What's a housepipe

[cubix]

Not being english, what is a house pipe(mentioned in the last episode)?

Faucet?

Greg

[Ben]

A hosepipe is the length of rubber tubing, about an inch in diameter, used in the garden to water the plants. What's a faucet???

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:Iu9ccdS8cpjbuM:www.londonist.com/image/hosepipe.JPG

[guapo]

am I the only who finds this amusing? I guess most people here are english speakers learning spanish and yet we have problems communicating in english!

Ben, I think a faucet is what we (brits) would call a tap.

More importantly how do you say hosepipe in Spanish? (just in case it comes up in conversation next time I'm there...)

[cubix]

Hah. Hose pipe is just a hose for americans, and the faucet is like a tap. In America a tap would either be an action(like to tap on something) or when you think of a keg

Well in spanish aren't there diffrences between dialects and countires. One of the biggest is the use of Vosotros, I've taken spanish for 5 years and had 4 different teachers. Each one has a different opinion on it, one told us flat out you will never use it. Now it's habit, but still

[cubix]

More importantly how do you say hosepipe in Spanish? (just in case it comes up in conversation next time I'm there...)


Manguera(looked up in Vox)

One question, do they have like a Spanish-English dictionary like with the British version of English? What dictionaries do you guys use(such a nerdy question)


I love the Vox brand dictionaries, there pocket dictionary has a ton of useful vocabulary. I use the compact version most of the time though. Also, 501 verbs is a godsend!

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0844279862.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

EDIT:fixed image

[Brian]

Vox rox, and it did so when I was a Spanish student in high school/college in the 80's.

[Ben]

wordreference.com (and proz.com for translation work) are my dictionaries these days.

[Alan]

I was going to say what a faucet was, but I thought Ben was being sarcastic . . .

[Ben]

I was going to say what a faucet was, but I thought Ben was being sarcastic . . .
No, just stupid :)

[richardksa]

Yahoo provided me with a neat little facility that translates any English word I hover the cursor on into Spanish. Quite useful for learning vocab. Does anyone know of a reverse facility. I could do it with Yahoo if I had a Spanish home page, but I don't want that. It would save a lot of dictionary page turning.

[guapo]

wordreference.com has a neat firefox extension that allows you to easily translate english->spanish or spanish->english (they have a whole set of other languages as well). You highlight a word, right click and the translated word shows up in the right-click menu.

The web site has some similar tools for Internet explorer, but I didn't try them as I mainly use firefox.

[cubix]

For me, when it's that easy to figure out what a word means, it doesn't help. When I make the effort to go find the dictionary and look it up, and then look the word back up in spanish(to make sure I am getting the word i really want) I find that I acutally learn the words

Greg

[gary]

Theres a great dictionary here

http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=perro&dict=esen&B=Buscar

its fast, its online and its free

[ndbutter]

A hosepipe is the length of rubber tubing, about an inch in diameter, used in the garden to water the plants. What's a faucet???

I find this stuff really interesting. I was wondering the same thing when listening to the last podcast. I interpreted "hosepipe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosepipe)" as the pipe you attach a hose to on the side of your house. I always call this a "spigot", but a lot of peope call them faucets as well I suppose. I've always thought of a faucet being inside the house (e.g., the kitchen faucet), and a spigot on the outside of the house.

I'm sure there are probably regional differences within the U.S. with this as well. Sometimes even Americans have no idea what each other are talking about. Had this been a Notes in Spanish podcast, Ben could have just said "manguera" and then we'd have all been on the same page!

Related to this topic, did anyone see the story about Tiger Woods (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060413/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_golf_masters_woods) a few weeks ago? Following his terrible putting in the Master's, he called himself a "spaz". An innocuous term in the U.S. meaning "sporadic" or "clumsy", it is evidently more offensive in the U.K. and other places, used to derogatorily reference people with a form of cerebal palsy. He ended up apologizing for it, which seemed confusing to most Americans.

[Alan]

It's a very offensive term here, but it is used.

[gary]

Alan's right, it's not really a swear word so much as very politically incorect - it is an abbreviation of the word spastic. A truly disabled person would never be called 'spaz' by anyone in any situation but it is not uncommon amongst groups of usually young male friends that are taking the micky out of each other. TV presenters, comedians etc avoid it - it would probably result in a sacking if used on air...

[lumpsuckerpig]

Manguera(looked up in Vox)

One question, do they have like a Spanish-English dictionary like with the British version of English? What dictionaries do you guys use(such a nerdy question)


I love the Vox brand dictionaries, there pocket dictionary has a ton of useful vocabulary. I use the compact version most of the time though. Also, 501 verbs is a godsend!

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0844279862.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

EDIT:fixed image

I second the Vox dictionary, I use a Vox mini pocket dictionary and its crammed full of Spanish - English and English - Spanish. Does what it says too, fits in your pocket.

[greytop]

I tried wordsearch but found it caused error messages with IE7 when I closed the window. I may give it a go again.
I have a Cambridge Compact dictionary (one step up from pocket sized) that came with a CD ROM. It has two versions and one of them called QUICKFIND does allow you to hover over a word that automatically transfers to the dictionary window. It works both Es-Eng and Eng-Es
Drawbacks:
Inability to deal with plurals or forms of verbs other than infinitive. You can edit out the plural endings fairly quickly but verb forms more of a problem as they are in any paper dictionary.
It cannot "see" into some windows also such as the editor for writing these replies.

[gary]

I use wordreference.com - they now have a version that you can use on a mobile phone - its great, no adverts, text only, really fast and clean, and whats more it works on your computer too, find it at

http://www.wrmob.com

[Alan]

Greytop, try a different browser that doesn't give you errors. IE7 hasn't even been officially released yet, and I defnitely wouldn't trust it.

A tool I use quite a lot is Google's translation services. It's excellent for a quick reference to find out what a word means without having to flick through the pages of a dictionary.

[Ben]

I've moved this thread over to the learning Spanish forum as there is some really good info in here on dictionaries etc.

www.wordreference.com is still my on-line favourite - it's so quick!

[gary]

Greytop
The wordreference.com online dictionary recognises the person and tense of the verb and resolves to the infinitive for the definition. Let me implore you to abandon IE7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and one and pick a different browser - I use Firefox but there is also Opera and Camino and a few less well known ones. These also have the advantage of being more resistant to intrusion by those wishing you no good!!

As I have said in other posts http://wrmob.com by WordReference is great if your mobile phone is internet capable, it is fast, clean, has no ads (yet) and works on your PC/Mac and, Alan, I presume a Linux Box?

[JanesDaddy]

Not to belabour the point, but EVERYONE who values the security and integrity of their Windows PC should abandon Internet Explorer and use Firefox or Opera instead. Both work really well, are very extensible (you can add cool widgets for extra functions), and are MUCH more user friendly and standards compliant.

[Alan]

I'm on Linux now, yes :), but I have Windows on the other partition. I'm not a Microsoft basher - I have very good reasons for not wanting to use IE7, or, as you say, any other version of IE.

I don't want to tell you which browser to get, but Firefox and Opera are both good suggestions. But to bring this back on topic, here's a good tip for learning Spanish. Both Firefox and Opera will allow you to have a Spanish browser. All the dialogues appear in Spanish and it just helps keep Spanish as a working language. In Linux, I have EVERYTHING in Spanish. With Windows, you would have to buy a Spanish copy of the program, just for a translation.

There is a lot of very helpful open source software around to aid your Spanish, and the only thing it lets me down with is games. I don't play many games anyway. One of my favourite programs is a Babylon type thing which gives a translation of a word when clicking on it (with Ctrl held). On Windows, you have to pay for it, but the open source version ktranslator does the same thing. It can even use Babylon's dictionary files.

And my mobile runs Windows :)

[greytop]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I'm convinced and will have a look at the alternative browsers!
Alan - You're right. I've got IE6 not IE7. My PC is mostly Spanish as I bought it here and have had endless fun trying to get some of it in English.
I moved away from MS Office suite and use OpenOffice now so next to go will be IE

[JanesDaddy]

I moved away from MS Office suite and use OpenOffice now so next to go will be IE
Hurrah!! OpenOffice is a great product suite, and the file format will become 'the norm' soon enough.

[cubix]

I use NeoOffice(mac version of open office) and Safari(I didn't like the feel of firefox on mac)