourced. With a million articles, you would think that by now a single textbook worth of material on some topic or another Would have been generated. Not so. Check out the “portals” on Wikipedia. “Portals” Are ways of grouping articles together by subject. Any cursory examination of the portals Shows that there wouldn’t be enough material out of any given portal to justify a whole Textbook. So what are 1 million articles covering? Everything you can think of, and mostly noise, nonsense, drivel, entertainment, Movies, Television, Games, Politics, Biographies, and so forth. Wikipedias content is by vast majority “non-encyclopedic.” If we define “encyclopedic” material as being that which would be found in some given textbook, or if we define an encyclopedia as a topic orientated textbook, Wikipedia is Already a gross failure. This proof is content driven, but there are more and better proofs that Wikipedia Is a battleground of point of view warriors. Perhaps the best proof is Jimbos talk page. Jimbo is the person who came up with the idea of Wikipedia, and he is the defacto Dictator of Wikipedia. Jimbo is a pretty kewl dictator as far as such go, because he believes in consensus process. But the point is, if you read his talk page, every third entry Or so is somebody making an appeal to him versus outlandish abuse. And he doesn’t answer these people, and the abuse goes on. At the top of Jimbos Talk page is a message saying to take such complaints to and Administrative page. Good luck. If your complaint for instance involves an admin, they might just delete the complaint and block you. If you are being personally attacked, the standard answer is to go “work it out yourself.” Of course, there are other methods to deal with problems on Wikipedia, and to be fair, we should discuss them. There is in fact an entire dispute resolution process. The first step is called a request for comment, or RFC. Here, you are invited to make a page, list your evidence, and make a complaint. The reality is that you are just drawing a big bull’s-eye across your forehead. It’s not against the rules for others to seek the help of all of their friends, and “consensus” process thus really amounts to nothing more than a popularity Contest. If you are new to wikipedia, or an expert with less time to devote than the next Whole month, you are pretty much out of luck. You’ll be crucified, happily, and if you get upset about it, and do anything other than allow yourself to become a good well behaved martyr, you are likely to get blocked or banned. After all of that trouble, and we will say a minimum of 5 days, an RFC must in theory be filed before any other complaints, but an RFC carries zero weight of authority. So if you are being abused, you just lost five days fighting where it doesn’t really matter, and on top of it all you have been tricked into criticizing Wikipedia, and thus have become a defacto enemy and Scapegoat for Wikipedias pov warriors and ignorant admins. Now that things have escalated, you can start a new process that will last a minimum of five days, and which also carries zero actual weight of authority called mediation. Here, you are expected to compromise and give in and allow others to assault you, mischaracterize you, and insult You, and further scapegoat you. There is no recourse here to logic or fair play, and despite rules that supposedly require civility, nobodies required to stay civil except you. Any admin can attack you, and, you simply are required to endure it. So now you have spent a minimum of ten days, nothing has changed, and nothing has been done about your complaint. Your article may have been nominated for deletion and been deleted by then, Before you even have a chance to seek genuine authority to resolve the dispute.

The next and last and final step, is called Arbitration. Unlike two prior steps, Arbitration actually has authority and weight to actually make people do things or face consequences. However, you should know that there are Arbiters who are pov warriors, and that the process only requires one arbiter to more or less act as facilitator. So if you are lucky, and you get an arbiter who favors you, you are in luck. But if not, you are basically in a court of law where the main judge is also the prosecution against you. You aren’t allowed to defend yourself versus the arbiter, nor to cross examine the arbiters case or logic. By now, the people you were in the conflict with have had at least 10 days to attack you, bait you, and abuse you. There is an evidence page where you get to make your case, but arbiters aren’t required to read it, and most don’t. Instead, the facilitating arbiter makes his or her case, and the other arbiters vote to agree with or disagree with the facilitating Arbiter. The page on which that happens you aren’t allowed to even make comment to.

So justice is elusive at best, and impossible at worst on Wikipedia. This creates a host of other systemic problems. It means that in the end, 99 percent of the participants put up or shut up, and learns to go along with the flow of apparent “consensus”. (Which is often generated by only a single admin.?) The idea here is that conflict takes time and process to resolve. The problem is, nobody in their right mind is going to put up with all of that. Wikipedia thus chases away anybody of decent or high caliber unless they are for whatever reason truly dedicated, and willing to spend hours and hours and hours being abused in order to accomplish writing a short article which will then probably degenerate into noise anyways.

Wikipedias government is thus definable as a tyranny of the majority based in pack psychology and anarchy. Its claim to consensus process is totally illusory, in fact it practices a perfect example of the now well discredited Delphi process. It forces false consensus via threat, intimidation, and manipulation.

Nowhere does this become more apparent than in trying to specifically bring these problems to the attention of Wikipedia. Like all bureaucratic monsters, Wikipedia isn’t Really interested in criticism, and serious critics are punished by intimidation, threat, Blocking, and banning. Standing up to an abusive admin is “asking to be banned.” Standing up to wikipedia as a whole on account of this problem was a lesson is doublethink and pack psychology. Being blocked for defending somebody else against blatant admin abuse (and reckless flagrant disregard for the rules) demonstrated the simple truth. People are blocked or banned from wikipedia simply for the crime of standing up for their rights, or other people’s rights, or for demanding that the rules be followed. The rules are followed selectively and at the convenience of the admins. Personal attacks are the modus operandi of admins, Votes for deletion, and even arbiters. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia; it’s a political battleground, a war zone of ideologies, Complete with total blatant and flagrant corruption.

Now, having made my case against Wikipedia, the next question is why bring this up With you? The answer of course is that I am interested in collaboration of the type that Wikipedia promises but cannot hope to deliver. For over 15 years, my goal has been to Write Textbooks or Tomes on those subjects which are most contended over, and to use truth and knowledge and logic and reason and fact to facilitate real change and evolution In our society towards the better. Specifically, I am interested in getting together with others and building a knowledge base prequel to writing textbook tomes on the following subjects. Ethics, Psychology, Sociology, Metaphysics, Philosophy, World Religions, Politics, Psychonautics, Permaculture, Arcologies, Architecture, Space Exploration and Colonization, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Herbology, Botany, Aerodynamics, Computer Sciences, Robotics, Alternative energy,

actually, i decided to have a weekend.
thats another 48 hours. see ya mondayish

well, you can't say i didn't try to warn you or work things out
they have archived all of my hard work over on your wikipedia talk page.

oh well, this is apparently an exercise in futility anyways.

http://tribes.tribe.net/vswikipedia?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B28362beb-251c-4adc-b9f4-152a0137b629%5D

http://tribes.tribe.net/omnipedia

in case you are ever interested...

i suppose that this will be the last time i bother to try to contact you.

I'm sure it will be painful soon enough.

ta ta

certain topics
Certain topics seem to generate unusual problems. Try to say something bad about Uncle Joe and. . . it gets deleted. Who's Uncle Joe? He was shortnamed UJ by 2 World War II leaders, one of whom is shortnamed FDR. Still can't guess?

Think of the 3 names associated with the largest number of killings in the 20th century.  TODAY IS JULY 4  - let's see how long this stays here
 * One has a last name starting with "H"
 * One has a name starting with an "M" (for Chinese names, Last / First may confuse some)
 * S T A L I N

De-adminship
Hello, As all administrators at the English Wikibooks, you are subject to de-adminship if you are inactive for over 1 year, which is currently the case. The request will be made at Meta one month from today. If you would like to object to the de-adminship, please do so at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access

Thanks for your time of service as an administrator at English Wikibooks.

– Mike.lifeguard  | talk 00:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Rename user
In view the login provided by the unified goal, ask the reaname of User:Chico, currently without any contribution in the project. The rename may be something like User:Chico-Old. Thank advance.

-q:pt:user:Chico (talk) 11:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

World History
I would suggest that you add your name to the World History/Authors page. You created the book (I also seem to recall that it was your first-ever Wikibooks edit) and you deserve to be recognized for it. --Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty 00:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Is User:Jimbo Wales the official account of Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia)?
Is User:Jimbo Wales the official account of Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia)? What is the purpose of this account? And why was it created? Numbers-Mathworld (discuss • contribs) 10:31, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It's his account, yes. The purpose? Same as any other account - he created it to edit Wikipedia (and the other projects). MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 21:10, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jimbo Wales


text:
Spanish/How to study Spanish

To study Spanish or any non-native language you should determine your goals. Many people study a language in school to fulfill a requirement. Others do it generally as a "broadening" experience. Still others do it so that they can speak with others in their own language.

Number one tip: study every day
To speak any language fluently and be able to survive in the language among native speakers, it is probably necessary to immerse yourself in the language for an extended period such as 9 months to a year. Short of that it is best to study intensively every day for an extended period. Studying every day is much more effective than studying every other day. Studying only once a week is a sure way to forget everything by the end of the week and be eternally relearning the same little bit of vocabulary. The problem is that your mind will forget much of what you learn in the course of one day and by the end of two days it is even more. If you study every day, even for a little while, it will mean that you can focus more of your time learning new material and waste less time relearning old material. This is one of the secrets to learning a language: study it every day.

Tip for studying new words: Have your own vocabulary. It can be some note, every page is e.g. 10 words. And every day study 10 new words, 10 words from the yesterday, 10 words from the day before yesterday, 10 words from the week before, 10 from 2 week before, 10 from 3 week before and 10 from 4 week before. It's overall 70 words. It want about half or 1 hour studying. 10 new words want more time than then repeat 60 others and you have confidence that you will know for a long time.

Spaced learning software such as anki does a similar thing by scheduling reviews depending on how well you do.

Using web resources
Learning via the web offers a lot of benefits that a standard textbook can not provide. One example are audio files which we already include in some of our lessons. Another benefit are online dictionaries that allow you to quickly look up vocabulary. Check out our Web Resources page to find out more.

Using media resources
Once you have learned the basics of Spanish, try reading or viewing material in spanish. A newspaper, a magazine or a children's book is a great place to start. Online retailers, such as Amazon.com, have international storefronts that sell books in foreign languages.

Watching Spanish television or Spanish movies will help you practice listening. Playing your favorite DVD or television show with Spanish close captioning on or with the Spanish soundtrack will help you learn new vocabulary and will assist in putting items into context.

Areas where a significant number of people speak Spanish should have reading material available at local supermarkets and bookstores, and may have some local television or radio stations in Spanish. If you cannot find Spanish media where you live, the Internet has online editions of many Spanish newspapers and magazines available.

Keep a dictionary nearby if you have trouble with unfamiliar vocabulary. The dictionary can be a very effective study tool. Each time you look up a new word, place a dot or symbol near the word. If you forget a word and need to look it up again, add another dot near the word. Pretty soon, you will have a collection of words with two, three and four dots. This marking system helps you figure out which words are either important to remember (because you use them frequently) or which ones are difficult to remember. During your vocabulary review, you can flip through your dictionary and find important words to practice.

Regular use of a dictionary has the added benefit of putting things into context. Many dictionaries have tidbits and trivia added to the definitions, to help you see how components of language fit together.

In addition, every time you open your dictionary, you will see other Spanish words, while searching for your target word and this has the effect of reminding you of other words.

Use it
The best way to learn Spanish is by using it with other speakers. Do not be discouraged by your bad accent and choppy flow; these are things that come with being a beginner. People will understand that you are learning and will appreciate you applying the skills that you have acquired. So go ahead—say something. Ask your neighbor "¿Dónde está el baño?"

Look around your local community. Often times coffee shops, libraries, or other local organization sponsor a "Spanish club" for adults. Both native and non-native speakers attend. This is a great way to use Spanish by speaking with others (especially native speakers).

Another great way to practice your new language skills is to travel to the country where the language is spoken. Most major cities in Spanish speaking countries host a number of Spanish language schools for foreigners. These schools offer language classes at all levels by hour, week, or month of classes. Also, they normally will arrange for their students to live with a local host family, which provides another source for practicing the Spanish language with native speakers.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Spanish/How to study Spanish


text:
Talk:Spanish

Link for Inclusion
There's this really incredible website for learning Spanish called Online Spanish Help that I think should be included in the list of link. It has games and audio pronunciations. It's the best site I've seen out there. adjwilli

Worlds foremost Spanish textbook in the making
Dudes, you realize that this is going to become the most used Spanish textbook for English speakers out there ? This thing is going to put the traditional Spanish textbooks out of business one by one. It can continue to grow and reflect real Spanish use, and uploading the sound files is something that a printed book cannot have. This is SO COOL ! I am confident that we are making history.

Sound file format: MP3 vs Ogg
Oh yeah, one question: does anyone out there know what would be the best format for sound files ? I was just lucky that I had a de-zipper on my machine to unzip the Spanish ones. Is there an open standard format ? A most common, non-M$ one (is Quicktime any better ?) --Karl Wick 14:23 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Karl, what about MP3? That sounds ;-) ok for me.. and I have heard that is popular.. I am not sure about the MP3 licence but probably there are not problems with that. In other hand is a very useful format for learning a language. You can download the file, load it in you MP3 reader and listening the lesson in the undergroung, travelling to work. Wintermute 17:27 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Huh .. MP3 ... sounds great to me, lets see if anyone has any objections to it. --Karl Wick

 * Not really my objection but I hear ogg format is recommended within Wikipedia. Kpjas

 * Ogg ? I am not familiar with it. Is it compatible with "everything" like MP3 ? Karl Wick

 * All modern MP3 playing software on computers should play ogg just fine. If you have an older player then you might need to install a plugin. MP3 is evil and should be avoided. --mav

 * Ah. "Evil". Karl Wick

 * uuuhh.. "Evil".. Evil like.. I don't know.. M$? really? so bad?. Maybe the soft MP3 play ogg but.. what about the hard MP3 players? I have a new one! But is ok. If it is evil there is nothing to do. Wintermute

 * <sarcasm>You're right. It will be horrible that people can't take the speech examples in Spanish onto their non-ogg compatable MP3 players. Such a shame.</sarcasm> LittleDan 14:59, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Yes - Evil. The owners of the MP3 patents have been trying to force websites that stream or otherwise host MP3 files to pay the patent owners thousands of dollars per website and on top of that a per download charge. Ogg, however, is free and will always be free. We should be supporting free software and free file formats over proprietary software and formats whenever practically possible. Ogg is such a format. --mav

 * Paying thousands of dollars for licensing ? That does sound pretty evil. --Karl Wick

 * ogg is the best choice as the format & codec are patent free. Maybe we should make a special ogg page talking about the format and how to read it on different computers (mac / win32 / linux ...). There could be a guide about converting the ogg encoded sound to other codec for hard mp3 players (ogg to wav then reencode for example).

Hashar 02:14, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Speex could also be interesting, since it is a codec especially for speech. The project is part of the Xiph foundation, and it is completely ridden of patents and nasty licensing issues. Since it is geared towards speech, it can result in much smaller files, which is nice for people with expensive slow connection or for PDA usage. Guaka 23:41, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Here is a revolutionary idea: hows about every soundbite being offered in mp3 (cause everything can read it) and speex (cause it is a freely avaliable, well thought out format, which is quickly becoming the standard for VoIP among other things) btw, ogg is a whole group of different formats (all of which are open-source) and of which speex is but one format (specifcally designed for voice recording). the bellman

It seems like common sense to me to just use WAV format. It's not like a sentence of speech is going to be that big anyway.
 * It would be big for me, with my extremely slow internet. I'd very much prefer the files to be as small as possible -- it might be the difference between me having to wait for a few seconds versus not having to wait at all. And when you add up thousands of downloads from all the different people using the wikibook, then it adds unnecessary network and server load for Wikimedia foundation. Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:27, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Project name, indices, non-zipped sound files

 * I think that the title "Spanish" is too general. Foreign language textbooks usually are aimed at learners at some level
 * it would be nice to have grammatical and themed indices. I was thinking that we should add the name "castellano" because that is the correct name for the Spanish being taught.
 * wouldn't it be better to provide both zipped and directly playable sound samples ?

 * I guess that more advanced learners can easily click through the first lessons.
 * Could be nice, but maybe it's better to have an overview of the entire grammatic and provide links to lessons.
 * Zipping already (lossly) compressed soundfiles doesn't (and shouldn't..) result in much smaller files. It only makes it less convenient to play the files. But it could be nice to provide different qualities, or Ogg and Speex files of the same audio. Guaka 23:48, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * For your first point, the name, I think it is implied (if nothing is stated) that it is for beginners. LittleDan 14:59, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Hi there, Native Spanish speaker over here. Just went to the German wikibook and looks superb. In my humble opinion, there are a number of thing that could be copied from that one. For example... the should be a cover. My personal sugestion for it would be the cover of the "Don Quijote" (400 years of its publication on 2005 I believe). The level divition also helps, and the more the better. Its always more fun to thing that something has been achieved like the first level out of x, than just 3 chapters. Anyway... Ill contribute to the Spanish one as much as i can. (have to find my login and password which at the moment dont remember them) Cheers.

Two comments: 1. this is great, 2. wheres the alphabet ?

 * 1) This is unbelievable. I am so happy to see this project.  I would love to see you language-learning become a subject for a "free" textbook.  I'm so impressed to hear the ogg examples.  Eventually, of course, it would be neat if you all had a bunch of different speakers from different spanish-speaking countries, so students don't become overly familiar with one accent.
 * 2) Shouldn't lesson 1 include the alphabet and how to pronounce the letters? I would think this is the most important lesson.

--Dan Keshet

I agree, pronounciation is important and should be covered very early on. I'll ask my friend Mariela if she can also give a sound recording of the alphabet (of course others are encouraged to do a recording as well, so that we have a lot of variety). Thomas

I disagree, lessons on pronunciation are boring. The pronunciation of spanish is so easy learners can pick it up on their own. -DM

Ideas for new chapters
Fun, social things
 * Parties
 * The beach
 * Dates
 * At a bar
 * Salsa dancing, La Bamba, la discoteca (anthro)

Topics common to richer/more developed cultures
 * At the office
 * At school
 * Transportation, airport, el metro, taxis ..
 * On the phone
 * buying a car
 * business trip, tourist trips
 * food shopping
 * in the kitchen
 * Beauty, barber shop
 * el gimnasio-the gymnasium
 * el cine (movies)
 * weddings (la boda)
 * Technology
 * restaurants
 * boating
 * soccer, sports

Things relatively unique in Latino culture
 * feelings toward the US
 * el quinceanero (Sweet Fifteenth Birthday)
 * Catholic Mass
 * deadbeat dads from the Spaniards to today
 * emotions
 * families
 * at home
 * poverty, Street beggars
 * el tianguis
 * crime
 * spanish-speaking communities in the US
 * discussion of various cultural spots in Latin America
 * restaraunts, taco stands
 * paracaidistas
 * historical events in LatAm history such as the killings in Mexico in '68
 * Historical figures like Che Gueverra, Selena, Pedro Infante, Cantinflas, Fidel Castro, Picasso, la dictablanda, Cortez, los Mayas, Cristobal Colon ... Don Quijote ..
 * Street vendors
 * etc etc ...

Hope this helps! --Karl Wick

Comments about the structure of the lessons
Please, see this comment like a mindstorm comment (Its possible that it doesnt make too much sense).. I would like to know what you (all) think about

I think that a lesson should contain only the matter for one period of study (one hour?, half hour?). There is not reason for limit the number of lessons in a textbook, so, what is a lesson if not a period of study? Maybe in others subjects of study you can split it by concepts but I think that, in languages, would be useful a one-day separation. It seems that for a basic language capabilities you need to know 2000 (more or less) words. 2000/365 = 5,4 words. If you can learn a few of grammar and 5,4 words every day, theorically you can write and read a language in a year (listening and speak is another thing). It seems a good mark to me for only 1 or 1/2 hour day. So, maybe, a lesson should be a few of vocabulary, a concept of grammar and a lot of exercices. Obviously, everybody could advance with the speed that he/she need or want.

Sorry by my english, I am learning..

Wintermute 22:36, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I think you are right with your point that we need a lot of exercises which only cover a small amount of material (for example a maximum of 10 new words or a single grammar concept). So we should definitely try to put an exercise right after new vocabulary/grammar concepts are presented. This way we can even keep the longer - theme oriented - lessons together as a whole (doing one 'lesson' would then maybe require four or five 1/2 hour learning sessions, but as long as each learning session has its own exercise part this should be OK). In either case, I think we should start now to put in some exercises for the lessons 1-3 where we already have enough material to construct useful exercises. -- Thomas

Formatting
I think its a good idea to put everything in Spanish first and then English. This translation helps people see the similarities and differences between Spanish and English.

I also removed some repetitive words like "Lesson" and "Lección" because I think it makes the page simpler and less work to read.

Also I moved the (very cool) flags to the bottom of the page so that people see content first. I'm not sure which way I like it, maybe its better with the flags up top like the were.

Please feel free to undo any changes you hate ;-) -- Karl Wick

About the exercices format:

What should be the exercices format? I propose using a different page for every exercices lesson and another one for the solutions. That would be 3 pages for lesson. It has a few advantages. A student could print the exercices, work in that in paper if she want, and check the solutions when he/she has finished. In this way, the lesson wouldn't be so big and we could enlarge the exercicies without limit.

Another question is.. should be write the exercices like the exercicies in a traditional book?

for instance:

Translate:

house    ______________

what do you think about?

Wintermute 20:44, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC) --- Thanks for bringing that up. We should be starting to work on exercises as soon as possible. I agree that we should have exercises separate from the main lessons (in fact, as our lessons are quite long, there should be one exercise sheet for every 1/2 hour study part of a lesson). I think the solutions can be writtem far more compact (by writing only the missing words or correct answers for multiple choice). So we probably won't need one page for each exercise but just one solution sheet for all exercises (or all exercises of one lesson).

In my opinion we should also try to emphasize collaborative learning in the exercises. So maybe we don't even want to give solutions to each exercise but rather leave some of them open so that students and teachers have to come together to discuss exercises. More importantly I would like to see a lot of exercises that can be done only with partners or in a group. For these exercises we will definitely need to use (voice!) chat. Even though the development of Wiki tools for realtime interaction are discussed as part of the 'Wikiversity' project it will probably take a while until they become available. So to get started with that (which will hopefully be soon) we should just go with available chat tools like irc,icq,aim,yahoo,...) -- Thomas Strohmann

 * No, I think people should still be able to learn spanish by themselves with this book. I think we should have a subpage for group resources, if anyone wants to do that, but it shouldn't make it so that people feel like they have to have a teacher to use the textbook. LittleDan 14:59, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

Hi guys. I'm new to wiki, but actually I was thinking about starting a similar project to this one for a while. I'm using javascript to allow you to test yourself by hiding either the English or Spanish half of the vocab list, click to reveal, shuffle, there are two stylesheets to make the printed version good for paper, readings are similar to vocab in that you can click to reveal translations, and the content is in XML and parsed to html (or latex) which should make the content useful for people wanting to parse it to other formats. Take a look and let me know if there is any interest in seeing this done. [It's all here.] Click on the reading, click on Practice: Recognition and then words in the vocab list. Print preview should be formatted for printing.

crail

New format looks fine to me
Hello,

I really like the work of Karl and others to put all the headers first in Spanish and then in English. Omitting the 'Lesson' word for all the lessons is definitely reasonable. For where to place the flags I'm not sure either. I think it would be cool if we eventually come up with a cool title plus a nice picture for our book to put it at the very start of the page. This could be the combination 'Aqui se habla espanol' (title) & flags (picture) but maybe we can come up with something more creative ;)

Thomas Strohmann

P.S. I've been away on a conference most of last week, this week I'll have much more time to work on the Wikibook...

Help
Hi, I was wondering if some people here are more familiar with Spanish than I am & are willing to look at some of the lessons we have so far and correct the mistakes that are in there. As the lessons get more advanced I try to make more elaborate examples, but since I'm just learning Spanish I'm not so sure if they are all grammatically correct / stylistically good. So if anyone wants to help out on this issue I would really appreciate it! -- Thomas -- UTC 05:55 Wednesday, October 15, 2003

 * I just downloaded all the lessons and I'm going to check them, but I won't be able to correct them for a while (dial-up connection, expensive telephone bills in the third world). Also I could contribute with some sound files with Guatemalan accent, just tell me what should I record.

(update) I just checked them. Look at the comments here

 * Oaso 13:49, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I've looked at them. Great suggestions Oaso! I'll put in the changes as soon as I can. Thomas Strohmann

Colored Tables
Following the good examples in other Wikibooks, I've starting to put in colored tables. I suggest the following colorcode: yellow for pure vocabulary (single words), blue for grammar tables (e.g. conjugations), and green for examples (whole sentences in dialogs, or sentences illustrating grammar rules). Thomas Strohmann
 * I was just going to suggest the same thing, but with different colors. Current colors look too strong. I think it's better to use pastel colors, like the Wikipedia's front page. If you were wondering, I was going to suggest pale blue for vocabulary, pink for grammar, pale yellow for examples, and gray for exercises.
 * Oaso 15:49, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment Oaso. Lets put together some suggestions on the talk page. Once we've decided on a format we can make it a 'standard' for the book. Thomas Strohmann

 * Current version

 * Alternative 1

 * I edited alternative 1 to show the precise colors I meant. Oaso 20:32, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Grammar
We ought to have a lot more grammar here! Gender! Agreement! Articles! Demonstrative adjectives! Prepositions! Verbs!!! The best way to learn Spanish is to learn the rules, so that you can create just about every sentence in existence. These situation-oriented lessons only allow you to say things appropriate for...well, that situation. If we were to exclusively use that approach, we would have to have an exhaustive list of situations, which would blow up the wiki server. If you learn grammar, you can interact in any situation. --Grammar bug

 * Yeah, thats a good point. --Karl Wick

 * Hi, I stumbled on this project. It's very interesting. I noticed you have past participle in Lesson 9, but kept the present progressive until Lesson 10. The way I learned Spanish, progressive was the first tense learned after present indicative. It's a simple way to vastly increase the number of phrases you can create, and I would suggest addressing it earlier.
 * What you say makes sense .. if you could play around and try to make the changes yourself that would be very helpful. Let me know if I can be of any help to you - Karl Wick

When learning Spanish I tried a lot of books and courses. The only thing that clicked with me was Madrigal's Magic Key, which is a very old text book, but teaches the language by rules and shortcut aids to memory. In fact it teaches grammar, but in a very palatable way.

I find all these "how to order a meal" type lessons OK, and superficially appealing but will never move the learner past the phrasebook stage, and ultimatly they will lose interest, this is not the way to master a language.

Once you have the grammar of Spanish, all the rest is plain sailing, you just have to practice and add to your vocabulary.

I don't have a user name, but I hope this comment helps. I'll look in here from time to time and see if there's anything I can add, but if it does develop into a phrasebook, then I don't think there's much I would contibute.

It would also be helpful to decide how to handle the question of which version of Spanish will be taught. Castillian is the standard, but Latin American is of equal importance. Maybe some method of highlighting the Latin American differences by color code, or a sidebar of important deviations by country would allow the book to be more useful. The alternative would be to create a Castillian main book with a Latin American appendix.

Where's the subjunctive mood? Where's the preterite and the imperfect?? Where's the conditional??

I think this book needs new sections to be added. This book is not at all complete. El subjuntivo es muy importante. TrueDat (discuss • contribs) 05:58, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

-

Wiktionary
Could this be in some way related to Wiktionary ? (Or, maybe it is, but I haven't noticed).

I'm thinking about something like a bilingual dictionary for language learning. The contents itself would probably look more like that of a textbook than that of a dictionary, but the purpose is to have the dictionary browseable / referenceable format.

I'm trying to put similar ideas together at Wiki Language School Flammifer 19:27, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Standards
I think in the long term intrest of this book, we should all consider starting the plans for restructuring this book so it conforms to textbook standards in a Spanish I, II, III, IV format. I know that currently, this will probably be quite unpopular, but in the long term intrest, we should at least consider it, maybe even splitting the book, one for serious education and study, and one for conversational situation reference. I'm just saying we should consider it. That's all.

New design proposal
Could you look at pl:Hiszpański: Lekcja A1 and pl:Hiszpański? Here you can see the proposal of new design for this Wikibook. Sblive 19:16, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Helping...
I'm Spanish but I find it difficult to help in this book. Make a clearer index or a page with things to do. About a wictionary: I think we should have ONE page for all languages. There you could see the word and then translations to all languages with definitions in that language. You could use any language to sort words alphabetically. Please ask for it in meta or in wikipedia!!! Or let's do one book here. I'm Barcelona in catalana wikipedia if you want to talk to me: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuari_Discussi%C3%B3:Barcelona

 * I'd love to help as well (don't even have a user name yet), but it really seems difficult, besides I'm from Argentina and lots of the lenguage used sounds weird, different latin american countrys have different vocabulary, specially Argentina (and Uruguay I think) were verbs are even conjugated differently. Some examples would be "vos" used instead of "tú", and others like "Sos de México" instead of "Eres de México". Skimming through the pages I've seen many references to Mexico ("You are from Mexico"), so I guess the idea is to mainly use vocabulary from Mexico (that is the spanish that people from the US is more familiar with), is there a standard way to add words used in other countries with a note clarifying it, or it would be too complex and confusing? 200.89.153.204 6 July 2005 13:46 (UTC)

 * You can always make some additional pages (or another course within this textbook) about Spanish used in south America. That would be great! Sblive 13:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Mouth Mechanics
I would like to request a section on the mechanics involved in speaking another language. I couldn't nail spanish R's correctly until I did a lot of digging. English produces an "r" without the tongue touching any part of the mouth, like a vowel. The spanish R is pronounced behind the upper teeth. Most try to approximate this by telling one to pronounce it something akin to TH. I am not an expert in the subject, and don't even know Spanish, so I can only ask for at least some links.

Like "TH"?!? I've always heard it described as "rolling" the R. I beleive one rapidly moves the tongue behind the upper teeth. Its easy to overdo, but when starting to learn its probably OK to "roll" the R's in an exagerated way. If unable to do so, I would think a "T" or "D" sound might be better than "TH," which seems more likely to lead to nasty tongue injuries than anything else.

There is some information here: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/ The stated use is for: It is intended for students of phonetics, linguistics, and foreign language. Maybe he would like to donate it to GFDL and we could hack it up? Although they do not follow words or letter they only give the phonetic alphabet. -Indolering

Opening Paragraph
I'm reading this to learn Spanish, I don't have enough ability to actually contribute to the book in any substantial way. However, I found this initial paragraph absolutely baffling, enough to make me wonder whether I should even bother reading further in the book:

The fundamental norm of Spanish grammar is the sentence, structured as follows:

Subject - Verb - Object

''This is so until the point that, in technical Spanish, you can consider an equivalence between the concept 'Grammar' and the concept of 'a sentence arranged according to the rule Subject-Verb-Object'. At this level, paragraphs, articles, and other sorts of grammatical groups are not considered. So, at this level, Spanish is an impossible language, because if it existed according to its theoretical definition, that is, if Spanish were used correctly according to its technical standard, then all the words from the Spanish dictionary would have been used just for an only eternal sentence, valid for past, present and future. Maybe this sentence is still to come, but, meanwhile, normal Spanish conversations are constituted by groups of sentences.''

Unless somebody can seriously rework and explain what is trying to be expressed here, i'd just as soon see this paragraph removed. The fact that we go Subject Verb Object is enough for me. Doesn't need much explanation, since that is a typical pattern in English, and this book is written in English and therefore assumes English knowledge.

Yikes. That certainly is a difficult paragraph. I have no idea what it's trying to say. I think that whole section needs to be reworked. I'll get on it. Fenoxielo 03:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Those paragraphs on grammar need to be moved off the main page. They don't look right sitting in the middle of what is essentially the contents. Any suggestions on where to stick it? Perhaps delete it from the main page and paste it in here until it gets a home? --Zapateria 09:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Cover and Contents
Does anyone think that we should change the cover title from "Spanish (Cover)" to just "Spanish" and change "Spanish" to "Spanish:Contents"? This will make it more in-line with other language textbooks. Geoking66 22:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Former Page Spanish: Contents
The titles in the "Lecciones" list do not match the content of the lessons. E.g. the second title, "El viajar", takes me to grammar of the noun... 18.19.0.183 19:47, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Originally, the lessons consisted mainly of vocabulary (you will find that lesson 2 has a part for vocabulary that you need for travelling). We started adding grammar topics later and they are harder to put under a specific title. If we find better titles for the lessons we can certainly change them. Thomas Strohmann

I changed it to "De viaje" because it sounds much better. Maybe it should be noted that verbs may work as masculine nouns, but certainly "El viajar" sounds too strange. Sabbut 12:08, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Incorporating verb tenses into the lessons
As I research the language I realize that Spanish has fourteen verb tenses, seven simple and seven compound, as well as a couple extras. We could use that information to work new tenses into the lessons systematically. --Karl Wick

Sound file format
Now I just had a teacher trying to use the site and he could not use the sound files because his hardware was not compatible with the sound file format that we are using. Would it be so wrong to offer the files in one "free" format and one proprietary one ? --Karl Wick

Naming policy
The Spanish book is now 100% naming policy compliant. Check http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=Spanish&namespace=0. All left non compliant pages are redirects. I also replaced most of all links to these redirect pages. E^(nix) 10:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Lesson Setup
I really think the lessons need to be setup in a different way. As it is you get tons of words at once with little to no practice. If there were large chapters broken up into smaller sections with an excercise at the end of each it wouldn't be so overwhelming. For example, the first chapter after doing the alphabet and pronunciations could be over Introductions. It would teach people how to say hello, nice to meet you, and my name is xyz in the first part with an excercise at the end. The next part could be over saying your age and numbers. After that could be a few adjectives and a lesson on noun-adjective agreement. I would be willing to reorganize the current lessons or start a string of alternative lessons if people like this idea, but I don't want to do it if people won't like it. It's just that I think it's quite overwhelming as it is.--Leostrife 21:19, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

suggestions
This is a wiki, it can be non-linear learning (sorry if I make mistakes, I'm Spanish speaker): suggest projects and exercise to USE language. Show words in use, link to images, texts and dialogues. Words couls also be linked to wiktionary for definitions and so on, so translations are not needed here (they always depends on the context). I 'll explain it better:

Imagine we are talking about food (in lesson 6). We can open the section with some pictures to match eith words instead of boring lists. Users can also click on words so they see the defintion in wiktionary. When exercise is finished, they have the basic vocabluary to start using it. They can read some dialogues: "in the shop", "in the restaurant" while they listen to them. Then they will be asked to complete a multuser dialogue. For example, there's a discussion between 2 people arguing about 2 different cooks. Each user adds a line or corrects mistakes, or ask for help in wikiversity page. Because the main point of a wiki is to edit it!.

Can somebody add a numbers lesson?
Can somebody add a numbers lesson, like how to count to 100? thanks
 * Wow. I can't believe we left it out.  Well, I added it here. --Think Fast 20:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Exercises for Vocabulary
It might help readers learn the vocabulary if there are exercises for it as well. -- Video Game Fan 01:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Celestianpower/Spanish
I have been working extensively on this new Spanish Wikibook. What do you think? Should we merge it with this one? Do you like the name? I'd like some feedback. Regards, Celestianpower 22:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Fragmentos para fusionar

 * Las personas — Describing people and opinions about them.
 * La escuela — School, ser versus estar.
 * El tiempo pasado — The past tense- All about the past tense in Spanish: Preterito, Imperfecto, Differences between the two.

These are some random contributions that don't seem to fit into the grand scheme yet. When I need them, they'll be here though! :). Kind regards, Celestianpower 17:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Pronouns missing?
I couldn't find anything in here so far about pronouns. The section on regular verb conjugation would be a good place to mention them. Also, some places that describe conjugations have 2 column tables where the first column in "Ingles" and lists only the English pronoun, and the second column is "Espanol" and lists only the conjugated Spanish verb. I think that instead of showing "I" "Soy" it would be better to show "I am" "(Yo) soy".

More audio
Do you think it would be possible to record dialogs an offer more audio?--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 12:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary
Why does this book link to the English Wikipedia article about the language, but doesn't link to the English Wiktionary Category:Spanish language, which includes a huge Spanish vocabulary defined in English, as well as appendices on conjugation and other tools? There doesn't even seem to be a template on this site! --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Archived
I am adding some of the related archived material onto the main contents page; the previous work the previous writers mustn't be put to waste! Some important ones can also be used! Minor User (talk) 09:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation
I suggest a version to learn medicine Spanish --Mac (talk) 09:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Neutral point of view
How neutral. The logo shows the coats of arms of Spain and Mexico. What about the other two thirds of Spanish speakers? Esmito (talk) 14:39, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I added the Argentinian coat of arms just to show how ridiculous it is to have coats of arms at all. Esmito (talk) 14:47, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Very good (Muy bueno)
I like this wikibook, that's very good. I speak spanish and this book looks great.

¡Gracias al creador de este libro de español! Thanks to the creator of this book in Spanish! --201.210.45.46 (talk) 23:22, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree
I want to thank all the contributors of this Wikibook. On 2008 I dived in for my first Spanish class. Our professor was from Madrid and it intimidated me greatly, as she expected us answer her in her language all the time. And then there was this Wikibook. I remember I would get up early every morning to diligently study as much as I could, memorize words, practice verbs. This book helped me immensely as though it were the only book that mattered, largely because it was the only book I could read simply by being connected to the Internet, and could be accessed at any time of the day. This went hand-in-hand with Wiktionary, being the only multilingual dictionary (a mighty vast one too) I could browse through the net. I started editing there too, adding words and learning about others, and it made me realize I liked this: writing, words, languages. This has made a lasting influence on me.

The Spanish language also gave me an opportunity to form relationships with awesome Spanish-speaking people who have touched my life forever, like with the professor I mentioned. This is another story, but my point is that it all started here. This Wikibook had been a catalyst. Changes in life from an online project pitched in upon by people I may never meet! Now learning languages is still an enjoyable hobby for me. And you know what? Despite not studying Linguistics full-on, Wikibooks on many other subjects still help me today.

So, thank you. The gratitude goes deeper than words can express. --Icqgirl (discuss • contribs) 13:57, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

How old is the PDF file?
I was pretty disappointed to find that in the PDF file of the Spanish Wikibook, it has the following answers for the first exercise in the first lesson:

What greeting would you use...
 * 1) At 8:00pm?
 * 2) At 10:00am?
 * 3) At 3:00pm?
 * 4) When you're going to bed?

Answers:

 * 1) Buenas tardes
 * 2) Buenas mañanas
 * 3) Buenos días
 * 4) Buenas noches

Buenas mañanas? Really? And buenos días for 3 PM? I don't really know what else to say. It's a shame because the PDF version is beautifully done and one of the best-formatted free resources available. Is it known when the PDF version will be updated to match the online/live version? I also just noticed that the link to the live version for lesson 1 in the PDF is broken.

What about the printable version? Is it the same text as the online version? I don't know if it takes that version and makes it ready for printing or if it's a separate file like the PDF.

Elsrbest (discuss • contribs) 18:48, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I looked twice, and this looks correct. I'm not sure what is wrong with the answers. These responses look correct. Peyton09 (discuss • contribs) 22:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Photos
I do not understand why do we have photos of various cities of Spain? This is not a book about Spain but the Spanish language, which is spoken in American countries as well. I think a) Photos of Valencia or Córdoba is not fruitful b) Even if there is a good reason, why are we not adding photos of Chichen Itza? acagastya 💭 19:03, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Please, get help on this project from Wikiversity.
I hope the people on this project will seriously consider the Wikiversity pages, also a resource for people learning Spanish. Their page is a improvement. I hope noticing their contributions will help to improve other people's Spanish. Peyton09 (discuss • contribs) 22:50, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Spanish


text:
Spanish/Lesson 5

Grammar - Questions
Unlike English, yes/no questions in Spanish are not usually formed by switching the position of subject and verb (if the subject is explicit). To recognize a sentence as affirmative or as a question one must pay attention to the intonation pattern. Unlike English, Spanish uses a reversed question mark (¿) at the beginning of a question:

become

For other type of questions Spanish uses the following question words (note that all of them have an accent in the word):

Here are some Spanish sentences where specific question words are used:

Questions can also be posed within a sentence:

Exercise: Questions

Grammar - Possessive Adjectives
Like English, the Spanish possessive adjectives differ depending on the person they are referring to. Unlike English, the possessive article also changes depending on the number of items that one possesses (for example: mi libro = my book, mis libros = my books). It can also change depending on the gender of the item (for example: nuestro perro = our dog, nuestra casa = our house). The following table summarizes all Spanish possessive adjectives:

 * Possessive Pronouns are not used when talking about body parts:

Exercise: Possessive Adjectives

Equality
Spanish uses three slightly different constructions for comparisons of equality. One for comparing verbs, one for comparing nouns and one for comparing adjectives/adverbs. The following examples show the three different possibilities:

When comparing nouns, the ending of tanto will be modified to tanta, tantos, or tantas in order to match gender and quantity of the noun. The general pattern for comparisons of equality is the following:

Inequality
For comparisons of inequality, Spanish uses the same form for both nouns and adjectives/adverbs. There are two types of inequalities: más ... que (more than) and '''menos ... que' (less than''):

In general:

Superlatives
Superlatives in Spanish are similar to comparisons of inequality: They use más for the most, menos for the least. Then follows the adjective and finally there is a preposition (de):

Note that in some cases (la más inteligente) you can just write the article and omit the noun. The general pattern for Spanish superlatives is:

Exercise: Comparisons

title: Spanish/Lesson 5


text:
Wikibooks:Biology bookshelf

Introductory textbooks

 * General Biology

Subfields

 * Anatomy
 * Human Anatomy
 * Histology
 * Biochemistry
 * Bioinformatics
 * Botany
 * Cell Biology
 * Developmental Biology
 * Dendrochronology
 * Ecology
 * Evolutionary Biology
 * Introduction to Paleoanthropology (Human evolution)
 * Phylogenetics
 * Genetics
 * Microbiology
 * Molecular Biology
 * Paleontology
 * Pathology
 * Proteomics
 * Zoology
 * Animal Behavior
 * Invertebrate Zoology
 * Entomology
 * Entomology

Biology courses

 * AP Biology
 * IB Biology
 * A-level Biology
 * GCSE Biology
 * Free High School Science Texts: Biology
 * WJEC GCSE Biology

Interdisciplinary fields

 * Systems Biology
 * Bioinformatics
 * Neuroscience
 * Biotechnology
 * Immunology
 * Methods Manual for Salt Lake Studies

Other topics

 * Biology, Answering the Big Questions of Life
 * Biology Laboratory Techniques
 * Dichotomous Key
 * Unsolved problems in biology
 * Gallery of Biologists
 * Molecular Biology (for master's degree)
 * The Descent of Man

de:Regal:Biologie

title: Wikibooks:Biology bookshelf


text:
General Biology/Classification of Living Things/Eukaryotes/Animals/Chordates

The phylum Chordata includes three subphyla. These include vertebrates and invertebrate chordates.

Shared characteristics

 * Notochord: The flexible, hydrostatic (non-collapsible), rod-shaped supporting axis wrapped in tough connective tissue that is found dorsal to the gut/coelom and below the nervous system of the embryos of all chordates, including vertebrates. As bone does not compress, muscles tensed on one side result in body movement instead of shortening the animal. This allows for much better locomotion than do cilia for larger animals in water, a crucial victory for later success.
 * Pharyngeal slits: Slits in the pharynx originally used to gather food. Water enters the mouth, passes through the pharynx and exits through gill-like slits, passing through a cavity called the atrium, and then expelled from the body. In humans, they are present only during the embryonic stage of development.
 * Dorsal nerve cord: A neural tube dorsal to the notochord.
 * Postanal tail: Elongation of the body and notochord, nerve cord and muscles past the anus into a mobile, external appendage on the same axis; its contribution to early locomotive function led to success.

Non-synapomorphic characteristics (not limited to chordates):
 * Bisymmetrical (bilateral symmetry)
 * Segmented muscles and bones

Subphylum Urochordata
The tunicates are located in this subphylum. Along with the subphylum Cephalochordata, these two subphyla make up the invertebrate chordates. Only the tunicate larvae have notochords, nerve cords, and postanal tails. Most adult tunicates are sessile, filter-feeders which retain their pharyngeal slits. Adult tunicates also develop a sac, called a tunic, which gives tunicates their name. Cilia beating within the tunicate cause water to enter the incurrent siphon. The water enters the body, passes through the pharyngeal slits, and leaves the body through the excurrent siphon. Undigested food is removed through the anus. Tunicates are hermaphrodites and can reproduce asexually through budding. In urochordates notochord is confined to larval tail.

Characteristics

 * Lack a cranium
 * Have an open type of circulatory system
 * Excretion is by neural gland (nephrocytes)
 * Have two siphons through which water enters and exits the body
 * Have a tubular heart
 * Have a tough outer covering (e.g. Accidia)

Subphylum Cephalochordata
The lancelets are located in this subphylum. Along with the subphylum Urochordata, these two subphyla make up the invertebrate chordates. Lancelets receive their name from their blade-like shape. They resemble fish, but they are actually scale-less chordates only a few centimeters long. They spend most of their time buried in the sand with their mouths protruding. Fossils of lancelets have been found to be over 550 million years old. Dropped out sessile stage, what was the larval stage is now sexually reproductive. Includes Branchiostoma (“amphioxus”).

Subphylum Vertebrata
This group gets its name from the Latin verb vertere, meaning "to turn." They are characterized by separate bones or cartilage blocks firmly joined as a backbone. The backbone supports and protects a dorsal nerve cord. Vertebrates have tissues which are organized into organs which in turn are organized into organ systems.

Characteristics
All vertebrates share the following characteristics:
 * are segmented
 * a true coelom
 * bilateral symmetry
 * cephalization
 * a backbone
 * a bony skull
 * a closed circulatory system
 * a multi-chambered heart
 * two pairs of jointed appendages
 * tissues organized into organs with specialized functions

The vertebrate organ systems are broadly categorized into:
 * Neurological
 * Circulatory
 * Digestive
 * Respiratory
 * Reproductive
 * Excretory

The vertebral column is not present in higher vertebrate organisms that have reached maturity. (In humans, the gel-like, spongy core of the vertebral column is the only remainder; ruptured or herniated discs are an injury to this.) The cranium is a composite structure of bone and cartilage that serves two primary functions:
 * 1) protect and orient the sensory organs of the head, and
 * 2) enclose or partially enclose the brain

What evolutionary relationship could we imagine between sessile echinoderms and the higher chordate animals?

Paedomorphic (child-form) hypothesis: basically, evolution of sexual reproduction in what had previously been a larval life stage, or the retention of at least one juvenile characteristic into the adult (capable of sexual reproduction) stage. Some scientists believe that this occurred in a proto-chordate animal lineage. Maybe chordates (and vertebrates) arose from sessile (attached) ancestors. Selection in these proto-chordates maybe began to favor more time in the larval stage, as feeding was more successful or mortality lower in this stage. As larvae got bigger physics shows that the cilia become less efficient for locomotion, favoring the undulating motion allowed by a notochord.

Is this hypothesis crazy? A similar example of this today is Ephemeroptera, the mayfly, which has almost abandoned its adult stage. Its one-year lifespan is mostly larval with just a brief day of reproduce-and-die as an adult, which doesn’t even have usable mouthparts.

Tunicate (sea squirt) larva has all four chordate characteristics, although adult sessile (“attached”).

Class Agnatha
"jawless fish" Appeared approximately 500 million years ago and dominated the oceans for about 100 million years. The first group of fish to appear. They had neither jaws, paired fins, nor scales, but they were the first organisms with a backbone.
 * Ostracoderms: extinct Agnathans which had primitive fins and massive plates of bony tissue on their body.
 * Cyclostomes: "circle mouth" - a group of Agnathans which is still alive in the form of lampreys and hagfish.

Class Acanthodia
"spiny fish" Appeared about 430 million years ago. An extinct class of fish that developed jaws with bony edges. They had internal skeletons made of cartilage and some bone.

Class Placodermi
Appeared about 410 million years ago, dominated the sea for about 50 million years. An extinct class of fissive heads.

Class Chondrichthyes
"cartilaginous fish" Appeared about 400 million years ago with bony fish. Includes sharks, skates and rays, and chimaeras. Their skeletons are made of cartilage strengthened by the mineral calcium carbonate.

The main characteristics and distinguishing features of this class: - gills - single-loop blood circulation - vertebral column - presence of placoid scales on their bodies - internal skeleton of cartilage - paired, fleshy pectoral and pelvic fins - asymmetrical tail fin prevents sinking - fatty liver provides neutral buoyancy - visceral clefts present as separate and distinct gills - no external ear - oviparous - internal fertilization - ectoderms - cold blooded

Class Osteichthyes
"bony fish" Appeared about 400 million years ago with cartilaginous fish. Includes about 95% of today's fish species.

Subclass Sarcopterygii
fleshy-finned fishes. Fins have bones and muscles, homologous to our limbs.

Order Dipnoi
lung fishes, two groups isolated when continents separated

Order Crossopterygii
includes coelacanths and rhipodistians, gave rise to amphibians, had lungs which evolved into a swim bladder in bony fishes, and labyrinthodont teeth, characterized by complex folding of enamel.

•	Skeleton made of bone, jaws, fins, most with scales, two-chambered heart.

Class Amphibia
means “both lives”, aquatic larvae, terrestrial adult Amphibians: - Legs - Lungs - Double-Loop Circulation - Partially Divided Heart - Cutaneous Respiration (Breathes through Skin)

Order Salientia
frogs (jumping) (aka Anura)

Order Urodela
salamanders (tailed)

Labyrinthodont amphibians: oldest known amphibians, inherited characteristic teeth from crossopterygii ancestor, had stocky, aquatic larvae.

Amphibians have limbs instead of fins. Girdles and vertebral column now more substantial and connected, support body on legs.

Lisamphybia: no scales, “smooth”, eggs with no shell, laid in water (water-reliant).

Amphibians gave rise to cotylosaurs, from which arose dinosaurs, turtles, lizards, and therapsids.

Class Reptilia
amniotic egg allowed freedom from water, shelled egg. (Amnion: protection). Reptiles have four extra-embryonic membranes: Reptiles are cold-blooded, or ectothermic, meaning that their heat come from their environment. Sometimes defined as all amniotes that are not birds or mammals.
 * Amnion: supports aquatic environment inside egg in fluid sac.
 * Allantois: allows gas exchange and elimination of wastes.
 * Chorion: gas exchange
 * Yolk sac: only one of the four left over from amphibian ancestor

Reptiles can be classified by skull structure into four groups: Refers to number of holes in the skull. Cotylosaurs had Anapsid skull
 * Anapsid
 * Synapsid
 * Diapsid
 * Euryasid

Dermatocranium: from bony outer skull structure, precursor to human cranium.

Subclass Testudinata
turtles, terrapins

Subclass Diapsida
dinosaurs, snakes, most stuff

Subclass Diapsida
includes Ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles convergent on dolphins; Plesiosaurs, ancient sea monsters; Squamates, including lizards and snakes; and Thecodonts, which gave rise to
 * birds
 * dinosaurs
 * crocodilians

Dinosaurs: broken into two groups, based on hip structure

 * Saurischia: lizard hips (gave rise to birds [!]), ancestrally bipedal
 * Ornithischian: bird hips, ancestrally quadripedal

Crocodilians: come from archosaurs, the only extant (still living today) archosaur descendant. Ancestrally bipedal, secondarily quadripedal.

Synapsids: refers to joined (Greek syn-, together with) parts of skull. Led eventually to mammals. Synapsid pelycosaur >> therapsid >> mammals

Pelycosaur: Sail-backed dinosaur, legs not spread out like lizard but more pillar-like and under body, allowing greater activity and competence in motion, pendulum like rather than constant push-up. Teeth differentiated into different types, for pre-processing of food needed by higher metabolism. Skull changes, bone histology, suggestions of warm-bloodedness.

Class Aves
arose late Jurassic, early Cretaceous. Feathers, skeleton modified for flight. Feathers: epidermal derivative, made of keratin (like fingernails). Carpometacarpis: bears primary flight feathers, parallel to hand parts. Keeled sternum: breastbone, powerful one needed to support flight muscles. Strong, light, occasionally hollow bones. All birds lay eggs (as contrasted to reptiles, which have developed live birthing over 100 independent times.) Why are there no live-bearing birds? Early birds had teeth, lost them. With mammals, only exothermic animals.

Archaeopteryx: “ancient wing”, Jurassic bird-reptile, very dinosaur-like. Good fossils found in Zolenhoffen, German sandstone mine with fine sand, shows feathers clearly, found shortly after Darwin’s publication and used to support his hypothesis. Thick, heavy bones and no sternum, bony tail, not a good flyer but did have primary flight feathers.

Archaeornithes: includes archaeopteryx.

Paleognathae: gave rise to Australian flightless birds.

Neognathae: remaining live birds.

Class Mammalia
Two unique characteristics, or synapomorphies: (don’t fossilize well)
 * Hair
 * Mammary glands

Three skeletal characteristics (fossilize)
 * Lower jaw only one bone, the dentary (several in reptiles)
 * Three bones in middle ear: malleus, incus, stapes (reptiles have one or two, never three)
 * Joint between upper and lower jaws between dentary and squamosal of skull (in reptiles this joint is between other bones)

Mammals basically have a synapsid skull design inherited from ancestor

Non diagnostic characteristics (not unique to mammals):
 * Warm-blooded
 * Skin glands: sweat glands and oil-producing sebaceous glands
 * Large nasal cavities (because of high metabolism) Clean, warm and humidify air
 * Heterodonty (differentiated teeth)
 * Diphiodonty: two sets of teeth: baby and adult (“deciduous” teeth, drop out) (reptile teeth are continually replaced)

Subclass Protheria
monotremes (Greek mon-, one; and trema, hole), or egg-laying mammals, have one opening for excretion and urination.

Subclass Theria
Metatheria: Marsupials (opossum, kangaroo…) Eutheria: Placental mammals (all common mammals)

Marsupium: (from Greek marsypion, purse or pouch). Gestation period much shorter than in Eutherian mammals, but after leaving the uterus the tiny offspring crawls into a pouch where it completes development latched onto a teat.

Recent molecular (read: genetic) evidence suggests that two different mammal groups may have developed live-bearing ability separately. Instead of being a “rough draft” for placental-style live bearing, perhaps the marsupial pouch approach is another solution to the same problem. Advantage: in tough times the parent can pitch out the offspring and increase its own chance of survival.


text:
General Biology/Tissues

General Biology

=Vertebrate tissues = Definition of tissue: an aggregation of cells, usually of the same kind, organized to perform a common function. A group of similar cells organized into a structural and functional unit (Raven/Johnson). Primary categories of adult tissues (non-dogmatic categories of convenience):

 * 1) Epithelial tissue
 * 2) Connective tissue Includes bone and blood tissues
 * 3) Muscle tissue
 * 4) Nervous tissue

title: General Biology/Tissues


text: General Biology/Evolution

title: General Biology/Evolution