Tuesday 6 September 2011

Waiter, there's a dictionary in my newspaper. . .

I know, I've mentioned Spanish and Mexican newspapers before, but how about an online newspaper, with a dictionary which is only a double-click away.
Imagine how useful it would be, for anyone doing the Times crossword, or a Sun reader struggling with more than two syllables (sorry, Lads. Chanting 'In-ger-land' , at a footie match doesn't count as three!)

I often find, when I'm perusing the foreign press, over breakfast, thats it's just too much hassle to pick up a dictionary, or go to SpanishDict.com and type in a word I don't know, and will simply pass on to another article.
Until, that was, profesora Ximena (my teacher in SecondLife) asked me to prepare a presentation on an article from the Mexican paper La Jornada.(http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ ) and I made this discovery.

La Jornada has a simply brilliant app, built into the page, which allows you to just highlight a word (click and drag) then double-click to open up a dictionary definition in a pop-up window. Even better, if you don't understand the explanation (did I mention it was in Español?), you can highlight any word INSIDE the pop-up , and double-click again, for ITS definition! Brilliant! ¡Cojonudo!

Looks as if, thanks to 'Dixio technology', I'll be forsaking El Universal, in favour of La Jornada.
Oh, one other thing. If you just fancy a quick read, La Jornada has a regular column called 'Mar de Historias', written by Cristina Pacheco. They're short stories, not too taxing, and make a break from 'hard news' , or harder novels ;¬)

Enjoy.

Addendum:
Written the morning after.
Just noticed that the Dixio dictionary doesn't seem to be enabled on the Site's Homepage, but don't be put off, it appears to work on all the other pages I've tried.

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