Listening and the word "instead"
I am learning Spanish and I am trying to say "I listen to podcasts instead".
The SpanishDict translator says "Escuchar podcasts en su lugar".
I am confused.
1) Shouldn't it be "Escucho" instead of "Escuchar" (To indicate that is I listening, instead of "to listening").
2) Why does it say "su"? I thought "su" meant this "his/her".
3) Why does it say "lugar"? I though that meant place?
Context: When making small talk conversation with strangers, we might talk about music. I might say "No escucho mucha música" (I don't listen to much music). But then I want to say what I do listen to (e.g. I listen to podcasts instead) Thanks!
3 Answers
Translators are rife with spelling errors. It's not a reliable source.
- instead is an adverb in this case, we can take it like en vez de eso or mejor.
- When saying listen to, we don't say escuchar a. For instance,
I listen to music. (= escucho música.)
(NOTescucho a la música.) - I listen to podcasts instead. (= escucho los podcasts en vez de eso/mejor.)
A proper translation for podcast could be redifusión multimedia, so we can have
escucho las redifusiones multimedia en vez de eso/mejor.
However I don't find the latter idiomatic, so it's better to keep the foreign word as it is.
Welcome to the forum. Can you add your level of English and Spanish to your profile? I assume fluent or advanced for English and beginner or intermediate for Spanish. It helps us to decide how to frame an answer and if you respond to a question how to assess your answer. As you can see from my profile my English is fluent but my Spanish is not.
Have you used the translator on this site? Are you writing a reply to someone's question? Eg Do you listen to films to improve your Spanish? No I listen to podcasts instead.
En vez de or en lugar de can mean instead/ in place of. In some circumstances it is followed by the infinitive. Your sentence appears to be incomplete so I cannot give you an exact translation - you could be in the situation of using sino ( a way of expressing but) or even the subjunctive. I agree 'I listen to' translates as escucho.
Can you edit your post to add the full sentence or context?
Small talk is difficult. Some of the language we learn in classes is very formal and can sound stilted. When you are new to Spanish it takes a lot of effort to understand what is said to you. Listening to music is good for new vocabulary and for getting used to the rhythm of the language. of course podcasts are great - I particularly like Notes in Spanish, LightSpeed Spanish and spanishpodcast.org but I live in the UK and they are based on the Spanish spoken in Spain - you will be understood elsewhere but if you are spending more time with people from Mexico and Latin America radio ambulante and Spanish Obsessed will help.
Why not just say 'me gusta escuchar los podcasts' or Prefiero escuchar podcasts al música. Or no escucho música sino escucho podcasts.
Sino is an alternative to pero when using negatives. My Spanish is not perfect but hopefully the people you are talking to will help. In English we often speak sloppily but in Spanish you have to add the missing words eg que for that, which we often omit.
