Who to write to
Exchanging e-mail in Spanish is a fun way to practice your language skills and learn about other people at the same time. You could write to your professor or to one of your classmates. There are also Web sites that bring together students interested in being international penpals (or "keypals" in Internet jargon). One site which focuses specifically on foreign language practice is Internet Foreign Language Partners. You will find links there to other sites too.

How to send it
First read the page on Foreign Language Word Processing if you don't know how to type accented letters on a computer.

One problem with sending and receiving e-mail in a foreign langauge is that the non-English characters, such as the ñ and accented vowels (which are extended ASCII characters) are not transmitted correctly by ordinary e-mail. The recipient may find these characters replaced by other letters, odd symbols, or hexadecimal codes (e.g. =E9 instead of é).

The solution to this problem is fairly simple. You must send your mail in MIME format, also known as "Quoted Printable," and make sure the intended recipient has this format enabled too. You will find this option in your e-mail program somewhere in the Tools, Options, or Preferences menu (depending on which program you use: Netscape, Eudora, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express -- it's there somewhere in all of them).

By the way, some e-mail programs, like Netscape, send messages formatted in HTML by default. You have to turn off this option. If the recipient doesn't have this option or it's not enabled, your accented characters will come across as an unreadable bunch of garbage.

In summary, to exchange e-mail in any language with non-English characters: find and enable MIME or "Quoted Printable" and ask the recipient to do the same. Disable HTML in Netscape Mail.

Return to Information for Spanish Students

This page created and maintained by William Miller, Spanish section coordinator

Last revised: 14 February 1999