Recommend Italian podcasts for a learner.
March 15, 2013 11:26 AM Subscribe
I need to improve my comprehension of spoken Italian, and I'm looking for free podcasts in Italian (as opposed to recorded language lessons) which can help me do this.
My Italian is at a level where I can (mostly) figure out spoken sentences when they are delivered slowly and clearly, but I can't manage much real-world comprehension (high speed, slang, background noise, interruption, etc.). So, to heave myself towards the next level, I'm looking for podcasts which are either targeted specifically at learners, or are at the easier end of the comprehension scale. Deutsche Welle provide a good example (but in the wrong language) of what I'm after: mp3s of news and current affairs delivered at a speed suitable for non-native speakers. Subject matter could be anything, but it does need to be audio-only, and downloadable rather than streaming. And I'm specifically after podcasts in Italian rather than "language lesson" podcasts which explicitly walk the listener through vocabulary and grammar.
My Italian is at a level where I can (mostly) figure out spoken sentences when they are delivered slowly and clearly, but I can't manage much real-world comprehension (high speed, slang, background noise, interruption, etc.). So, to heave myself towards the next level, I'm looking for podcasts which are either targeted specifically at learners, or are at the easier end of the comprehension scale. Deutsche Welle provide a good example (but in the wrong language) of what I'm after: mp3s of news and current affairs delivered at a speed suitable for non-native speakers. Subject matter could be anything, but it does need to be audio-only, and downloadable rather than streaming. And I'm specifically after podcasts in Italian rather than "language lesson" podcasts which explicitly walk the listener through vocabulary and grammar.
Response by poster: Thanks, Miko! Comparing the responses to this question with its equivalent for French, I get the impression that what I'm looking for is not easy to find in Italian.
I'd never heard of Stitcher before. The streaming service itself is not much use to me, but the app shines as a well-curated, up-to-date catalogue of podcasts which I can then find and download from their own sites. It's a far better list than anything my google-fu had turned up. None of their Italian programmes seem to be pitched explicitly at "non-native" level, but I realized that my audiobook player is perfectly happy to slow down playback for me, which helps a lot.
posted by pont at 11:06 AM on March 18, 2013
I'd never heard of Stitcher before. The streaming service itself is not much use to me, but the app shines as a well-curated, up-to-date catalogue of podcasts which I can then find and download from their own sites. It's a far better list than anything my google-fu had turned up. None of their Italian programmes seem to be pitched explicitly at "non-native" level, but I realized that my audiobook player is perfectly happy to slow down playback for me, which helps a lot.
posted by pont at 11:06 AM on March 18, 2013
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posted by Miko at 7:25 PM on March 15, 2013 [1 favorite]