Angel "Java" Lopez on Blog

English is a fascinating language, but its study can become an overwhelming task for an adult student. There are so many difference from Spanish, my mother tongue, that I must practice a lot to grasp the language. I want to write about some English particularities, and its origins and history, but now I'm in a middle of a moving, and I'm far from my English books.

Web is a great source of English resources, and I'm compulsive link collector (you can view my delicious cloud at http://www.ajlopez.com/en). Thanks to Mariano Szklanny (a good guy), I have a new link to explore and share:

http://www.usingenglish.com

I used to say "readen" instead of "read", influenced by "written" vs "write". Now, I can learn about irregular verbs:

Irregular verbs

A list of 211 basic English irregular verbs, including their base form, past simple, past participle, 3rd person singular, and the present participle / gerund. Click on a verb to view extended information about it.

Irregular verb definition

An irregular verb is one that does not take the -ed ending for the Past Simple and Past Participle forms. Some irregular verbs do not change; put put put, while others change completely; buy bought bought, etc.

Irregular verbs fall into 5 categories:

1. Base Form
2. Past Simple
3. Past Participle
4. 3rd Person Singular
5. Present Participle / Gerund

Curiously, there are many kind of verbs:

Auxiliary Verb; Ditransitive Verb; Dynamic Verb; Finite Verb; Inchoative Verb; Intransitive Verb; Modal Verb; Non-finite Verb; Phrasal Verb; Regular Verb; Stative Verb; Transitive Verb; Verb Group; Verb Phrase

There is a free dowload

Irregular Verb List Viewer

I'm amazed that some verbs has no future tense ("can" is an example). Verbs with incomplete conjugation are called defective verbs, more info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_verb

I want to improve my English, starting from my "Anglish", Angel's English. This blog is dedicated to practice, keep tuned, and feel free to send suggestions, corrections and comments.

My collected links about English, at:

http://del.icio.us/ajlopez/english

Angel "Java" Lopez
http://www.ajlopez.com/en

Today, the ninth of September of 1978,
I had in the palm of my hand one small disc
of the three hundred sixty-one that are needed
for the astrologic game of Go,
that other chess of the East.

It is older than the oldest writing
and the board is a map of the universe.

Its black and white variations
will exhaust time.

Men can be lost in it
as in love and day.

Today, the ninth of September of 1978,
I, myself, who am ignorant of so many things,
know that I do not know one more,
and I thank my poetic inspiration
for this revelation of a labyrinth
which will never be mine.

Jorge Luis Borges

I'm a fan of the game of Go. This is a fascinating game: I recommend it to any person interested in "brain" games. It could be addictive, and it deserves more than a look. You can find more information about rules and game in general at:

http://www.gobase.org
http://senseis.xmp.net/

In these Internet days, we can play Go in the net. One of the more visited servers is KGS:

http://www.gokgs.com

Playing games, you obtain a rank. In Go, rank begins at 30 kyu, ascending to 1 kyu, and then, 1 dan to 9 dan (amateur and professional). I'm a 10 kyu. You can see my evolution in this graph:

I must improve my game skills. I have to gain more sense of danger, management of balance (territory, influence), view the direction of play, know how to reduce and how to invade, understand josekis and fusekis (openings), and train reading tesujis (tactical problems).

As a software developer, I'm working on a Go program. The creation of a computer go software is one of the hardests problems in artificial intelligence game programming. It's a big challenge. More info about these topic at:

http://gobase.org/information/computers/

Angel "Java" Lopez
http://www.ajlopez.com/en

Hi people!

My name is Angel "Java" Lopez, and I'm from Argentina, South America. English is not my mother tongue, so I need to learn and practice that language. I'm a software developer, and usually, I  read a lot of books, manuals, magazines and web pages written in English.

This blog has a purpose: to post my thoughts, ideas, and comments, in English. One of the topics will be English language: grammar, history, curiosities, problems and web resources. Actually, I have a blog written in English, http://ajlopez.wordpress.com/ but it's dedicated only to articles about software development.

My personal site is http://www.ajlopez.com/ (in Spanish) but now I'm traslating some page to English, you can see the partial result at http://www.ajlopez.com/en

That's all, folks. My plan is to write an article once a week, about English as as Second Language, some ideas, books, or everything else.

Angel "Java" Lopez
http://www.ajlopez.com/