Typing in Spanish (aka The Song About A Cow)

[katie ta achoo]

I know enough Spanish to get by: What time is it, I need help, where’s the Apple Store? You know, the basics.

I've picked up parts of the language in Spanish class in High School and around Texas, but my friend, Laura, taught the Spanish I use most often: How to curse at people in traffic, how to pick up men, and a song about a cow.

From time to time, I’ll send a text message in Spanish. In the past, I've avoided it because I had to turn off T9 on my old phone to even think about writing in Spanish. But that was a cruddy $50 phone… How would the iPhone stack up?

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Note from Arn: sorry for the delay in Katie's posts, that was my fault due to my schedule, which has bottlenecked the posts

 

[PumaGuy]

El Toro Relajo?

 

[Luis]

Damn... that is seriously bad. If it gets unlocked (which i'm sure it will) and I buy it there must be a way to type in Spanish, since i'm sending a whole lot of SMS's in Spanish...

 

[kalisphoenix]

What was that about the Immigration and Naturalization Service?

 

[devilot]

Love the video! Ha. Love how your cat made a special guest appearance, too.

 

[jizquierdo]

It learns spanish...

I'm a iPhone user in Puerto Rico and obviously my main language is Spanish... i've had the iPhone since its release and at first it was kinda weird typing in spanish cuz' the iPhone would suggest strange stuff from the dictionary... as what happened with the Cow song... but after using it for a while i've come to notice that it learns what you type. In my case it has learned the most frequent spanish words i use and corrects them as they should... it would be nice if they added a spanish dictionary and let you switch between languages...

 

[siurpeeman]

What was that about the Immigration and Naturalization Service?

haha, i found that funny, too! INS in big, block lettering. i hope they're not trying to send a message.

 

[loudestnoise]

The only issue I've seen with using Spanish words on iPhone is the fact that the dictionary tries to learn your commonly used words and the confusion of another language can mess with your auto correction. I know this from personal experience, as I just spent a week in México and have been thinking and SMSing in Español.

 

[tom@bluesky.org]

For a possible workaround for typing simple emails in Spanish and some other languages, point the iPhone browser at this page:

http://pointatme.com/keyboards/

 

[iSaint]

My 8 year old recognized the cow song from his Spanish classes at school!

 

[maccatalan]

French works

From day one I have been sending emails in French to my family in France. At first it was a painful process because of the English dictionary trying to fix every single one of my words. But with time the iPhone has been registering and remembering my preferences and uses of the keyboard/words and now I can type in French pretty much normally. Something quite amazing is that the iPhone will actually fix some of my French misspellings because it remembers how I typed them before.

 

[Chrysaor]

Actually there is a secret Auto Correction setting in Keyboard Preferences. You have to edit Keyboard.plist to get enable/disable Auto Correction button. I don't know why Apple didn't made this setting visible by default.

 

[dukeblue91]

Perhaps the reason is that this is a english speaking market.
I'm sure once the phone comes out in a spanish speaking market they will change this little communication problem.

 

[diamond.g]

Perhaps the reason is that this is a english speaking market.
I'm sure once the phone comes out in a spanish speaking market they will change this little communication problem.

Hmm, I thought a growing percentage of people speak spanish in the US (and especially SoCal)?

 

[dukeblue91]

Hmm, I thought a growing percentage of people speak spanish in the US (and especially SoCal)?

Sure, but the larger percentage speaks english.
Besides I believe in the old saying: When living in Rome do as the Romans do, and that includes the language.

 

[TheAnswer]

Besides I believe in the old saying: When living in Rome do as the Romans do, and that includes the language.

Then surely you meant to say "si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi"

 

[hiroshitakeuchi]

Using spanish with iPhone

Hello there...
As you are... I am proficient in spanish, and I have been using my iPhone to send, not only text messages but full e-mails in spanish, and as you said, it was at first a bit of a hassle to write in spanish, what you may have not realized yet, is that the iPhone will learn the words you use and eventually the dictionary will add those spanish words to its database, allowing you to write in spanish more proficiently. Yes, it is not perfect, but if you keep, not only sending text messages, but even mails, this will certainly help you and make your spanish a lot easier to come by in the iPhone.


I hope this helps...


Hiroshi Takeuchi

 

[photobiker]

Petition Apple to support several languages

I'm French-American and I find the iPhone unusable in any language other than English. Maybe the best would be for all the polyglot geeks to let Apple know about the problem and petition them to offer a solution in a future revision. They will have to address the internationalization issue soon enough anyhow, in order to distribute the phone in Europe, but it would be cool if the phones could support several languages instead of just the one language of the country they are distributed into.

I left some feedback with Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html and I invite you to do the same.

 

[JPyre]

It would be nice to have multiple languages, but I'd rather have them working on other features instead of that first. Also, I (and the majority) don't need space taken up by un-needed features(by the majority), It would have to be an option in iTunes if anything. I can't wait to hear what the French Canadians have to say when it comes out up there, they're always good for a laugh.

I'm French-American and I find the iPhone unusable in any language other than English.

Your English is pretty good for not being able to use an iPhone, I know thats not what you meant but that's not my point. Pick a side French or American. My ex-girlfriends parents have only been in the country for 7 years, they speak broken English but have no problem using computers here, and they don't expect Apple to support them.

Edit: Let' start a Creole end Ebonics petition too

 

[joejoejoe]

it really surprises me that there isn't an option to turn the dictionary off

 

[ppdix]

International iPhone needed...

I know we are in America. But millions of us speak other languages besides English...

I speak and write 6 languages and use my iPhone daily for SMS and Emails in Spanish, Portuguese and French... The iPhone keyboard really sucks, and all of us should admit it... It is too small for normal fingers. Not only it is a pain in the a$$ to type in basic English, where it comes up with bad suggestions like STD... Why would they choose to add STD to the dictionary... Yuk... Anyway. Typing in any other language is even worse. A 40-word email takes 2 minutes to type since I have to keep undoing the iPhone's inadequate corrections. Apple should think outside the box... The USA Box, that is...

 

[megfilmworks]

I know we are in America. But millions of us speak other languages besides English...

I speak and write 6 languages and use my iPhone daily for SMS and Emails in Spanish, Portuguese and French... The iPhone keyboard really sucks, and all of us should admit it... It is too small for normal fingers. Not only it is a pain in the a$$ to type in basic English, where it comes up with bad suggestions like STD... Why would they choose to add STD to the dictionary... Yuk... Anyway. Typing in any other language is even worse. A 40-word email takes 2 minutes to type since I have to keep undoing the iPhone's inadequate corrections. Apple should think outside the box... The USA Box, that is...

I'm sure they have. Wait until the EU releases and I bet you will have the dictionary that fits the country.

 

[megfilmworks]

The iPhone keyboard really sucks, and all of us should admit it... It is too small for normal fingers.

I couldn't disagree more. I think the keyboard is brilliant and extremely easy to use. I get 35-40 wpm and I am a very weak typist.

 

[ppdix]

The only issue I've seen with using Spanish words on iPhone is the fact that the dictionary tries to learn your commonly used words and the confusion of another language can mess with your auto correction. I know this from personal experience, as I just spent a week in México and have been thinking and SMSing in Español.

Yes, it learns. But u have to have typed the word for it to remember it... The other problem is ñ's, and at least... á é í ó ú... And why would they have defaulted to buttons with Capital letters? Sometimes you don't even know if u are on caps or not... Desperately waiting for v1.1!!!!

 

[ppdix]

Oh well...

I couldn't disagree more. I think the keyboard is brilliant and extremely easy to use. I get 35-40 wpm and I am a very weak typist.

I come from a Sony P800, then P900, then P910 and later the amazing Nokia 7710, which, btw, actually has the REAL internet experience... The keyboards were so much better and you could type with your nails, if necessary. The iPhone only recognizes skin touching...