Callionica Conjugations ES.
3000 Spanish verbs. Beautifully presented. On the App Store.
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Callionica Conjugations ES is a reference of over 3000 common Spanish verbs with their inflected forms and a concise set of rules for conjugating Spanish verbs. With text, audio, and animation.
Features:
Each verb shows its impersonal forms (infinitive, participle, and gerund), and tenses from the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods.
The included verbs were chosen by analyzing the most frequently used Spanish verbs in top Spanish language newspapers today.
The display of the verbs works in harmony with our specific formulation of the Spanish conjugation rules so that you can quickly see which forms are handled by common rules and which are unique to a specific verb.
Truly unique forms are marked with a double-dagger ‡. Noteworthy forms are marked with a single-dagger †.
Our goal is to minimize the amount of information that you need to learn for each verb, and to provide a stripped down explanation of the mechanics of conjugation. The guide provides a clear summary of how to conjugate a verb to produce the correct form.
We've paid particular attention to providing a regular framework for all verbs so the rules are written to apply as broadly as possible. For example, orthographic changes caused by weak/strong and hard/soft vowels are clearly explained in relation to the spelling and pronunciation of Spanish as a whole, not treated as something that's specific to certain verbs.
Callionica Conjugations ES is available as an app optimized for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
No internet connection required.
Conjugations ES uses the speech engine and voices built in to every iOS device so that you can choose what kind of Spanish accent to listen to. You can currently choose to hear European Spanish pronunciation or Latin American Spanish pronunciation. If Apple makes more Spanish voices available in the future, we'll support those too.
We decide which voice to use for the Spanish speech in Conjugations ES by looking at the system preference for languages on your device. We'll use whichever Spanish language is higher in the list and has a matching voice.
You can find the list of languages supported by your device in Settings > General > Language. You can also change the order of the languages here.
If Español is higher than Español (México) in this list, you'll hear European Spanish pronunciation in Conjugations ES.
If Español (México) is higher than Español in this list, you'll hear Latin American Spanish pronunciation in Conjugations ES.
You can download enhanced quality voices for iOS to improve the quality of the speech. In Settings, go to General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Languages & Dialects > Add New Language... to add a new language.
When your device is plugged in to power and on a wifi network, tap the More Info button on your newly added language to see a switch that will allow you to enhance the quality of the voice. Setting the switch to On will download some data to improve the quality of the voices used by iOS.
You can also adjust the speaking rate on this screen, but this will only apply to VoiceOver.
When VoiceOver is not being used, the speech features in Conjugations ES use a non-adjustable speech rate that's comfortable for non-native speakers of Spanish.
Apple has a support article about voices at https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5025. We hope it will be kept up to date as Apple introduces new changes and features to the operating system.
Conjugations ES provides a fantastic way to view Spanish verbs. In Conjugations ES 1.1, we've added the following features:
Let's take a closer look at the enhancements we've made to VoiceOver accessibility.
ACCESSIBILITY & VOICEOVER
New to Conjugations ES 1.1 is full VoiceOver support. VoiceOver is Apple's gesture-based screenreader that lets you enjoy iOS even if you can’t see the screen.
Conjugations ES now sounds great with VoiceOver. We've taken the time to ensure that all buttons and controls are labelled for accessibility and that everything is grouped for ease of use. For example, a tense is treated as a single unit. This means that (by default) a single tap will get VoiceOver to read the title and all forms in that tense. It also greatly simplifies navigating the app - a single horizontal swipe will take you to the next or previous tense.
We've also ensured that all elements are tagged with the correct language. That means that you'll hear Spanish spoken with a European Spanish accent or American Spanish accent, and English text spoken as English, just as you'd expect. You don't need to change your VoiceOver language for this - it's automatic.
All areas of the app are accessible to VoiceOver users, including the new animation feature. When VoiceOver users access the animation, it works just the same as when the animation plays with speech enabled. The rate of the animation is increased (compared to the silent animation) so that speech is the primary output. The feature is useful even if you can't see the screen. By double-tapping on a tense (the same gesture as when VoiceOver is off), you'll hear each item in that tense and all other tenses for that verb in a continuous loop. Double-tap again to return to the previous section.
Conjugations ES 1.1, like previous versions of the app, adjusts the size of its text based on your system-wide text settings. If you make changes to the system settings and want to see a similar change in Conjugations ES, please restart the app.
You can find more information on VoiceOver here: https://www.apple.com/accessibility/ios/voiceover/
Conjugations ES provides a fantastic way to view Spanish verbs. In Conjugations ES 1.1, we've added the following features:
Let's take a closer look at the new animation feature.
ANIMATION
When you want to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs, it can be useful to see the conjugation process in action. It's great to see the final verb forms, but when you're getting to grips with the conjugation rules for Spanish, it's even better to see each step taking you from the infinitive to the conjugated form. That's why we've introduced full-screen animations in Conjugations ES 1.1.
The new animation view in Conjugations ES shows the infinitive, mood, tense, number, and person at the top of the screen. The text in the center of the screen animates from the infinitive, through each stage of the conjugation process, to the final form of the verb. Along the bottom, we describe what each step is doing.
With the new animation, Conjugations ES is a great way to learn by example how to conjugate Spanish verbs.
You can display the animation by double-tapping a Spanish verb tense. The full-screen animation will show how all the tenses for that verb are formed starting with the tense you tapped on. The animation will loop through all the tenses for the current verb and keep looping. To stop the animation, tap once to go back to the Spanish verb view.
And you can even enable speech. Want to hear the Spanish pronounced while the animation plays? Just long press on the animation. Conjugations ES will speak each verb form as it appears on screen and we'll speed up the animation to match the speech. To stop the speech and slow the animation, just long press again.
Whether or not you choose to turn on speech, the animation view can be a great way to test yourself on Spanish conjugation. When speech is off, you have a certain amount of time before you see the final form of the verb. You can use that time to remember the correct form of the verb. Try to get the spelling correct. You'll quickly see if you've got it right. When speech is on, the challenge is increased - you'll have to be quick to say the verb along with Conjugations ES. You can use the visuals and audio at the same time or you can just rely on the audio to learn or practice a Spanish verb.
The new animation looks great up close on your device and it looks really awesome on a big screen using Apple TV. Use the iOS system controls to turn on AirPlay Mirroring, put your device in landscape orientation, and enjoy the show. For immersive Spanish learning, turn on speech in the animation to engage your ears and your eyes. If you're hosting a Spanish club, parent-teacher conference, or language fair, leave the speech turned off and the relaxed pace of the animation will provide an informative and relevant visual backdrop to your event without interfering with the conversation.
The new animation view can be used to:
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Understand Spanish conjugation rules
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Learn Spanish conjugation by example
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Learn all the forms of a specific verb
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Test your knowledge of Spanish verb forms (with speech on or off)
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Learn all forms of a verb by listening (with speech on)
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Provide an animated backdrop to your Spanish club, parent-teacher conference, or language fair
Conjugations ES provides a fantastic way to view Spanish verbs. In Conjugations ES 1.1, we've added the following features:
Let's take a closer look at the new audio features.
AUDIO
We believe that letting you see and hear Spanish at the same time helps you understand, remember, and learn Spanish more effectively. Starting with Conjugations ES version 1.1, you can hear the Spanish pronunciation of any of the 3000 Spanish verbs included in the app.
All you have to do is long press on a tense in Conjugations ES, and the app will speak all forms in that tense using the accent of your choice. Just hold your finger down until you see a response on the screen and you'll hear Spanish spoken for the item you've selected. If you want to hear a new tense before the speech for the current tense has finished, long press on the other tense. Conjugations ES will interrupt the current speech and start speaking Spanish for the new tense.
By using the speech engine and voices built in to every iOS device, we're able to give you a choice of accent. You can choose to hear European Spanish pronunciation or Latin American Spanish pronunciation. We'll pick up the Spanish pronunciation you prefer from your system-wide language preferences.
If you like to listen to music while you study Spanish or listen to podcasts while you research Spanish verb conjugation, you can do that and still hear Conjugations ES speak Spanish when you choose. Start audio playing in another app and it will continue to play while you use Conjugations ES. When you decide you want to hear Spanish pronunciation, we'll lower the volume of the other audio automatically and bring it right back up when we're done speaking Spanish.
And if you want to be sure that Conjugations ES won't make a noise, you can use the Mute button or switch on your device.
You can also hear Spanish spoken in the new animation view using the same long press action. See our article on Animation for more details.
Don't miss:
3000 Spanish verbs and their inflected forms. The Conjugations ES app for iPhone and iPad lets you see and hear Spanish verb conjugations. It even has animations that show how verbs are conjugated.
Using the verb list:
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Tap the toolbar button in the middle of the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to show the verb list (without the on-screen keyboard)
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Scroll through the list
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Tap the row that corresponds to the inflected form or infinitive you're interested in
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Tap the top of the screen to scroll to the top of the list
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Tap Cancel to hide the list without changing the current verb
Using the verb list and text box:
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Tap the infinitive at the top of the screen to show the verb list and on-screen keyboard
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Type text and see how the list scrolls to the best match
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If the matching verb is the one you want, tap Go to select it (no need to type accents in most cases)
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If you see the verb you want in the list, tap on the verb directly to select it
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Edit your text in the standard way if necessary
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Scroll the list to hide the keyboard and see more of the list
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Tap back in the text editing area to show the keyboard again
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Tap the top of the screen to scroll to the top of the list
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Tap Cancel to hide the list without changing the current verb
Also:
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Swipe left or right when viewing a verb to see the next or previous verb alphabetically
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Use the < and > toolbar buttons to move forward and back through your navigation history
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Tap LIKE VERB to go to that verb
Don't miss:
You don't need to type accents or diacritics to use Callionica Conjugations ES. All the same, it can be useful to know how to type Spanish accents on an English language keyboard in iOS. Thankfully, it's very easy.
Using the standard keyboard, just hold down the letter until the accent menu appears then select the accent you need. You don't need to switch keyboard layouts or languages to do this.
When we first started designing Callionica Conjugations ES, we knew that selecting a Spanish verb from the 3000 we have in the app was going to be very important. It had to be easy and quick for Spanish students to choose the right verb. And our design had to work on the small devices that are so popular for their convenience and simplicity. On iPhone and iPod touch, we have a beautiful screen in a small space so we were very aware of showing only the information you need to accomplish your goals. We also wanted to make sure that you could find the verb you're looking for and select it using only your thumb.
By watching the behavior of Spanish learners, it was immediately apparent that we needed to make it easy to look up a Spanish verb using an inflected form. Many apps and dictionaries only allow you to find a verb using the infinitive, but this can make it hard to find the verb you need. Irregular Spanish verbs can have inflected forms that are very different from their infinitives (consider irgáis-erguir, ve-ir, and fui-ser for example). And some Spanish verbs with similar infinitives to other verbs can have similar inflected forms. We needed to make it easy for you to home in on the right verb even if the Spanish verb you're looking for is irregular or similar to another verb.
We knew that we wanted to show both inflected forms and infinitives in the verb list to overcome both of these problems, so we came up with a verb picker that uses two columns. The column on the left shows inflected forms and the column on the right shows the corresponding infinitive. At first, we tried showing each inflected form as a separate row. This meant we could show forms for erguir among forms for ir for example. Success!
But with over 170,000 inflected forms in Callionica Conjugations ES, the list was unwieldy and hard to navigate using only a thumb. Although some Spanish verbs are similar to others and some very important Spanish verbs are irregular, most Spanish verbs are not. Displaying so many forms in the list meant a lot of scrolling and a large amount of vertical space being taken up by each verb. And it meant that we couldn't show multiple verbs next to each other on the same screen. If you can see multiple similar verbs at the same time, it helps you make sure you're picking the right verb.
To achieve the perfect balance we came up with a solution that minimizes scrolling while still allowing you to see the inflected forms: we condensed multiple rows into a single row for each section of the list where the infinitive was the same. Instead of showing a single form in the left column, we show you two forms representing the start and end of the alphabetic range covered by that row. By doing this we kept the ability to show inflected forms while gaining the ability to show different verbs next to each other on the same screen. As a result, we reduced the number of items in the list from 170,000 to around 5,000 making scrolling much more efficient.
Scrolling and tapping to select a verb from a list is not always the most efficient option. We wanted to make it easy for you to type what you're looking for directly, so we also enabled keyboard input. We provided a toolbar button to display the verb list without the keyboard showing (since the keyboard reduces the visible space for the list) and added a text box at the top of the list for direct entry. Tapping on the text box displays both the list and the keyboard, so you can use a combination of approaches to select the verb. Changing the text in the text box scrolls the list to the relevant point and highlights the infinitive that will be selected when you tap Go.
Streamlining keyboard input involved its own set of design challenges. Although iOS makes it relatively easy to enter accented characters even on an English language keyboard, we wanted to make it unnecessary to provide diacritics in most cases. We decided that sorting and searching the Spanish verbs using an approach that would tolerate missing or incorrect accents would make Conjugations ES even easier to use. So we sort verbs following alphabetical sorting rules for English with the addition that accented letters appear with, but after, non-accented letters.
This means that if you type text without accents, we'll match the accented forms anyway. And if there happen to be both accented and unaccented forms, you'll see them right next to each other in the list. We'll match accents if you type them or we'll show you the best match if you don't.
Note that the verb list is not sorted according to Spanish alphabetic rules. In Spanish, the letter Ñ is sorted as a separate letter - it's not treated as a variant of N. In the verb list, we treat Ñ as a variant of N so that you can find verbs that use this letter more easily.
We also made sure that using the keyboard wouldn't prevent full use of the list. In addition to providing a toolbar button to display the list without showing the keyboard, you can also dismiss the keyboard without losing your place in the verb list. If you scroll the list while the keyboard is showing, we'll hide the keyboard to give you more screen space for the verb list. You can scroll to the top of the verb list by tapping on the status bar at the top of the screen regardless of whether the keyboard is visible or not.
We started with a clear set of requirements for how Callionica Conjugations ES can help you find the right Spanish verb and we followed the design goals to create a user interface that makes it simple and fast to find the Spanish verb you're looking for. We hope you like it.
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