How to "Hear" Spanish
Hello! I'm a freshman at Warsaw, High School, and I'm having issues with Spanish I. My main issue, which I am addressing here, is learning to "hear" Spanish correctly. I do not have much trouble writing it, but I have a lot of trouble hearing it. Does anyone have any tips at all or websites that could help me hear the language fluently? I've already used translators, but they are not helping. Thank you for your time!
16 Answers
Hola Splicer:
Wow! What a question. I'm a Spanish teacher and I know what you may be experiencing. In my college classes we also have an on-line program that takes care of that problem.
For those who can afford it I recommend the "Pimsleur Approach" learning program that starts out by merely repeating things that you are told to, and winds up by participating in complex conversations. These are obtainable at the Amazon.com website. They have an introductory course for $10.00 which will give you the first eight lessons of the comprehensive course.
On this website click here we have a great program with an American teacher who is very good.
I think the website is www.spanishdict.com/learn. This is not the Fluencia program that is advertised here, but it is the one that belongs to our site. I think you will enjoy our teacher she is very sweet and also very efficient.
We would also appreciate you filling our your profile. If you don't know how to do it, just click on my name and it will take you to mine. You don't have to do your bio in Spanish, English will be fine. I think you will enjoy our family here.
If my friend Sanlee sees this I know she will be able to provide you with some great websites.
I can attest with what Ray is saying about everyone having the hearing problem. The only solution, unfortunately is to just listen, even if you can only understand a few words here and there, to get your ears accustomed to hearing spoken Spanish. Over time, your hearing will improve. My advice to you, which may seem a bit overrated and possibly funny, is to learn the Spanish alphabet and its sounds thoroughly, so you'll be able to recognize or sound out words more easily, even if you don't know what they actually mean. Eventually, you'll be able to improve your ear and use context clues as you're building your vocabulary.
I've been trying to learn Spanish for about six months & sympathise with your problem. I decided to start learning six months ago when on holiday in Spain. I already knew a little, that I'd just picked up without really trying, so I could understand some of what was being said, e.g. waiters in restaurants if the context was already clear. So, I decided to embark on a serious learning attempt. I spent about three months listening to audio discs in my car on the drive to & from work (about two hours a day), & in due course I completed the Michel Thomas method. I also bought some grammar books and a dictionary, & of course I joined Spanishdict. All these have been very helpful, & my written Spanish is now much better. However, when I returned to Spain for another holiday at Christmas, I found my 'aural' Spanish was not much better than six months previously. Of course, being able to speak it better (and, relatively speaking, Spanish is quite an easy language to learn how to speak), I could initiate conversations, e.g. asking for things in shops & restaurants, asking for directions, small talk with taxi drivers etc. However, I got the impression that the natives could understand me, but when they replied it was often like flabbydabbydoodadoodaday... At about a billion words a second ¡!
I exaggerate, of course, because I could get by. For example, I did have a conversation with a taxi driver about the St Christopher pendant that he had beside his steering wheel, and I understood when he told me he'd been driving taxis for 40 years, and I took him to mean that he felt it protected him.
Yet, what I'm going to say may sound a little snobbish. Often folk in the street aren't easy to understand. Sometimes at home in Scotland, just standing about in public places & 'eavesdropping' on conversations, I lament because the quality of diction is so poor. I think, pity the poor foreigner who might come here & try & understand our people. And I guess taxi drivers may not be the best people to practise on in any country.
If I think of my other foreign language, French, I've had similar experiences with 'aural' French (although French is a much harder language to learn how to speak , and it took me a while to be able to pronounce French in a way that the French could understand). People in the street can be hard to understand. However, recently, listening to the French President speaking on TV about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, he was as clear as day.
Similarly in November I was in a restaurant in Edinburgh when I overheard two Spaniards speaking & they sounded very clear so I could understand them, I whispered to my wife that I believed they were from Madrid, then I asked them '¿ de donde están ?' & they answered Madrid.
Certain accents will be clearer (actually, I find South Americans slightly easier to understand than Spaniards for some reason, despite my spending six months forcing myself to pronounce 'c' & 'z' as 'th'). High up politicians & newsreaders (both of whom are trained to annunciate clearly) will be easier to understand (I found Spanish TV kind of made sense, particularly kids' TV - even Donald Duck ¡!).
Therefore, try different sources. Listen to 'the best Spanish', even if it makes you feel like a snob, then 'work down'.
I live in Scotland. If I went to Devon or Cornwall in the South on England, I wouldn't be able to understand people entirely until I'd settled in for a little while, & that's in my native tongue.
Ultimately, if you wish to be able to understand everyone fluently , then you'll probably need to spend a few years living in a Spanish-speaking country to immerse yourself in the language. I have a Bulgarian friend who's lived in England for about seven years & who seems to me to be fluent in English, but even after all that time she claims she isn't & says sometimes she just 'zones out' because she can't follow the native dialect. Buena suerte, amigo.
Try to watch a Spanish soap-opera every week, if you can bear to. Switch on the ' subtítulos para sordos' . This will give you subtitles in Spanish. I have found it very helpful. Also, just keep watching the news and other programmes, if you can, just go to rstv.es and switch on the Spanish news. News are the same all over the world, and the pictures of various disasters and accidents help a lot. Also, they are very repetitive, the Spanish TV has a24 hr news programme that goes round and round, if you can bear to watch it a few times you will understand more each time.
There is nothing else for it, just keep listening and eventually the people will' slow down'.
The key to "hearing" Spanish (or any other language) is vocabulary. Once you have sufficient vocabulary you will begin to be able to break the stream of sounds (ie. sylables) into words. Until you have sufficient vocabulary it will just be a stream of sounds. Vocabulary is King.
Hi Splicer,
Here is a link to a post with some good resources for listening. I will be adding more as I find them. The lessons in Dani's post are free and are available right here.
Here is the link to a previous similar question.
In response to Falda's comment on my comment about vocabulary being king. I agree that kids have a limited vocabulary yet can communicate very well for their age. But it is because of their vocabulary not because the know the cadence of the language. Children learn simple (one syllable words first) and they can "parrot" more than they understand based on context. But you can take a simple sentence: It is time to go to bed. All one syllable words and apply many different cadences, melodies, etc and they will still understand because the know the words. Add a word they don't know and they will recognize that it is unknown and ask about it. But they only recognize the new word because they know the words around it.
One other thought. English is a very tonally diverse language. There are many different vowel and consonant sounds. Spanish is much more homogeneous with only 5 basic vowel sounds. This makes many more words sound the same to the untrained ear.
Try to communicate a thought without the correct words. You can't. Get the accent wrong, get the grammar wrong and you can still get your communicateion through if you have the words. Until you have enough vocabulary and experience in hearing the words you know you cannot break a stream of syllables into words, and thus you will struggle and fall behind and it all seems fast.
Once you start understanding, the speech of others will not seem so fast. They didn't suddenly start talking slower. Your mind is processing the sounds into words faster.
The best thing for you, it would be to get a Spanish movie, with no subtitles of any kind and start listening closely, while paying attention to the action in the movie.
The movie has to be of the genre you really love.
Edit:
I always recommend a movie instead of shows, because a movie has a plot/thread and it will help your brain to connect the action of the movie with what you are hearing. Believe me, you will be understanding rather sooner than later.
All this does is to give you a jolt and work out your listening skills, but with the aid of your eyes and your brain.
That's all.
Using all of you in order to understand..
& with regard to what Gringojrf says about vocab, yes & no. Yes, it's important to know vocab, but no I really don't believe it's king. I have two kids aged 4 (almost 5) and 2 (just turned). They both speak English. My son, the 4-year old, has a superb grasp of English (in the context of being 4), but he has a very basic vocab (he also speaks some Spanish, by the way, thanks to the TV program, Dora the Explorer, Spanish classes, &, to a lesser extent, his dad). However, what he possesses (& more so than some foreign students of English who may have studied for much longer than 4 years) is familiarity with the rhythm, sound pattern & syntax of the language. Before I went to live in France I'd spent hours trying to memorise vocab books & read several novels, yet when I arrived there & people spoke to me it still sounded like flabbydabbydoodadoodaday... It didn't matter that I knew, or thought I knew, all these words for various different things.
You'll learn a lot of very common words, & through a process of forgetting then remembering then forgetting & remembering again, eventually these key words will become familiar to you. But there's little point in trying to commit eternally to memory certain more obscure words, because you'll probably just forget them anyway. However, if you master the sound pattern of the language, when an unfamiliar word comes up, you can ask what it means. This is what my 4-year old does with me almost every day 
If you're willing to invest a little in acquiring the listening skills you want, a good site to check out is http://www.newsinslowspanish.com/weekly-news-in-slow-spanish/9999/2029/jan2929/transcript.html.
Also https://spanish.yabla.com .
Also this telenovela, which was developed specifically for learners of Spanish and has exercises to complete with each section: http://learner.org/series/destinos/watch/ . This one is free except for some hard-copy study materials that I think have to be purchased, but are not essential to your purpose.
Just keep listening, listening, listening, and as gringojrf said, keep acquiring vocabulary. Eventually something will click in your brain and you will realize that you're understanding more and more of what you hear.
Everyone here has made some great suggestions and listed some great resources. From my experience, as I learned more grammatically, I had the false hope of expecting to be able listen and comprehend at the same level. Obviously, learning a language doesn't work that way. Immersion is the key to being able to speak and comprehend. If you do not have the luxury of being around native speakers, you have to manufacture a way ( e.g. with some of the resources listed here or many others on the Internet). Set realistic goals. I am a native English speaker, yet I don't understand every English speaker or for that matter the words to every song that comes on the radio. Learning any language doesn't happen overnight.
Remember this phrase when a Spanish-speaker speaks too fast:
"Perdon, mas despacio, por favor. Trato de aprender Español."
I go to a Latin American market about once a week. The first time I went there, I used the phrase above. The girl there now knows me, and she patiently speaks with me. If I don't understand something, I now just say "Como?" And now, most of the other people there know I'm trying to learn, so they speak slowly, or repeat for me.
Hola, Splicer, and welcome to SpanishDict! Like others have suggested, it really helps us to know a little more about you to better answer your questions. For example, how advanced are you in learning Spanish? First year, etc? Are you in the USA? What is your native language? Also if you include a few of your interests, if you are male or female, etc. we can give you better suggestions for learning ideas.
As far as "hearing" Spanish, I've found that speaking it aloud is a big help (as well as the other suggestions above). Speak your lessons aloud, and then try listening to Spanish TV shows and songs. I like to listen to Spanish-dubbed American films because I already have an idea of what's going on. Spanish-language news programs are waaay too fast for my ears yet, but I can still pick out words. There are plenty of Spanish shows and songs on Youtube, some with subtitles. Listening to a Spanish song/show with Spanish subtitles is helpful as well.
All the best to you in your studies! 
Here are two good resources for listening.
Educacion masiva para el futuro | Luis von Ahn | TEDxRiodelaPlata
Hi!! I´m spanish and i think that the best thing you can do to improve your hearing is speak with native people, who can teach you the correct form of pronuntiation. The problem is that normally spanish people speak soooooo fast and it´s impossible to understand us..our fault 
! you can start listening music or movies with subtitles that can help you
