This is an on-line Spanish verb tester. It will give you a page of English expressions to translate into Spanish, such as "I walked"; if you give the correct translation "anduve" you get a mark. The questions are drawn randomly from a large database of conjugated verbs and include present, preterite, imperfect and perfect tenses, including regular, irregular, stem-changing and reflexive verbs. You can specify which tenses are used in the questions before you start the test.
I've written this because I'm trying to learn Spanish and I think it will be useful to me. I'm making it available on the net for two reasons: first, I hope that others who are learning Spanish will also find it useful. Second I hope that others who use it will spot any errors that I have missed and report them to me!
Please read the following conditions of use carefully before proceeding.
By using the software you agree to the following conditions of use. If you do not agree with these conditions, do not use the software.
Exclusion of Warranty: This software is provided in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty of any sort. This includes but is not limited to any warranty of correct or safe operation or of continued availability. The entire risk of using this software is yours. Use of this software in safety critical applications is expressly prohibited.
Redistribution Prohibited: If you have received the software in source or executable form, you are prohibited from selling or giving away or transfering in any other way the software to any other person or entity, or incorporating any part of the software in any other system. If you access the software remotely, you are prohibited from incorporating remote access to the software into any other system in any way that disguises the origin of the software.
Registration Required: If you use the software more than once, you must register your use with the author. The author undertakes not to pass details of registrations to any third parties. You may register by sending an email message to the address given below.
Bug Reports Required: If you identify any undocumented errors in the software, you must notify the author with details of the specific problem.
If the law in your juristriction does not allow any of the preceeding conditions you are prohibited from using the software.
Please send any comments, suggestions, bug reports etc. etc. to Phil Endecott (pbe@cs.man.ac.uk).
Ambiguities in the English: A few English verbs are ambiguous; for example "I read" could be either present or preterite tense, depending on context (and in this case pronunciation). I'm afriad that if this comes up you'll have to try and guess what it wants and award yourslef an extra mark manually if you guess wrongly.
Synonyms: Several English verbs have several Spanish translations ("to hate" could be "detestar" or "odiar", for example). In cases like this I have normally put only one of the possible translations in the database. Again I'm afraid you'll have to guess which is being expected. In other cases where a number of English and Spanish words have broadly similar meanings I have tried to give clues as to which is intended in the form of notes that are displayed along with the question.
Translation of the imperfect tense: The Spanish imperfect tense is always translated here using "used to", e.g. "trabajaba" is "I used to work". Depending on context this should sometimes be translated as "I was working (when something happened)" or "(when I was younger) I worked (during the holidays)". In this test, "I worked" is expecting the preterite tense to be used in the answer ("trabajé") and "I was working" will never be asked.
Silly Questions: Sometimes you'll be asked a silly question such as "Translate I Snow". Do your best.
List of Verbs: The list of verbs is is based on the contents of my Spanish Grammar book (all the important irregular verbs) plus GCSE vocabulary material (common regular verbs). Here is a complete list of the verbs. Get in touch if you notice something important that I have missed. If you want you can also look at all the verbs fully conjugated, but this file is huge. Please report any errors.
The software has been implemented using the programming language Perl, but if you access it remotely the interface uses only standard HTML so you can use your favourite browser.
Now that I have built the main verb conjugation engine, extensions are quite easy to implement. Possibilities include multi-choice questions, translations into English, other tenses and questions based on filling in blanks rather than translation. Your comments would be appreciated.