An Ear for Spanish
Hi guys,
Trying to develop an ear for Spanish, I searched Youtube for some Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles but found nothing other than songs.
Can someone please suggest some part of a movie, a TV show or a talk show in Spanish with Spanish subs?
Thanks.
Thank you guys. I got more help than what I wished for. You're all awesome!!
9 Answers
One of my favorite resources is The Destinos Video Series
Primero- it was produced by a University language department with the expressed goal of teaching Spanish.
Segundo- the language starts out easy, but becomes increasingly more difficult near the end of the series.
Tercero- vocabulary is often grouped together by type. For instance, unit 22 covers: Vocabulario: directions; more family members; weather; changes in states and condition; parts of a house; domestic appliances; more descriptive adjectives. Gramática: present and past progressive; imperfect; imperfect and preterite together; por and para; affirmatives and negatives; idioms with tener; comparisons; estar and sentirse with adjectives; acabar de; hace, hace ... que; al + infinitive.
Cuarto- You can click for the subtitles if you want them. (But I think the series was designed to teach Spanish without them and that was added later.)
Quinto- There are 52 episodes, each slightly less than 30 minutes.
Sexto- You can watch it for free and is very beneficial to watch over and over.
Séptimo- Associated study resources for the series are available for sale.
Octimo- The main character begins in Spain, then in the course of the story must travel to Argentina and Puerto Rico before ending up in Mexico. Thus many of the variations of Spanish are covered.
Noveno- It's a fairly interesting story, so it's a fun way to learn.
I highly recommend it!
"Developing" an ear for a language and "training" an ear are quite different. I don´t think an ear can be developed for languages or music. You are either born with the ability to easily comprehend sounds or you are not, ie: people who are "tone deaf" find it impossible to sing on key and also have difficulties with new languages.
So for training your ear with youtube, I suggest typing in "entrevista" along with the name of anyone who you would like to hear interviewed. This will give you the sound of the language without the sound effects of films that can be distracting. Some talk shows are Ok as well.
In addition to Goyo's post (the Destinos series is great) there are a lot of Youtube videos that you might like. This guy has uploaded a bunch of videos, look for the ones that begin "Extra en español". They are sitcom based and quite silly, and they over exaggerate the Spanish pronunciations, but you can learn from them quickly. There aren't any subtitles if I recall correctly, but they are made for Spanish learners.
If you are looking for soap operas with easy dialog, you might try (all on youtube)
?Las vías del amor
?Decisiones (fairly trashy)
You might also try looking at popular vlogs and amateur sketch comedies like
One technique that I have found helpful is to simply think of topics that I find interesting and then use certain keywords (in Spanish) to try to fish for resources on sites like youtube, justin.tv and tu.tv
Another technique that you might find helpful would be to look for lessons or various topics presented in Spanish (again, just use Spanish keywords). For example, here are several series of video presentations (playlists) on
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/index.html
Hola, SpanishPal--This is one of the best websites ever for listening practice. You can choose levels and topics and you can see and hear the Spanish but also get a translation if you wish. The speakers come from all over the Spanish-speaking world, and the topics are short, interesting, and useful. (I found this through spanishdict, of course!)
You may want to check out Destinos. It's like a soap opera used to help teach Spanish. Should be easy to find with a Google search.
Nevermind, the post above already has this.
Try this online station: link text
If you go to BBC languages you can watch the" Mi Vida Loca" series .It's directed at beginners of Spanish. A little slow but still a good story .Buena suerte.
You could try Lomas tv. I don't recall the exact url and it is a pay site but I've used it and it is helpful. They have videos and translations at various levels along with quizzes, etc.
Also, there are tons of movies on Netflix in Spanish with English subtitles, both streaming and on DVD, but the subtitles are not exact, sometimes not even close. But they will help you follow along.
