TTS y otros...

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noviembre 27: se acabó el período de pruebas...

Voy a hablar de la necesidad de aprender inglés, y nótese —literalmente hablar (con TTS o text to speech), espero que mi voz gaucha no me decepcione... que conseguí en sitepal, buscando animar las lecciones de matemáticas que queremos abordar con Pablo.

He encontrado varios sitios interesantes en el camino, que encontrarán en el blog bajo regalos:

• Quiz Tree, que ofrece varios cursos con su sistema de flashcards; incluso, uno para aprender inglés.
• West Texas A&M University, que da un curso de algebra muy completo, incluyendo temas previos de nivelación, para el ingreso a la universidad.
• Starfall, que da un bonito curso para aprender a leer inglés para nenes.
  

Pero, quería recalcar la importancia del inglés, el idioma de las ciencias; y también hacer otro alcance, me convencí que es bueno anglizar el español —nada de pinchar, sino clickear... Trabajo suficiente hay con traducir el resto, para seguir agregando más palabras al español que nos hacen desentender las ciencias...

Nota posterior, 18 noviembre 2006:
Econtré esta interesante alusión de Churchill respecto de la importancia del conocimiento del inglés en un discurso que dió en 1943, durante una visita a la Universidad de Harvard:

The great Bismarck - for there were once great men in Germany - is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.

That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.

This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other's wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.

Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech - no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.

What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C.K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.

The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.