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- MCP server with stdio transport for local use
- Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series
- 4,511 episodes with metadata and transcripts
- Data loader with in-memory JSON storage

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Episode: 3164
Title: HPR3164: I'm Learning Spanish
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3164/hpr3164.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:05:00
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3164 for Thursday 17 September 2020. Today's show is entitled,
I'm Learning Spanish. It is hosted by Ahuka
and is about 16 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is
how I am using a variety of tools to learn Spanish.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
HPR15. That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
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.
Hello, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio.
Bringing you another show, something a little different this time.
But, you know, Ken keeps asking for more shows.
So, I've been involved in doing something that I thought I'd report on.
I'm going to start with a joke that I find pertinent here.
The joke is, what do you call a person who speaks three languages?
The answer is trilingual.
And what do you call a person who speaks two languages?
And the answer is bilingual.
Well, what do you call a person who speaks one language?
And the answer is American.
And in many cases that does seem to be the case.
And I thought that since I'm spending all my time at home in the year of the plague,
why not do something productive like learn a language?
And I decided to do just that.
And the one I picked is Spanish.
And the reason is very simple.
It is the majority language of the Western hemisphere.
It is the second most spoken language in the United States.
I would like to visit Mexico and other Latin American countries.
I spent one day in Mexico in my entire life.
And I'll just say that's not enough to feel like you've learned what the country is about.
So I'd like to go back, but I would probably do better if I could speak the language a little bit.
So I thought, I've got time on my hands, so why not?
So I wanted to share with you some of the things that I had come across that are helpful.
Now, I want to emphasize, I wanted to do Spanish.
It is not the only language that tools like this are available.
So if you had a hankering to learn another language, I've been seeing stuff on Japanese, Mandarin, Chinese, Turkish.
Any language you want to learn, there's a lot of stuff out there.
So think of this as encouragement if that's something you want to do.
I'm trying to spend one hour a day on this.
If I keep putting in one hour a day in a year or two, I'm going to do reasonably well.
That's how I'm looking at it.
So I went looking for tools, and I found some that I like and find helpful.
There's a variety, summer free, summer paid for, some of a free level and a paid level.
And for ones like that, the freemium model.
I can use them at the free level until I know whether I would spend the money.
The tools come in basically for forms.
So I went looking for smartphone apps, websites, YouTube channels, and podcasts.
Now that made sense to me because basically it fits my lifestyle.
My smartphone is never far from me.
I've got web browser open 24-7.
I watch a lot of YouTube channels. I listen to a lot of podcasts.
So why wouldn't I look at those things?
Now as I go through these, just note that a lot of these places have multiple channels
to interact with you.
So they might have a smartphone app also has a website, and they may have a podcast,
they may have a YouTube channel.
So you see the same names pop up in several different categories.
Now the other thing is I am not saying these are the best.
They're just the ones that I found and I use, so your mileage may vary here.
However, I have, and if you take a look at the show notes, you're going to see,
I tried to put in reviews on all of these.
So these are things that get generally pretty good reviews as being among the top things available.
Now, a thing about Spanish in particular that you want to watch out for,
you know, a lot of the things that you want to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
you're going to have a lot of things to watch out for, you know,
because Mexican media tends to dominate the Latin American market.
So it's just something that you need to be aware of when studying,
since some of the learning tools may use the Spanish of Spain
and others, the Spanish of Latin America.
So, smartphone apps.
I have an Android phone, so these are apps from the Android App Store.
I'm pretty sure they're all available on the iPhone.
If that's your choice.
So the first one is Babel, B-A-B-B-E-L.
And I've put a link in the show notes to the website.
I've got some reviews, you know, there's a ton of links in the show notes for this,
because I tried to put in reviews.
So for this one, actual fluency, has a review, trust pilot has a review,
all language resources has a review.
So Babel is a program I paid for,
and they offer subscriptions from monthly up to annual,
with annual being the most affordable at $83.40.
Though you can get discounts if you look around for places where they advertise,
I actually paid $22.15 for a six month subscription using a link from SciShow,
which is a YouTube channel, and Babel advertised on it.
So I use that.
It's going to take me through to January.
And right now, my intention is to renew,
because I think I'm getting value for the money.
And if you want to see what you get, if you sign up,
I've put a link in the show notes for that as well.
Now, for my personal take, for me, Babel works well.
It nagged every day.
You may not like that.
But for me, it gets me on to the next lesson very regularly.
I have a number of these apps that do that.
Now, each lesson does not take all that long.
We're talking five to ten minutes.
It combines vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, and sentences.
For the spelling part, they have a keyboard that you can hold down letters to get special characters.
Such as, there's a character in Spanish called the enya,
which looks like an end with a tilde on top,
and they use a lot of accents on vowels and things like that.
So you can get that on the keyboard by holding down the letters.
So this is usually the first thing I do in my hour of Spanish every day.
Next site, duo lingo.
Now, this app can be used for free if you receive ads.
In my case, I used a free trial period for a few weeks.
Then signed up for one year to duo lingo plus for $83.99.
I put a link in the show notes.
This was Apple's 2013 app of the year.
Pretty good recommendation right there.
And I've got some reviews from CNET, PCMag, UK, and a site called Influencer.
So this is a very gamified app that gives you a lot of cheerleading encouragement.
That may or may not be your taste, but I don't object to it.
The sort of thing that, you know, you answer five questions correctly
and little animated character pops up and says, oh, you are amazing.
All right, so what?
As with Babel, I get the daily nags that it is time for a lesson.
And as with Babel, that works for me.
As Woody Allen said, 90% of success in life is just showing up.
And if I do that every day, I will learn the language.
Another one, Memorize.
This app uses the freemium model just like duo lingo.
There is good content for free, but you can get a premium subscription.
So right now, I'm using the paid version for which I got the introductory offer
of $44.99.
And all these prices are all US dollars, of course,
with renewals at $89.99 per year, and I can cancel at any time.
And I've put in reviews from PC Magazine, from all language resources, and life wire.
So Memorize is more of a flashcard app that helps you memorize words and phrases.
The interesting wrinkle here is that it is largely crowdsourced.
So this is the third of my daily apps, and like the others, it gives me daily nags
to take another lesson.
And there's SpanishPod 101.
Now this app is paired with a website, and I actually find the website more useful.
Another freemium model here, I did try the basic subscription,
which is the lowest paid level, which is $72 for two years,
which on an annual basis is less than the others.
And again, website, link in the show notes, and reviews from FluentU,
all language resources, and actual fluency.
So the app focuses on the spoken language, and while it has some uses,
as I said, I tend to use the website more.
The main downside is that they relentlessly try to upsell you.
Right now I am more inclined not to renew in two years, but maybe I'll change my mind.
Having an app on my phone means I can't get in a quick lesson anywhere at any time,
and that's not bad.
And there's one that I was not able to find a website or any reviews anywhere,
but it's a free app on Google Play.
And it's kind of a flashcard app called Spanish Words Learn Esponillo.
It's not as polished.
It doesn't have the bells and whistles of something like Babel or Duolingo,
but you know, it's a free app.
So it shows you a list of words, then drills you to see if you remember what you learned.
Sometimes by spelling out the Spanish equivalent to an English word,
or by selecting the English equivalent from a group before when given the Spanish word,
stuff like that.
And then another one that is a free is called Speak Tribe Spanish.
And that's another free app I downloaded from the Google Play support.
I've got reviews from Android Guys, Educational App Store, and App Groups.
That's another gamified system where you accumulate points needed to move to the next level.
There are five levels, and each one has lessons that combine written in spoken Spanish.
And the last of the smartphone apps is something called Learn Spanish Offline.
Now this is an ad-supported app, so expect a pre-roll ad every time you open it.
It is however free, so that's the trade-off here.
And I've got some reviews from Amazing Talker, App Groups, and App Follow links in the show notes.
So this one you get a list of words, phrases, and sentences in various categories,
such as greetings, general conversation, numbers, time and date.
On each list, just click on a word or phrase in English and hear the translated Spanish equivalent.
Useful is a supplement to other tools, but not sufficient by itself, so it won't cover any of the grammar, for instance.
Now websites, there are two websites that I tend to check into every day.
The first one is that SpanishPod 101 that I mentioned previously.
It also is a smartphone app, and it also shows up as a podcast, so they're all over the place.
So I prefer the website, it's well designed, with short lessons that start by giving you some vocabulary, which you can click on to hear in Spanish.
Then there is a downloadable lesson notes that discuss some aspects of grammar and some cultural insights.
Then there is a dialogue, which you can download in MP3 format and a transcript.
So I tend to download both and play the dialogue while reading along with the transcript.
You can also sign up to get a daily email for the word of the day, which will take you to a page where you can hear the word spoken, both by itself and as part of a few sentences.
The main downside is what I mentioned before, the relentless upsell you get.
I receive an email at least every other day urging me to upgrade my subscription.
As I said right now, I'm inclined to not renew when my subscription runs out, but I have two years to think about it.
And then the last website is Spanish Obsessed, and I've got some reviews from language learning library, fluent you, and the Guardian.
So it's also a great podcast.
But as I said before, a lot of these tools cross over to different media.
You'll have a website, a podcast, a YouTube channel, all from one source.
So you could just download the MP3 files and listen to them on your MP3 player like any other podcast.
And in fact, I do that as well.
But the reason I like to go to the website is that I can read along with them as the audio plays.
Like many other learning Spanish podcasts, this combines a native English speaker with a native Spanish speaker.
Now you can also download both the MP3 file and the transcript from the website.
So this is my first look covering the websites and the smartphone apps that I'm using.
And I'm going to follow up with actually two more.
So I'm going to do one that's going to look at YouTube channels and podcasts.
And then an explanation of the international keyboard and how I implemented that and use it to type in Spanish.
So this is a hook up for hacker public radio signing off.
And as always, encouraging you to support free software.
Bye bye.
You've been listening to hacker public radio at hackerpublicradio.org.
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