Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

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Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby RubiksKid » Tue Jun 25, 2019 9:31 pm

Hello. As the title says, I'm looking for shows in Spanish (specifically that from Mexico) to improve my listening comprehension. Does anybody know of anything I could find online that's free that also includes Spanish subtitles? I think that would be ideal.

I would really appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks in advance!

-Nick
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Jun 25, 2019 11:31 pm

RubiksKid wrote:Hello. As the title says, I'm looking for shows in Spanish (specifically that from Mexico) to improve my listening comprehension. Does anybody know of anything I could find online that's free that also includes Spanish subtitles? I think that would be ideal.

I would really appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks in advance!

-Nick

Hi, Nick,
Have a look at the first page of the Spanish Group on this forum, then browse through the rest of that thread.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Jaleel10 » Wed Jun 26, 2019 12:26 pm

https://www.telemundo.com/
Biggest telenovela network in the world. Many of the popular shows contain subtitles
Some popular ones:
- El señor de los cielos
- La reina del sur
- Señora Acero

An alternative to telemundo is Univision https://www.univision.com/shows/series
They have a wider variety of content in terms of genres

If you're interested in Spanish from Spain you can google ''RTVE'' and if you're interested in the Argentinian dialect ''Telefe'' is your best bet.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Hank » Wed Jun 26, 2019 9:29 pm

When I was working on listening comprehension I found La familia P. Luche and La rosa de Guadalupe to be the most comprehensible Mexican tv programs. You can find episodes of both shows on YouTube, but I don't know if they have subtitles.

La familia P. Luche is an adult comedy and is really funny. La rosa de Guadalupe is for a younger audience, maybe pre-teen or teen, but it's fairly entertaining. A lot of actors and actresses who are now stars in Mexico were on this show when they were younger.

If you have Netflix there are quite a number of Spanish language shows on there, and the subtitles are very good.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby RubiksKid » Thu Jun 27, 2019 10:56 pm

Tom wrote:Do you have netflix or do you mean free online?

I do have Netflix, so either option would work.

Jaleel10 wrote:https://www.telemundo.com/
Biggest telenovela network in the world. Many of the popular shows contain subtitles
Some popular ones:
- El señor de los cielos
- La reina del sur
- Señora Acero

An alternative to telemundo is Univision https://www.univision.com/shows/series
They have a wider variety of content in terms of genres

If you're interested in Spanish from Spain you can google ''RTVE'' and if you're interested in the Argentinian dialect ''Telefe'' is your best bet.

Thank you for the recommendation. I briefly checked out La reina del sur and it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. The subtitles work too, so that's awesome! The only thing is that the ads are painfully long to endure, and there's no way to avoid them. New window, new tab, nothing works. I think I'll just mute it and study with Anki until they're over.

Hank wrote:When I was working on listening comprehension I found La familia P. Luche and La rosa de Guadalupe to be the most comprehensible Mexican tv programs. You can find episodes of both shows on YouTube, but I don't know if they have subtitles.

La familia P. Luche is an adult comedy and is really funny. La rosa de Guadalupe is for a younger audience, maybe pre-teen or teen, but it's fairly entertaining. A lot of actors and actresses who are now stars in Mexico were on this show when they were younger.

If you have Netflix there are quite a number of Spanish language shows on there, and the subtitles are very good.

I'm going to see if I can find them on Netflix. That would be awesome. I haven't used Netflix in months, but I do have an account through my parents. Thank you for the recommendations.

Anyway, I leave for work soon today, but tomorrow is my day off, so I'll be spending more time going through these resources. Thank you all for the replies!
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby golyplot » Fri Jun 28, 2019 5:41 am

RubiksKid wrote:The only thing is that the ads are painfully long to endure, and there's no way to avoid them. New window, new tab, nothing works. I think I'll just mute it and study with Anki until they're over.


Luckily, La reine del sur is also on Netflix.

Anyway if you want something that isn't just a soap opera or about drug dealers, as every Mexican show on Netflix seems to be, there's also a Mexican cartoon on Netflix called Legend Quest.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby RubiksKid » Tue Jul 09, 2019 7:02 pm

Hank wrote:When I was working on listening comprehension I found La familia P. Luche and La rosa de Guadalupe to be the most comprehensible Mexican tv programs.

I've started watching La familia P. Luche on YouTube and I've found it to be good listening practice. I've watched several episodes so far. I'm definitely going to continue watching.

golyplot wrote:Luckily, La reine del sur is also on Netflix.

Yeah, I started watching it on Netflix. It's much (MUCH) better without all the ads. I watch it with Spanish subtitles, and I alternate between this and La familia P. Luche.

golyplot wrote:Anyway if you want something that isn't just a soap opera or about drug dealers, as every Mexican show on Netflix seems to be, there's also a Mexican cartoon on Netflix called Legend Quest.

I found the show, but it seems to only be available in English, although it's listed as a Mexican TV show. Maybe there's an option to watch it in Spanish. I'm not sure.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby golyplot » Wed Jul 10, 2019 12:02 am

I watched Legend Quest in Spanish, so it's definitely possible. It would be very weird if Netflix *removed* language options.

Edit: I just checked and Spanish is (still) a supported audio option, among many others. Although English is listed as [Original].
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby drp9341 » Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:18 pm

The accents within Mexico differ in interesting ways, and some of them (i.e. heavy norteño) can be pretty challenging at first.
There's two types of Mexican TV shows - shows for Mexicans and shows made for Spanish speakers in general.
(Most shows produced by Telemundo fall into the 'all Spanish speakers' category.)


If you can't understand Mexican Spanish because of the accent itself, (not the grammar and slang confusing you,) then check out the Phonetics section on Wikipedia's Mexican Spanish page. Watching Telemundo shows might be good for you, simply because it's "tidied up" Mexican Spanish, and will get you used to the rhythm and the phonological differences.

One very Mexican feature is the way stress consonants. Lots of South American and Caribbean accents sounds like "all vowels" to me. This is because Mexican Spanish weakens a lot of vowels, (vowels in a position like the 'o' in "muchachos" sometimes gets pronounced like the "u" in the English word "up") and they emphasize the consonants a lot more. There's also the rhythm, which is quite sing-song like, but that shouldn't take that long to get used to.

Netflix is great for Mexican Spanish.
I had watched lots of Mexican telenovelas. However it wasn't until I started watching 'Club de Cuervos' when it first came out that I realized I didn't understand Mexican Spanish that well. I used the website https://www.asihablamos.com/ for lots of words. I thought I understood those words, but I didn't actually. Wisely using the English subtitles helped a lot. I would turn them on whenever I wasn't sure if I understood. The words used are pretty useful - words that have to do with drinking, technology or sports instead of drug trafficking. The slang is also more or less commonly used slang that you'll hear when Mexicans in their 20's talk with each other.

I would recommend starting with Club de Cuervos and studying the different expressions. Rewind and try to shadow the characters if you still have trouble with the accent itself.

NOTE: Not all the characters are Mexican, almost all are Mexican though.
NOTE 2: The language varies between characters, but it's mostly upper class slang without an overly "fresa" (Mexican word for posh,) intonation. A lot of the 'poorer / not-über-rich' characters speak very similarly to the way lots of Mexicans you'll speak to in real life speak.
Comedy (whether standup, or something like Club de Cuervos) is a great way to check if you understand the "slang" well. If you don't understand the meanings that well, you wont find it funny.

After that, check out 'Diablero'

This is probably harder to understand, but after 4 seasons of Club de Cuervos you should be ready.


At this point, you should check out...
'Yankee'

This show has a very high production quality and will introduce you to lots of Mexican Slang you will not have heard much from the other shows. They all speak with a 'Norteño' accent in this show. Some features are the 'ch' sound sometimes becoming a 'sh' sound and words combing like French or English - "tengo que" sometimes becomes something like "teng'que" for example. This show will introduce you to words your more likely to hear from Mexican immigrants in the US - at least in my experience.


Another show to watch to see how the high class Mexicans in Mexico city speak is "Made in Mexico"

This will overlap A LOT with the kind of Mexican Spanish you hear in Club de Cuervos in terms of vocabulary and the 'spanglish' used. Also, since it's "not scripted" the way they speak will be more realistic. Most people don't have the ability to fluently and eloquently speak fluently, while cleverly choosing there words in everyday life like the characters on a TV show. In other words... we don't memorize, rehearse and then actually say entire monologues that were written by professional writers.


There's one documentary about Lucha Libre on Netflix that I liked a lot for it's Spanish. It's a funny little documentary, and the characters speak a very unpolished Mexican Spanish.


A great podcast is "El Podcast de Alex Fernandez."


Mexican Spanish is really rich in slang. I think it's important to be able to separate Mexican and 'Standard' Spanish so that you don't confuse Spaniards or Latin Americans. No one in Argentina had any idea what 'una chela' or 'una chamba' meant.

Mexican Spanish is really funny to me, I like how it's so creative, and how to use certain words in ways I wouldn't ever predict. Even though it's not my favorite accent in terms of how it sounds, vocabulary and creativity wise it's awesome.
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Re: Shows in Spanish (Mexico) for improving listening comprehension?

Postby RubiksKid » Tue Jul 16, 2019 8:50 pm

To drp9341:

Thank you so much for taking the time to go through and list different resources. I really appreciate it. I'm going to start with Club de Cuervos and then go from there.

golyplot wrote:I watched Legend Quest in Spanish, so it's definitely possible. It would be very weird if Netflix *removed* language options.

Edit: I just checked and Spanish is (still) a supported audio option, among many others. Although English is listed as [Original].

Okay, cool. I must have missed something then. Until recently, I never really used Netflix. Thanks again!
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