Spanish Resources

I've attempted to brush up on my Spanish recently, mostly because I'm a bit short of other things to do until I nail down a consistent job. The internet can be a pretty amazing thing...it provides access to a wealth of resources that one would otherwise have to spend quite a bit of time or money to access. And it allows one to read and listen to a language as its actually written and spoken in the "real world"...not some dumbed down stilted exercises in some textbook and tapes. I've especially appreciated the aural exposure to Spanish that the internet has allowed me.

So - partly so that I have an easy record of sources to access, and partly in the hopes that all this might be helpful to someone reading this someday - here are a number of the online resources I've found to be a great help at this point in my study. (I've enough basic knowledge of Spanish to often (but not always) be able to figure out a word's meaning using a Spanish-to-Spanish dictionary. So I don't know what sorts of resources would be most useful to someone starting from scratch).

Tools

Spaced Repetition Systems. The folks who use SRSs swear by them...so I've joined the club, if only because it's a lot easier than making paper flashcards. Afraid I don't use it as consistently as I should, though.

I've been using Mnemosyne, and Anki is another common one. One thing I really don't like about Mnemosyne, though, is that I can't shuffle the cards. (Maybe I've just missed the checkbox on the options menu?). But I don't know if Anki is any better when it comes to shuffling.

WordReference.com. Specifically, the Spanish-Spanish dictionaries, Spanish-English dictionary, and verb conjugator. All are linked to one another, and there's even links to relevant threads in the WordReference discussion forums that help to flesh out additional nuances, or that include a discussion of the rare word that isn't in the dictionary. (I've used the forum links several times. They're usually very good).

This is holy grail of Spanish online dictionaries. I've looked at several other online dictionaries and translators, and none of them can hold a candle to this site. It's miles ahead of anything else I've seen out there in both ease of use and thoroughness of definitions.

Both of the dictionaries are very good at noting idioms, showing which prepositions go with what verbs, and giving example sentences. Moreover, they do an excellent job identifying the verb you're looking for whenever you type in a conjugated form. Which is an absolute lifesaver when one runs into an unknown irregular form, or isn't even sure that the word they're looking at is actually a verb.

Also, they're so, so, so much faster than flipping through a dead-tree dictionary. And they're especially useful if one is using a computer flashcard program to keep track of words and sentences.

Any Spanish news sites. They're good practice, relatively interesting, and usually not too difficult to understand.

Google! See a word or phrase somewhere, and want to know if it's being used correctly? Or want a couple more examples of how it's used? Want to know which variant of a word or phrase is actually the most common? GOOGLE IT! There's example sentences galore to study and use, right at one's fingertips.

Audio

Huzzah - Spanish radio! I've stuck with stations where there's a lot of talking; so far the best Latin American ones I've found for those purposes have been the AM ones on the Radio Centro site. Good variety, and usually high quality sound. Sometimes they refuse to play on my computer, and I use 920 Noticias as a fallback, but the sound quality can be iffy.

Although I'm somewhat wary of mixing European Spanish in with Latin American at this point...I do very much like RTVE (the Spanish version of NPR, as far as I can tell). It's a rather classy series of stations all around, with few commercials and high sound quality. Channel 1 is news; channel 5 is a wide variety of programs, including interviews and talk shows.

La Biblia de las Americas (New Testament only) - Fluid reading, at what I suppose is a moderate clip of a pace. Whenever I try to run the whole New Testament, it always flashes an ERROR message at me and stops a chapter or a half in. But listening to whole books at a time hasn't been a problem.

Audio Biblia - I can't say I really like this audio Bible. I don't care for the slow speed and jolting voice of the narrator. But it IS the entire Bible, not just the New Testament.

Video

Amar en Tiempos Revueltos - a TV show from Spain.

The only TV shows I've found that come from Latin America are horribly cruddy low-budget soap operas. Which is a shame, because shows are a rather good way of learning to comprehend oral Spanish. However, if you're willing to toss some European-style Spanish into the mix, do check out the Amar en Tiempos Revueltos. It's something of a historical melodrama (historical soap opera?), set in the years surrounding Franco's dictatorship. So there's fights and politics and death, and far grander conflicts and betrayals than mere romantic ones. It's also got excellent production values - crisp filming, intricate period costuming, and I'm assuming good acting (though that's rather hard to tell when I understand only 5% of what they're saying, at best). What I've seen of it, I very much like.

Abre Los Ojos - Watch the entire film online...legally! (And I guess here at IMDB, too.)