Understanding spoken Latin American Spanish

[reineke]

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[solocricket]

I'd also like to add that "Latin American Spanish" consists of wide variety of very different accents. News and dubs will be more formalized, but I've only realized lately that my Spanish listening skills weren't that bad, it was that I wasn't used to some South American, rural Mexican, and Caribbean accents. I'm used to hearing "Mexico City" Spanish and Madrid Spanish through my podcasts and radio, so it makes sense that the accents that tend to drop a ton of consonants or use different intonations would be a lot harder. Just something to keep in mind!

[smallwhite]

NHK...
There's a certain window of time during the day on NHK when the transcript and the audio may not match because of the time zone difference.

I didn't understand that red part - don't they always upload transcript and corresponding audio at the same time, such that the two always match? My experience was that as long as I downloaded the 2 immediately after each other, and I avoided downloading around their upload times, then the 2 would always match.

And seems Tomás' problem is not that the 2 don't match, but that neither are there at all / Tomás doesn't know where to look:

Are they still doing this? I could not find the relevant links to audio or transcripts on any of today's news stories.

[smallwhite]

I use a method similar to Ari's in his post Ari’s Chinesepod method which I find highly effective.

I've been getting better and better results from this method, but even when I first used it, I progressed from catching only ~10% of the words to 90%+ of them in a series of cartoons (Spanish), after just 8 or 9 sessions of this method. I didn't watch the cartoons during that time, and it wasn't the cartoons' transcripts that I used with this method - this methods improves your own listening ability and the ability transfers to things outside of the transcripts you use.

For me, the method means, in essence, doing a session of matching a piece of audio to its corresponding transcript followed by multiple relistening to the same piece of audio when commuting or doing housework, hearing but not necessarily listening. I use transcripts I can understand without dictionary, with audios of which words I can catch ~90%. I used to use audios of about 10 minutes long, but now I prefer shorter ones. A matching session takes me about 3 times the length of the audio - I listen twice while reading the transcript, plus overhead. So about 10 minutes per session now.

[iguanamon]

There is a transcript and audio. Sometimes, for a brief time window, at least with Portuguese, they may be out of sync for a little while until they get around to updating it. Tomás' post saying "today's news" was what threw me off. I apologize for not answering his post adequately.

The NHK site is poorly designed, it always has been. Here's a brief tutorial on how to listen with the transcript:

1) Click the link I posted
2) Wait for the page to fully load
3) Scroll to the bottom third of the page where you will see a button called "escuchar" (listen) (it is also downloadable as an mp3 by clicking "podcast RSS"
4) The embedded audio player will open in a separate window. Click pause
5) Scroll back up to the top story and click it
6) Click the play button in the audio player
7) Read and listen
8) On the right hand side of the screen is the list of stories in order. Before the current news item ends, click on the next story in the list and continue to read and listen.

This looks complicated but it really isn't. It's just not clear on a first look. NHK has never made their site user friendly in this regard. As I said, they don't make it obvious, but it is indeed there. Their newscasts helped me a lot when I was training my listening with Portuguese. I don't listen to NHK much these days, but if I were learning a next language that they cover, I certainly would. That transcript for each individual item was invaluable to me.

[smallwhite]

they may be out of sync for a little while until they get around to updating it

OK. That's my experience, too.

The NHK site is poorly designed, it always has been.

I know. I used to just manage to stand it, and used it occasionally for maintenance; but shortly after they rolled out their current interface, I gave up altogether. But then again, I think the news section is designed to be either read or listened to, and not both like what we do.

[Ari]

Dubbed shows, man. I find listening to dubbed TV shows and movies is a lot easier than listening to native material. I'm currently plowing through Family Guy episodes dubbed to German, and Game of Thrones did a lot for my Portuguese. It's also a way to watch American TV guilt-free.

[Tomás]

There is a transcript and audio. Sometimes, for a brief time window, at least with Portuguese, they may be out of sync for a little while until they get around to updating it. Tomás' post saying "today's news" was what threw me off. I apologize for not answering his post adequately.

The NHK site is poorly designed, it always has been. Here's a brief tutorial on how to listen with the transcript:

1) Click the link I posted
2) Wait for the page to fully load
3) Scroll to the bottom third of the page where you will see a button called "escuchar" (listen) (it is also downloadable as an mp3 by clicking "podcast RSS"
4) The embedded audio player will open in a separate window. Click pause
5) Scroll back up to the top story and click it
6) Click the play button in the audio player
7) Read and listen
8) On the right hand side of the screen is the list of stories in order. Before the current news item ends, click on the next story in the list and continue to read and listen.

This looks complicated but it really isn't. It's just not clear on a first look. NHK has never made their site user friendly in this regard. As I said, they don't make it obvious, but it is indeed there. Their newscasts helped me a lot when I was training my listening with Portuguese. I don't listen to NHK much these days, but if I were learning a next language that they cover, I certainly would. That transcript for each individual item was invaluable to me.

Thanks very much. This is a great resource. The Spanish news readers speak clearly and using straight-forward language. I predict that I will be listening to this every morning for a while.

[Montmorency]

I'm not worried about frustration. I have always been the kind of person that enjoys the journey more than the destination. Frustration is just a part of it. What I worry about is reaching a level of fluency that I'm happy with and losing interest.

The predominant advice here seems to be to pay attention to shows for beginners or children. This seems like sound advice. Putting this advice to use, I started watching the animated El Chavo program today. The childlike voices took some getting used to, but once I got past that it went well. Especially since the actions of the characters was so closely related to the dialogue.

This may not be exactly what you want, but it might be worth a look at:

http://www.veintemundos.com

Quite a lot of the articles are about Latin American themes, although not 100%. Audio + transcript. It's not spontaneous speech but obviously someone reading a prepared text, but it's still a good chance to hear the spoken language with a reliable transcript (if you need it), plus some vocabulary help (if you need it). If nothing else, it's a chance to learn a bit about the cultures of the various countries featured.

[reineke]

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