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Typing in Spanish (aka The Song About A Cow)

I know enough Spanish to get by: What time is it, I need help, wheres 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, Ill 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?Allow me to fire up Notes. Ill type my little Spanish cow song. Its the best! :)

Just trudging though came up with this:



With the iPhone I usually just power through (audio) and let the iPhone make the text make sense. Sometimes it confuses my friends, but they do the same thing back at me!

By comparison, the actual words to the song are:

Yo tengo una vaca lechera,
no es una vaca cualquiera,
me da leche merengada,
ay! que vaca tan salada,
toln , toln, toln , toln.


(Video of Katie's rendition)

Since English is the default language, I thought maybe changing it to Spanish would help when I typed my song. After running through all the settings, I couldn't find a way to change it! Dios Mio!

Since the iPhone uses its built in dictionary to power the auto-correction on the touch keyboard, if the word you are typing isn't recognized, it will happily correct it to one that it thinks is right. Even if it isn't what you wanted. (Someone write an app to read my mind, please. :)

I guess Ill just have to stick to English for now, s?

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Posted: 60 months ago


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
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Posted: 60 months ago
El Toro Relajo?
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Posted: 60 months ago
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...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Posted: 60 months ago
What was that about the Immigration and Naturalization Service?
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Posted: 60 months ago
Love the video! :D Ha. Love how your cat made a special guest appearance, too.
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Posted: 60 months ago
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...
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Posted: 60 months ago

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. :eek:
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Posted: 60 months ago
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.
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Posted: 60 months ago
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/
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Posted: 60 months ago
My 8 year old recognized the cow song from his Spanish classes at school!
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