Episode: 3320
Title: HPR3320: YouTube Channels for Learning Spanish, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3320/hpr3320.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 20:43:27

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3,324 Friday, on April 2021, today's show is entitled
YouTube channels for learning Spanish, Part 2, and in part on the series Languages, it is
posted by a huker, and in about 15 minutes long, and carry my clean flag.
The summer is my review on some YouTube channels offering free Spanish language lessons.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello, this is Huka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode,
and I'm going to continue my language learning with the second episode on YouTube channels for
learning Spanish. I already put up one that covered some of them, but there's a lot of YouTube
channels, and I spend a lot of time on YouTube, so here's some more. The first one I want to talk
about today is how to Spanish. How to Spanish has a Mexican focus, and that matters because Spanish is
different in different countries, just as English is different. I seem to recall something that
Churchill said that Britain and the United States were, as he put, two countries divided by a
common language, and it is much the same with Spanish. Spanish, as spoken in Spain, has some
vocabulary differences, and some significant differences in pronunciation. And within Latin
America, Mexican, Spanish, and Argentinian Spanish are different as well. From what I've learned
so far, people will understand you no matter which variant you speak, and I'm not yet encountered
anything as interesting as the phrase to knock someone up. I'm told that in England this only
means to visit and knock on their door, while in the US it is slang for getting someone pregnant.
How to Spanish started off as an audio podcast, but not a free one. You would have to join their
Patreon to get access there, which would also include PDF downloads at the transcripts. But when
they added the YouTube channel, that is free and open to anyone. The episodes are all in Spanish,
so this would be good for practicing listening, but probably not for complete beginners.
You would probably need to get to somewhere around the A2 level in the CEFR. Remember we talked
about that last time? Common European framework for reference, for languages? So you probably need
to get to the A2 level before this would be very helpful to you. Not quite there yet, but I find
is I'm listening to more of these, it's gradually getting me there. Now the next one I want to talk
about is one of the big ones, SpanishPod101.com. Now that's a site I was kind of doubtful about when
I first started in large part because of the relentless sales pitches. I have warmed to the site
sense and even upgraded my membership. Now the YouTube channel is completely free, though if you
subscribe, they will send you endless notifications of sales pitches. But just because they put
them there does not mean you have to listen to any of them. Now the channel has a number of
different series. One of the most interesting is hosted by two young men from Mexico,
Efrain and Diego. And of course they focus on Mexican, Spanish and culture. They do at least one
video a week normally of around a half hour. And incorporate some test questions if you happen
to make it to the live broadcast. I mean you can participate in the test if you're on the live
broadcast. They have a live chat feed going on. Then there's a sporadic series by Victor Trejo
also from Mexico that is a little more systematic about the grammar, aimed at beginners.
There's also a series featuring Rosa who is Spanish. And her series mostly focuses on vocabulary,
teaching you words and phrases in Spanish. And they have done something interesting with hers. They
have been sort of building this mammoth video where they started with 15 minutes of content.
And the next week they added another 15 minutes and sent it out as a 30 minute. And in a week
after that, they had another 15, sent it out as 45. They're up to over four hours, you know,
which you could sit and listen to if you wanted to. Interesting approach. I will sometimes just
listen to the first, were first couple of parts and then say, okay, I gotta move on. I have a life
to lead. Another host there, Brenda Romaniello, who we previously mentioned for her Ola Spanish
series also appears on this channel. And these are just the currently active video series,
as I have encountered them in the last five months or so. There's an archive of earlier series,
such as the weekly Mexican Spanish words with Alex, the introduction to Spanish series.
They have a Spanish in three minute series, which is very much a beginner's look. And with short
videos, you can make a quick beginning. Now there's more to SpanishPod101.com than just the
YouTube channel. But we'll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, there's a great wealth
of material here. And just the free YouTube videos alone are a great resource. And so, yeah,
you do have to put up with the sales pitch, but I think there's good stuff here.
The next channel, Dreaming Spanish, is a channel that has within it multiple series at different
levels, from super beginner to beginner to intermediate to advanced. The videos are all in
Spanish, but if you view ones appropriate for your level, they're a great way to practice your
listening comprehension. Now they base their approach on something called the Automatic
Language Growth Theory from Dr. J. Marvin Brown. And I put a link to that in the show notes,
which says that the best way to become fluent is not to study grammar, but to listen and absorb
the language. And a second influence they cite is Stephen Crashan, who has something called
Comprehensible Input Theory. And a brief description of that. Comprehensible input is
language input that can be understood by listeners, despite them not understanding all the words
and structures in it. It is described as one level above that of the learners if it can only
just be understood. According to Crashan's theory of language acquisition, giving learners this
kind of input helps them acquire language naturally rather than learn it consciously.
So what both of these are basically doing is they're asking a question and say,
how did children learn language? And mostly they don't learn it by studying grammar in school.
I mean there may come a point where they do, but mostly they acquire it by just absorption.
They're hearing it spoken around them all the time and it just kind of sinks in.
Now, the beginner series, for instance, is hosted by a man who illustrates everything he says
in Spanish, again, remember, by drawing little stick figures. It does help you to follow what he's
saying. Then I watched one of the advanced series videos that showed a woman making chilés
or anos in her kitchen. She was talking very fast, so I could not really follow her, but I could
recognize some words and phrases. Now, there's a lot of material here, over 500 videos total,
the majority beginner level, but also a good number of intermediate and advanced, and they are
releasing new videos every week. Why not Spanish? This channel, Why Not Spanish, has a format you see
frequently in YouTube and podcasts where there is a native Spanish speaker and a student
learning Spanish. Often there are a couple, which is the case here. Now, the YouTube videos are
mostly a way of publicizing the courses they sell, but that's true of many of the YouTube channels.
Most of the videos are fairly short, and of late it looks like a number of them revolve around
the move of Cody, the student, and Maria, the teacher, to Columbia. Now, this is not one of my
top channels, but I do enjoy it. Sometimes it's just a little over my head, but there was
a story. I watched an episode last night, which had Maria making a soup, and then Cody
going to get identity documents from the government. So, I understood some of it anyway.
Next, Spanish After Hours. Now, this is a recent arrival on YouTube, but the host Laura has
done about 30 videos in five months, and that's not bad. So, you're talking about an average of
a little more than one a week. So, I've got to give her props for that. Now, I learned about her
channel when she was a guest on the Dreaming Spanish channel and decided to subscribe. Now,
her channel is at the intermediate level, which is a little above where I am now. I'm still a
beginner, but it is a little easier because her videos all have English captioning. It's just
enough to be a challenge without being frustrating. Now, the next one, Spanish Land School.
This is a channel I have found particularly helpful for working on my listening comprehension.
The host Andrea Alger is from Columbia. She's full of energy. What helps is that there are
subtitles in Spanish, and also she sometimes gives the English translation for what she's saying.
The videos are short and mostly no more than 10 minutes and come out about once a week on average,
and with the archive going back three years, there's a lot of content here. Now, she also released a
short mini-series on active listening, which is free, and I signed up for that, and I've taken the
first two parts of that. I think there's five videos total. So, this is some good stuff worth looking
at. Now, the last one I want to talk about today is something called Spanish with Paul. Now,
this is again one of those things where the YouTube channel is marketing for courses that are
available for sale. So, the YouTube is not what I would call systematic. It's not really much
discussion of grammar. You don't really learn all the verb conjugations, but what it does do
is get you up and speaking pretty quickly. He shows you how to quickly build vocabulary,
such as by looking for Spanish words that are similar to English words. For example, words that
end in ECT in English are frequently the same except they end in ECTO in Spanish. So, for example,
correct in English is correct though in Spanish. Perfect in English is perfect though in Spanish and
so on. Then he's got a mini course that has videos which are longer at over 30 minutes and shows you
how to say common phrases. Now, if I was planning a trip to a Spanish-speaking country that would
happen in three months, I would definitely put more effort into these videos for the quick payoff.
However, for someone who wants to actually achieve mastery of the language, I would expect to spend
some years using other tools. Now, that said, it could be that all the systematic stuff happens in
the courses and I'm not paying for them. So, I don't really know. But this is just my impression of
of the free videos. Now, Paul is British and lives in Mexico and has set up an operation
selling making and selling courses. Now, I don't see any evidence that he has added any videos in
the last year or so though he is actively promoting his courses and I know because I get email from
him. I don't know anything about the courses. If you like his approach, you may want to try them.
I'm not opposed to paying for courses. As I mentioned in the previous episode, I bought a course
from Coffee Break Spanish. I use several paid apps and websites as well. But that's for places I
want to visit daily. And while I enjoy some of what Paul does, it is more an occasional thing for
not a daily driver. And with that, I think I have pretty much concluded my look for now at the
various YouTube channels I use for studying Spanish. As I said in the previous episode, there's
lots of YouTube stuff available for all kinds of languages and it's a great resource that you should
take a look at. But for now, this is a hookah signing off and as always, I encourage you to support
free software and support free language learning. So, bye bye for now.
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