Panama Canal-1

The Panama Canal lets ships travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Here is a two-minute time lapse video of a full crossing:

A longer (almost six minutes) and much more informative time lapse video set to music (Chitarra Romana) appears below. This video will help you learn quite a lot about how the canal works:

破解瑪雅密碼 Cracking The Maya Code

Here is an interesting video presentation that explains how Mayan writing was deciphered. Don't forget to turn on the Closed Captions (CC) to see bilingual text in English and traditional Chinese.

 
Chinese explanation appears below:

Mexican Music: Malagueña Salerosa

This is one of the most famous Mexican songs, about a poor Mexican man who is in love with a woman from Málaga, a city is southern Spain. The three versions on this page are all by Mexican singers. If you check on YouTube, you can find versions by singers from Spain and even Italy, but they don't feel so authentic.

The version below is sung by Javier Solis:

The version below is by TrÍo TiracurÍ:

Here is a karaoke version:

Please note that each singer changes the words a little bit to suit his own style, so you might find that the lyrics don't match up 100%. The Spanish lyrics appear below, along with my own literal English translation.Sigh! The Spanish sounds so much more beautiful!

Tourist Spanish-4

There are two ways to say "Do you speak English?"

1 ¿Habla Inglés? (Formal) ("Formal" means "serious": this is how we speak or write to older, or more important people)

2 ¿Hablas Inglés? (Informal) ("Informal" means "relaxed": this is how we speak to friends or other young people)

Notice how printed Spanish questions use two question marks, ¿ = upside-down (at the beginning), and ? right-side up at the end.

Tourist Spanish-3

Hola = Hi! Hello! (Be careful! In Spanish, h- is silent)

Buenos días (Pay attention! There should be an accent mark on the “i”, not a dot. They don't show the accent mark on the video: this is a small mistake)

The Spanish Conquest of Peru

About five hundred years ago, small groups of Spanish people came into North (Mexico) and South America (Peru) carrying guns and swords. The Spanish conquered two empires (the Aztecs and the Incas): this changed our world forever. Jared Diamond has studied how this was possible. Be sure to turn on the captions (CC) to read the English dialogue while you watch this video.

Tourist Spanish-2

Saying "Thank you!" and "You're welcome" is essential when you travel to another country.

Tourist Spanish-1

When learning a new language, it is very important to relax: don't worry about grammar. Just practice listening to words, short phrases and dialogues many times to see if you can recognize all the sounds. Try to write them down, but don't feel bad if you make mistakes. Ear training takes time.

After you can identify most of the sounds, imagine saying them (Where do you put your tongue, your lips etc.) but don't actually speak until you feel ready. A realxed silent period is very, very helpful.

One of the first things you should learn in Spanish is how to introduce yourself.