Do you speak Spanish?
Hahaha no, although it wouldn't hurt, Spanish is a sexy language :P
I just like learning languages, besides my native language(Greek) and English, I also took a jab at Japanese a few years ago but that went horribly! I can understand most of what I hear and maaaaaybe I can have a very basic conversation with someone but written Japanese is beyond me.
Plus this semester due to some other obligations I'll have to go back and forth between places a lot so can't attend my classes at university thus the need to do something else productive with that time :P
Comment has been collapsed.
So that's how you learn a language the proper way, I just sorta bruteforced my way through english cause I wanted to consume more entertaiment media :P
Comment has been collapsed.
You can practice your music Listening with "Soda Estereo" , Molotov , "La oreja the van goth" , maybe some "Los tigres del Norte" , some of them are legends here , Gabriel Garcia Marquez books are Awesome or Paulo Cohello , TV cant recommend because I dont see it at all , but you can try with CNN in Spanish or NTN24 from Colombia.
And yeah my natal Languaje is Spanish from South America Colombia , that is rated the best of the best.
Comment has been collapsed.
LODVG are already in my playlist, found them a couple days back and absolutely loved them. Thanks for the rest of suggestions.
For tv, news networks are exactly what I want to avoid, I remember it was what was "suggested" by pretty much all of my teachers when I was studying english too however it's the "proper" form of the language which you end up using like 5-10% of the time at most if you're not using the language in your place of employment :\
Comment has been collapsed.
for tv, if you don't mind
you could watch some soap operas
Comment has been collapsed.
It has crossed my mind but there has to be a better option ;-;
Comment has been collapsed.
They do have their redeeming qualities. After all I grew up watching Cebollitas, Chiquititas, Esmeralda, the countless soap operas Thalía starred in etc. so I might go rewatch if only for the nostalgia, though all of them were dubbed.
But yeah, even so I think there's so many better choices nowadays :\
Comment has been collapsed.
Morning Wolba!
Forget those recommendations since they are not European Spanish groups....
You can listen to Spanish rock/pop from 80's :D Los Rodríguez, El Último de la Fila, Los Piratas, Seguridad Social, Duncan Dhu...
Also you can chat with me whenever if you want ^^
Comment has been collapsed.
Origin doesn't matter much after all, I've found quite a few Euro Spanish groups/artists already yet a number of them use seseo(DVICIO for example, which is a peculiar case cause they don't normally use it, they do only in their songs). Thankfully it seems I'm starting to be able to tell the accents apart :P
I'll check your recommendations too, thank you :)
Comment has been collapsed.
The problem is voseo and local terms and expressions
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh gawd, just when you think you're starting to get a grip on things more regional differences come up! What have you done people?!
Comment has been collapsed.
+1 Soda Estereo was one of the greatest bands in spanish (at least in Argentina)
Comment has been collapsed.
Watch Avatar, the legend of Aang, in latin spanish (European spanish version was kind of meh)
Comment has been collapsed.
El quijote de la mancha
listen to soda stereo, vetusta morla
malpais
or yould read books translated to spanish
you could watch nueve reinas
or some of the movies made by the guy of birdman
sorry I couldn't think of something to recommend
I just realised that I don't consume a lot of spanish entertainment
Comment has been collapsed.
Only heard a couple tracks but man, Vetusta Morla are great! Thanks for this one!!! ❤️️
Comment has been collapsed.
Hola, Wolfedood! A couple Spanish movies I'd suggest are The Orphanage (El orfanato) imdb link and Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno ) imdb link
These are both high quality movies in my opinion and two great movies in general. If you forgot, I love movies! If you like a specific genre, let me know and I'll come up with a couple more movies.
Edit: fixed links
Comment has been collapsed.
haha, yeah, I just edited that. I always forget which way it goes. Some day I will remember. Some day.
Comment has been collapsed.
Old man!!!! ❤️️
Thanks for the suggestions, those are two movies I'm still managing to avoiding! I'm an enormous wuss so even if it approaches the horror/thriller genres I turn tail and run as fast as I can xD
I mainly like either quite pessimistic movies, dipped in sweet despair and rotten humans(e.g. Lars von Trier, absolutely love stuff like Dogville and Melancholia), dystopian/political movies but set in modern settings. not historic (e.g. Die Welle), movies that touch controversial topics(e.g. The Normal Heart) or what I like to call "extended vlogs", movies that focus merely on human interaction and relations with no central plot besides the characters themselves(e.g. Perfetti sconosciuti)
Got any of those? :P
Edit: Oh, and musicals ._.
Comment has been collapsed.
Musicals? Did ever mention I got my bachelor's in Theatre?
Anyway, for a musical maybe Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar? It is a somewhat recent musical (from the last 15 years at least...too lazy to look it up!). Found the soundtrack on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoe7elL1ES0&list=PLAB163E3ABAD0E895&index=1 (I can't promise this version on Youtube is a good version since I haven't listened to this version), but the musical itself is pretty good.
Not sure this absolutely fits your above genres, but it seemed pessimistic to me. The Last Days (Los últimos días) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935914/ - Without giving too much away, a movie where everyone in the world gets major agoraphobia and one guy is trying to get back to his pregnant love. I found it a pretty awesome movie. Last I checked you could stream this off of Netflix.
Let me sleep on it and I'll see what I come up with. For some reason all the dystopian movies I'm coming up with are either French or Korean. Go figure!
Comment has been collapsed.
A jukebox musical, huh? Those are always hit or miss, will give it a try.
Los últimos días however looks quite promising! Thanks :D
Comment has been collapsed.
She is very good! Will keep that bookmarked, thanks :D
Comment has been collapsed.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794240/
The original one is from Argentina (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316613/), don't know about the spanish adaptation but it seems to be good too :)
I'm not that into music in spanish, but Divididos is pretty good if you like rock ^^
Even though it might not help with pronunciation, new vocabulary is always great ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
Ooohhh this one looks very interesting, the plot is quite intriguing!
Comment has been collapsed.
It is, I'm sure you'll like it. :D
PS: Divididos has some folk sogs you may like, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGSnIu38aA8
Let me know if you need more help :)
Comment has been collapsed.
Quite nice indeed, however a bit slow for what I'm searching for. I have them bookmarked for sometime in the future though, when I can understand the lyrics.
Oh and happy factory day!!!!
Comment has been collapsed.
Never actually studied spanish but living in Barcelona for over 10 years and having a spanish partner kind of helped me to be proficient in the language. Also being native on another romance language (Portuguese) made things a lot easier
So, anyway, a couple of books and a couple of movies. If you want a more extensive list let me know.
Books:
- Donde mejor canta un pajaro - Alejandro Jodorowsky
- 100 años de soledad - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (most of his books are great)
Movies:
- Lucia y el sexo
- Cronocrimenes
Good luck!
Comment has been collapsed.
Ahhhhh, Barcelona ❤️️
Thank you for your recommendations, will check them out.
However I know of 100 years of solitude, doesn't that heavily touch on Latin American history? Will having 0 knowledge about that history impact my experience with it or is it written in a way that it doesn't hinder you much?
Comment has been collapsed.
The story takes place in an imaginary town of Colombia and follows some of the historical events of that country. However, the focus of the novel is one family and it is one of the most known magic realism books. It doesn't hurt to know what he sometimes mentions but it is also not necessary to appreciate it.
Some more movies:
El espinazo del diablo
El espiritu de la colmena
La cabina (short story)
El laberinto del fauno
El día de la bestia
When I came to Barcelona my Spanish friends made me watch "Torrente, el brazo tonto we la ley" to really appreciate their culture... not for the easily offended :)
Comment has been collapsed.
You could never go wrong with movies by Pedro Almodovar or Alejandro Amenabar.
Some recommendations among my favorite:
for Pedro Almodovar:
- Todo sobre mi madre
- La mala educacion
- Los abrazos rotos
for Alejandro Amenabar:
- Abre los ochos
- Mar adentro
- bonus: The Others (pero la película es en Inglés.)
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't think there's anything of Almodovar's I haven't watched yet! xD
My mother loves him so I've watched a lot of his movies when I was younger and kept watching later on.
Also where is Tacones lejanos? :P
Same goes for Amenabar to some extend. I haven't watched his whole filmography but I've watched a good portion. The Sea Inside is actually one of my favourite movies.
Comment has been collapsed.
Very good spanish movies are: El dia de la bestia and La comunidad, you could watch those. TV series: Aqui no hay quien viva (relies on humour, so if you're not confident enough with the language it might be hard to understand) and, if you have Netflix, you can try the new spanish series: Las chicas del cable
Regarding of music: Jarabe de Palo, Amaral, Tino Casal, David Bustamante, Monica Naranjo, Pablo Alboran (not a fan of all those myself, tho). Bonus: All the Spanish entries for Eurovision.
Now books: I'll recommend poetry by Espronceda, or the book Intranerso.
But might I recommend another thing? Try playing videogames in spanish, or spanish dub and english subtitles.
Comment has been collapsed.
Very nice suggestions! My playlist suddenly doubled in size xD
As for dubs I'm avoiding those, it can help with listening comprehension but tv/movies/music videos have the same effect with the added bonus of having an accurate visual, it's very helpful being actually able to watch someone's mouth when talking if you're trying to familiarize yourself with a language.
And even though I'm asking for books that's just something that will come quite down the road, I'm just bookmarking them for now and will attempt to read in a few months when I won't have to translate whole pages but hopefully do it selectively. Same goes for games, that's the one thing I had decided from the get go, once I have a good enough understanding of basic written spanish I'll just switch them to it too
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, I see your point with the dubs, it's true that helps a lot.
And well, I almost forgot to wish you luck with your learning! ¡Ánimo!
Comment has been collapsed.
How did nobody recommend REC yet? Go watch it if you haven't. There's a (good) american adaptation, too. It's called Quarantine. I don't speak spanish, btw.
Comment has been collapsed.
Because of this:
I'm an enormous wuss so even if it approaches the horror/thriller genres I turn tail and run as fast as I can xD
Looks like a good movie but I like sleeping too much to lose that :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Ohhhh I see lol. Sorry about that. It's a great movie, though. Watch it in the morning or with a friend!
Comment has been collapsed.
Won't help xD
Even though I know 100% it's fake and shit my mind just refuses to let go of them. After watching Funny Games(1997) for example I was in a near panic state for almost a month when I was alone in the house. But let's say that's justified(it's not) since it's not anything "supernatural" and it's a scenario that could happen. I watched Darkness(2002) over a decade ago. I still go on high alert when the lights are out because of it! And that movie is absolute garbage! xD
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok, some nice movies where you can learn some new words:
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film957793.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film545489.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film526932.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film879812.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film165370.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film581441.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film942734.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film487418.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film936995.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film531662.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film428723.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film374559.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film855997.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film575568.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film926890.html
http://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film270489.html
About music, some good groups/singers with good lyrics:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Sabina
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%C3%9Altimo_de_la_Fila
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolo_Garc%C3%ADa
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Manuel_Serrat
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Bunbury
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Sanz
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Piratas
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Dhu
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecano_(banda)
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh wow, that's a lot of stuff! Thanks I'll check them out later today! :D
Comment has been collapsed.
The only Spanish movie I can remember off the top of my head is Like Water for Chocolate (Trailer). I'm not a huge fan of romance movies, but I do recall enjoying this movie. I haven't seen it in a really long time and don't remember too much about it.
Edit: After looking up some Spanish movies, I have found a few more that I saw and liked:
Open Your Eyes - This is a great movie, it's the original Spanish version of Vanilla Sky and I enjoyed this version more.
Pan's Labyrinth
The Orphanage
Comment has been collapsed.
I'll answer you in spanish so you can practice:
Peliculas (aparte de las anteriores en el foro)
Español "de españa":
El lapiz del carpintero
Celda 211
Mientras duermes
La caja 507
No habra paz para los malvados
Airbag <- Esta es de humor muy español. Puede ser mas dificil de entender por los giros y frases hechas,
dias contados
Alas de mariposa
El cuerpo
Grupo 7
El niño
La isla minima
El hombre de las mil caras
El desconocido
Series de TV:
El principe
Aguila roja
Acusados
Edit:
Tesis Imperdonable que se me quedase en el tintero. Opera prima de Amenabar (Abre los ojos) y muy recomendable. Para adultos ya que trata el tema de las "snuff movies".
Comment has been collapsed.
Woah, woah, slow down cowboy! I haven't even started yet, still looking for a tutor xD
(although weirdly enough I could understand about 70-80% of everything written, only had to translate specific words)
That's quite the list there, lots of good stuff from the looks of it, thanks :D
Comment has been collapsed.
If I'm not worng all are rated abot 6.5 at IMDB And all are made in spain so the spanish accent is the european one.
Comment has been collapsed.
Lot of series to choose from.
"Castellano" its normally the term used for european Spanish and "Latino" for American Spanish.
I can suggest to look also for some non spanish movies/series dubbed into spanish, maybe some or your favorites.
Lots of them change or add phrasing, different spanish idioms and culture related things.
Comment has been collapsed.
"Castellano" its normally the term used for european Spanish and "Latino" for American Spanish.
TIL. Gracias. Not sure how to pronounce the elle though(it's my pronunciation nightmare at the moment xD). Is this the "y" one or the soft "j"? x_x
Comment has been collapsed.
I studied Spanish and Swedish for a while, but I gave up on both because I wanted to study Japanese. Duolingo is really good, I learned a lot of English there.
Comment has been collapsed.
I admire your courage! Only took me two months to give up on learning Japanese. I was coping up to the point of learning -kana but when we moved to Kanji all hell broke loose xD
Best of luck!!!
Comment has been collapsed.
Not a native speaker, but good to see that you are trying to find a tutor because I've tried sites like duolingo and besides the basics you won't improve very much. I've tried both and the difference in learning speed from a site to a real class is abysmal. I'm also studying for DELE(C1). Things that work for me: Newspaper. Choose a spanish speaking country and start reading their news. El País, La Nación, Clarin, La Jornada...Just don't mix them, spanish, although gramatically equal, have many regional variations. Some people in latin american even say they don't speak spanish, but castellano.
Movies/tv didn't help me at all, but music helped a lot, especially those catchy songs. They are great for learning and retaining new words.
Since you are here on Sg, i guess that you like games a little bit. Try to change their language to spanish. Most of them don't have spanish VO, but reading is good enough notably because it's a familiar context for gamers, so you probably know most of the words in your own language/english. I've been fighting my backlog in spanish for a while now. xD
Anyway, I wish you good luck. If you need anything, I may be able to help :)
Comment has been collapsed.
Agreed, Duolingo and similar SRS sites/apps are great memorization tools if used right, but quite limited(and possibly harmful) for actual learning. Plus I wanna soldier through and sweep through as fast as I can, hopefully take the B2 exam on April/May 2018(assuming I start classes around March 20th as I've planned) so a tutor is an absolute necessity :P
Newspaper is an old trick too, already have that experience from my days learning English, which is why I didn't even mention it, it was certain I'd do that but appreciate the suggestion ^^
The function of things like movies/tv is to force myself too keep up with the average talking speed and deduce the meaning of an unknown word fast or completely ignore it and just grasp the general idea. With written stuff you have the luxury of taking your time analysing but not so much when you're conversing with someone so it is good practice in that capacity.
Btw how long did it take you to reach B2?
Comment has been collapsed.
You don't have to reach b2 to take a C1 exam, if that's what you meant. The moment you pay Cervantes' fee you choose the level that you wanna try. At least here. TBH, C1 is not necessary unless you wanna teach spanish or your job requires, b2 is enough for everything else, IIRC. I might be wrong though, there are so many numbers and letters that it's easy to mix everything up.
I studied spanish in school when I was younger, but never really felt that I needed to learn because of the similarities between portuguese and spanish. I thought that spending some time with the argentinian side of my family was enough, but I was clearly wrong. I've been taking real classes for some months now and some prep classes specifically for DELE since last month. I highly recommend some prep classes for DELE, the exams are very similar, with a clear pattern that after a while you could do it blindfolded with enough training.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh yeah, I know that one diploma does not require the other, it's just quite atypical for someone to go straight for the Cs without having taken the B2 exam unless he already speaks the language or apparently a similar Romance one(french, portoguese or italian for example) and just need it for practical reasons.
And you're right, B2 is sufficient for 90% of the cases, only specific branches ask for C1-2(e.g. med schools) which is not something that interests me. However I do aim on ultimately get C2 just cause :P
Comment has been collapsed.
I can recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_ministerio_del_tiempo. Really interesting
English: The Ministry of Time) is a Spanish fantasy television series .[1] The series follows the exploits of a patrol of the fictional Ministry of Time, which deals with incidents caused by time travel.
On December 29, 2016 it was announced that RTVE had sold the rights to Netflix to broadcast the third series internationally, outside of Spain, resulting in a bigger production budget.[4]
You already have many suggestions :)
Comment has been collapsed.
La tigresa del Oriente, thank me later.
You can try Italki.com
Comment has been collapsed.
Good luck with all of those "andaluz" stuff. Be aware some people just recommended you good movies or movies they like, not audiovisual material to learn anything.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh I'm well aware, I'm not looking to learn through the recommendations here, those are meant as spanish "injections" to my hobbies so I can immerse myself in the language while I'm learning it from a professional :P
Comment has been collapsed.
Anyway, you can find good material from "La 2" it's the 2nd public TV, normally used for cultural TV and not propaganda, although nowadays is kinda dead. It's a shame but it has some good stuff sometmes.
Saber y Ganar is a show where they ask about cultural stuff, maths and other topics. Generally neutral accents and it's pretty popular because the showman doesn't age, we think it's an android.
http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/saber-y-ganar/
You can watch a lot of stuff and series free online there.
Comment has been collapsed.
There is another thread in the forum with other people asking the same thing with a lot of recomendations https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/emdbT/need-help-with-spanish-ga
Good luck :)
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah, this is great! Thanks for bringing it up! My level is nowhere near adequate enough to understand what M was asking about :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Here are some bands, mostly from Argentina (not all of them though). Stuff I listened to a lot when I was younger:
- Los Piojos
- Los Tipitos
- Las Pelotas
- Divididos
- Soda Stereo
- Bersuit Vergarabat
- Cielo Razzo
- La Renga
- No Te Va Gustar (NTVG)
- La Vela Puerca
- Las Pastillas Del Abuelo
- Fito Paez
- Charly Garcia
These are all I remember at the moment, might add more later
Comment has been collapsed.
So after years and years of putting it off I finally decided to start studying Spanish.
Started fooling around with Duolingo for starters while I'm looking for a tutor to learn properly.
However as much as one wants to learn a language, classes/apps have their limitations and since I can't just take the time off and go live in a Spanish speaking country I'm going for the next best thing. Introducing entertainment for my free time in Spanish so I stay in contact with the language on a daily basis but my knowledge of artists, actors, authors etc is pretty limited so if anyone has any good recommendations, especially music I'd greatly appreciate it.
For everything spoken(music, movies, tv series, podcasts, radio etc.) I'm mainly interested in ones that are in European Spanish as that's the pronunciation I'll be going for for the DELE(Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera), but feel free to suggest whatever(just please mention it if it's not that pronunciation so I won't be trying to copy it)
Also for music please no hip-hop and metal, I'm really not in those genres. Mainly go the pop route or folk :P
And for anyone that studied Spanish with English as their primary language I'm also looking for good premade sets of flashcards I could use in some app like ANKI(I'm way too lazy to just make 300+ cards at once ._.)
O.GAEndedSorry for whatever butchering of the language has happened in the poll
Comment has been collapsed.