Practicing your Spanish is one of the things you’re going to have to do if you want to cross the border from I took 2 years of college Spanish territory to the country of I can fluently converse in this language.

You should take every opportunity you have to speak with someone in Spanish, and use it for your benefit. You might start with just a word or a comment, and the other person will most likely welcome the conversation.

How to start? It’s as easy as “Hola”, “Buenos Días”, “Hace mucho frío”, “Hace mucho calor”, or “Gracias”.

If you do this you’ll start reaping the benefits.

Benefits of striking up conversation with strangers

1. You meet new people, and possibly even gain new friends.
2. You will get more respect– others who have a fear of talking to strangers will respect you more, as well as your interlocutor.
3. You’ll learn new things. The person you’re talking with has interests, ideas, and goals. Finding out what they think will open doors for you and you’ll learn all kinds of things.
4. Every time you do it, it will become easier. You will start overcoming fear if you’re fearful of speaking with strangers, and if it simply makes you uncomfortable, once you’re used to it, that uneasiness will be gone.
5. There’s really no risk– after all, you don’t know the person, so what would it possibly matter if they think poorly of you?
6. Your Spanish will improve. Every chance you get to speak with someone in Spanish is another chance for your conversational skills to improve.

So, when was the last time you talked with a complete stranger in Spanish? When was the last time you talked to anyone in Spanish?

Google just began offering instant machine translations for Google Talk and Gmail.

You can access the new service from within Google Talk, the chat window in Gmail or any IM client that supports the Jabber protocol. To use the service, add these addresses as friends en2es@bot.talk.google.com for English to Spanish translations, or es2en@bot.talk.google.com for Spanish to English translations.

You can also add the robot to a group chat and let it translate between the two of you on the fly. Here is a complete list of languages and their codes that are available.

The translations are far from perfect, as you can see from the following dialog.

David: How good are translations when you use machine translation software?
en2es: ¿Cómo son buenas traducciones cuando utilice programas de traducción automática?

The translation probably should have been something like this: ¿Qué tan buenas son las traducciones cuando usas programas de traducción automática?

When translating from Spanish to English, you need to use all the correct punctuation marks and diacriticals to help it guess the right meaning.

David: Buenos dias como estas?
es2en: Hello like this?
David: Buenos días, ¿cómo estás?
es2en: Good morning, how are you?

In 2008 Lamborghini will offer a car called the Reventón to 20 people who can scrape together the million Euros to buy it.

The word reventón has various meanings for Spanish speakers, including party, explosion, burst, flat tire, and blowout. Lamborghini has also made cars called the Espada, Diablo, Murciélago, and Gallardo, but it’s not the only car manufacturer to use Spanish words to name cars.

Ford manufactured the Fiesta, Festiva, Pinto, Granada, Cortina, Sierra, and Bronco. Chevrolet sold the El Camino for a while. Dodge has the Durango, which is also the name of a Mexican state. Hyundai sells the Veracruz (another Mexican State), and the Santa Fe. In Toyota’s lineup are the Corona, Paseo, Premio, and Vista.

Do you know the meaning in Spanish of all the car models named above? Can you think of any more?

Picture credits: Tacoekkel and Zölle.