Como se dice "Podcast"?

February 6, 2024 3:44 AM

It's a bit aspirational for me to learn another language, but I think podcasts could help

My narrow question would be podcasts in Spanish that I can listen to at a slower speed to better understand spoken Spanish, but if people have podcast recommendations in other non-English languages I'd love to hear them (pun acknowledged but not intended)

posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

I asked a similar question a while ago. The Duolingo podcasts are definitely good for learners because they're clearly spoken and have a lot of supporting English giving you context and explanation, and interesting stories.

The thing I've found most useful is to actually take one episode of a podcast and listen to it again and again and again. It's incredible how, on first listen, it just all feels like noise. Then second time around I'm catching particular words. Then those kind of creates islands of understanding and I next time around I start to understand the words next to them. Then those islands grow, to the point that after maybe a month of repeated listening, I'm understand a really surprising amount, without having deliberately translated most of it (obviously this is more likely to happen if you're actually studying the language outside of your podcast listening, so you have stuff already in your head that you've maybe not learned by heart but which is swilling around, and which you'll gradually start to recognise).

Of the ones suggested in my question, I basically picked El Dollop, found an episode I liked the sound of, then listened repeatedly.

More recently I've enjoyed the Easy German podcast, which is actually not total beginner level, but again, with repeated listening I was amazed how much I started to comprehend, and I really like the presenters, their sense of humour and the topics they chat about. It doesn't feel like a learners' podcast.

I think the trick with this kind of learning is to get your head around the difference between focused and diffuse learning (not sure those are the right terms but you get the idea). With a podcast, you're not trying make sure you understand every word, or even every sentence. It's more about putting yourself in the way of a fire hose of language that buffets you for an hour or whatever. You start to hear the cadences and the rhythms, which are useful even before you understand any words. And then the words start to drift in - sometimes I look up a specific word but mostly it's just letting it all wash over you, same way kids learn their mother tongue.
posted by penguin pie at 4:25 AM on February 6

Coffee Break Spanish is great! I know they have other language as well.
posted by Mournful Bagel Song at 4:29 AM on February 6

It might be too advanced if you're starting from zero, but check out Jiveworld.

It's an app that takes stories from the Spanish language podcast Radio Ambulante and builds in a lot of learning features like visual cues, definitions, speed adjustments.

I like it because Radio Ambulante is an interesting podcast in its own right, not something produced for learners. Kind of a This American Life of Latin America. They also have a wide range of accents so its very good for learning to understand Spanish as spoken by actual people.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 4:43 AM on February 6

There are two routes you can go down: podcasts especially for learners, or podcasts that natives would listen to. (on preview, as ambulanceambiance alludes to).

I like both, but the latter is interesting if you can find a subject you're really interested in. You can always slow it down if you need to, or follow along with the transcript.

Perhaps you could mention what podcasts you listen to in your own language and people could suggest based on that.
posted by iamsuper at 5:09 AM on February 6

News in slow Spanish has been suggested here multiple times. You have to pay for the whole episode, but ~5 minutes / week are free. I think it comes in both Spain and Latin American language versions. For me, the advantage of this podcast is that I already know the news they are talking about, so there is no effort to have to understand the content.
Similarly (not podcast) - CNN has headline news newsletter in Spanish (5 cosas), which as also been great for similar reasons.
posted by Dotty at 5:46 AM on February 6

Another vote for the _Easy Languages_ franchise. I can only vouch for _Easy German_ (excellent! hilarious!), but they have many other podcasts, of which _Easy Spanish_ is one.
posted by toucan at 6:10 AM on February 6

I somewhat liked News in Slow Spanish for this except 1) it was Spanish from Spain or Latin America and I live near Mexico and 2) it was about news from Spain/Latin America so I felt like I was trying to do two things at once--learn Spanish and figure out what they were talking about vis-a-vis names and situations I wasn't familiar with. The first one is my own deal but I thought I'd offer the second caveat as a more "is this how you want to learn?" practical matter, because for me, it led to me not using it for very long. My brain wasn't doing well about moving in two directions at once, and I'm pretty good with languages.
posted by less-of-course at 6:33 AM on February 6

For French, I listen to a lot of podcasts from France Culture (I like current events and news deep dives: Affaires Etrangeres, Les Pieds sur terre, Les Enjeux internationaux (~10 minutes a day)) and RFI (Revue de presse Afrique; Journal en francais facile (for learneing); Les voisins du 12 bis (a cute fiction podcast aimed at learning French, good for beginners)). I also listen to Change ma vie, which is a light pop psychology French podcast.
posted by quadrilaterals at 7:38 AM on February 6

Seconding Radio Ambulante. An important part of learning is being able to understand it when you hear it as it is spoken normally. It's the thing that gets rusty most quickly in my experience too, as opposed to reading and speaking.
posted by kensington314 at 11:22 AM on February 6

Bit off topic, but in addition to podcasts I just want to suggest ChatGPT as another avenue for practice (hear me out!).

Their mobile app (iOS - Android) now has a voice-enabled conversation mode (including for the free tier). Their built-in voice recognition service, Whisper, is excellent at picking up poorly pronounced or enunciated terms in a variety of languages, and ChatGPT is smart enough to understand what you're trying to say even if you make grammatical mistakes. It's also designed to respond conversationally, adding a question or prompt at the end of its spoken answers that you can respond to indefinitely. You can choose from several different natural-sounding voices, and even ask it to insert "..." in between words to force it to speak slower if needed. You can also request to switch to English at any time and ask for corrections or advice on what you've been saying, and it will answer in kind.

The standard caveats about hallucinations apply, so don't ask it questions about anything important, and I wouldn't get too into the weeds on obscure points of grammar. But AI chatbots have famously perfect diction, and it's a great way to practice various 101-level conversations about everyday topics in an interactive way without needing to recruit a native speaker or listen to a tape.

Here's an example voice conversation I just had with some deliberate errors on my part:

Me: Estoy practicando mi español. Cuando voy a la aeropuerto, es difícil para comer.

ChatGPT: Entiendo que puede ser complicado encontrar opciones para comer en el aeropuerto, especialmente si estás buscando algo específico o si tienes restricciones dietéticas. ¿Hay algo en particular que te resulte difícil cuando intentas comer en el aeropuerto? ¿O buscas consejos sobre cómo hacerlo más fácil?

Me: Did I make any grammatical mistakes in my question? Please answer in English.

ChatGPT: Your Spanish is quite good, but there's a small grammatical error in your sentence. You said "Cuando voy a la aeropuerto," but since "aeropuerto" is masculine, it should be "al aeropuerto." So, the corrected sentence is: "Cuando voy al aeropuerto, es difícil para comer." Additionally, to make it sound more natural, you might say, "es difícil encontrar algo para comer" (it's hard to find something to eat). Keep up the good work practicing!

If you want a more judgey persona, just ask it to respond however you'd like in your opening question (example: "I'm practicing my Spanish. Please respond to each of my statements normally in Spanish, then add an English follow-up correcting any mistakes I might have made. Here is my opening sentence: XXX")
posted by Rhaomi at 2:06 AM on March 15