Category: Media

Posted on

Patricio’s recommendation of the week: Listen to more Spanish music!

Listening to music in the language you’re learning helps you improve your pronunciation, listening skills, and even grasp some grammar patterns. It’s fun, you can do it anywhere, and it’ll expand your Spotify playlist. Here’s some of my favorite artists broken down by genre.

Pop & Folk Music

La Quinta Estación – El Sol no Regresa, Algo Más, Me Muero

Natalia Lafourcade – Nunca es Suficiente, Soledad y el Mar, María la Curandera

Camila – Todo Cambió, Mientes, Coleccionista de Canciones

Juanes – A Dios Le Pido, Es Por Ti

Jesse & Joy – La De La Mala Suerte, Dueles, Llegaste tú

Sebastian Yatra – No Hay Nadie Más, Quiero Decirte, Tacones Rojos

Reguetón

Danny Ocean – Dembow, Me Rehúso, Mónaco, Volare, Swing, Cuando me Acerco a Tí (I love him)

Rauw Alejandro – La Nota, Todo De Ti, Algo Mágico, BESO

ROSALÍA – DESPECHÁ, LA NOCHE DE ANOCHE, BESO

KAROL G – TQG, MAMII, Si Antes te Hubiera Conocido

Oldies but goodies

Mecano – Mujer Contra Mujer, Cruz de Navajas, Me Cuesta Tanto Olvidarte

Emmanuel – La Chica de Humo, Insoportablemente Bella, Bella Señora

Sin Bandera – Entra en Mi Vida, Que Lloro, Sirena

Luis Miguel – La Incondicional, Culpable O No, Ahora Te Puedes Marchar

Posted on

This is your sign to learn Icelandic! Do it with Drops!

This week’s recommendation is to learn Icelandic. It is believed to be the hardest Germanic language to learn for English speakers. It has some intense grammar and complex pronunciation. But you should learn it anyway! Icelandic is the closest living relative to Old Norse, which was spoken by Vikings. I’ve been trying to learn it and Drops is so far the best app to do it. One of the best features it has is lessons to teach you how to pronounce the extensive alphabet, which is tricky as there’s a mix of rolling r’s similar to Spanish, the eu sounds similar to French, and the gargling r’s from German. Some fun words I’ve learned are Hjàlp! (Hee-owl-fff-p, i.e. help!), tuttugu (impossibe to describe how it’s pronounced, i.e. twenty), and sveppur (sveh-prrr, i.e. mushroom). Some not so fun words I’ve learned are matvöruverslun (…, i.e. grocery store) and sjúkrahús (shoe-crah-whose, i.e. hospital).

Posted on

Drops of God: Patricio’s Recommendation of the week!

I recently watched this show and I absolutely loved it. Drops of God is a multilingual show, which means many languages are spoken throughout the course of the episodes. Depending on which character is speaking, the show switches from English, French and Japanese. Something I found particularly interesting is how the characters’ personalities shift when speaking different languages, which is a common phenomenon in bilingual people. This show will give you a new (and kind of pretentious) perspective of wine, and will probably make you want to swirl and smell any beverage you drink, whether it’s wine or apple juice. Is that a hint of… apple I smell? With… hmmm…. limestone?

Posted on

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon: Patricio’s recommendation of the week!

This week I’m recommending a French book I read a while back, which has also been adapted as a movie. I can’t speak for the movie as I haven’t seen in, but the book is beautifully written and deeply heartbreaking. The author of the book, Jean-Dominique Bauby, suffered a massive stroke, which led to him getting a condition named locked-in syndrome. Trapped in his own body, Bauby wrote this whole book by blinking with his left eye.

Posted on

Amores Perros: Patricio’s recommendation of the week!

This semester I started using Letterboxd and Goodreads a lot more to procrastinate working on my thesis. While probably not the most productive, it did motivate me to start consuming more media in Spanish, French, and German, so I thought I’d start sharing a weekly recommendation! Amores Perros is a movie by Alejandro González Iñarritu, a Mexican filmmaker that has released some great films such as The Revenant and Biutiful. Amores Perros is a devastating movie about different stories that crash together during an accident (figuratively and literally speaking). This movie is such a brutal portrayal of the social problems in Mexico. As the title suggests, dogs play a big part in the story! I’m wondering how they got these dogs to act so well. Are there animal Oscars? If so, it’s a close call between these gnarly dogs and the one from Anatomy of a Fall. That dog can act.

Posted on

Master the AZERTY keyboard with French typing tests!

One of the first things I did while taking French 110 (now 111/112) was add a French keyboard to my laptop and phone. What I didn’t know as a beginning French student was that even the French keyboard layout is different!

Layout of a French AZERTY keyboard from the Mac keyboard settings.

This layout is called AZERTY, with all the additional French characters (ex. ç, é, and à) arranged on number and symbol keys. It also swaps the positions of Q/A, W/Z, and M, which actually helps you type in French faster, believe it or not! As you advance in French, improving your typing (“la dactylographie”) skills will make a difference in typing emails, essays, and texts. Here are two typing practice recommendations to boost your AZERTY typing skills!

Continue reading “Master the AZERTY keyboard with French typing tests!”
Posted on

Mexican media for Spanish learners!

If you’re learning Spanish and are particularly interested in learning how it’s spoken outside the classroom, watching movies and reading books is a great way to learn it. If you’re interested in how Spanish is spoken particularly in Mexico, please for the love of God don’t watch Emilia Pérez. There’s so many things wrong with that movie I could write a whole blog post about it. Instead, here are some recommendations for you to watch! I ranked them in order of the level of Spanish I estimate you need to comfortably understand what’s going on, from easiest to hardest.

Continue reading “Mexican media for Spanish learners!”
Posted on

Petit Poulet, Henry Hühnchen, Pollito Tito… also known as Chicken Little

Petit Poulet, aka Chicken Little, looking at his computer. “Le ciel est en train de tomber!”

THE SKY IS FALLING, and you can read that in three other languages on TheFableCottage.com. I discovered this website with a friend as we attempted to read bedtime stories in each other’s languages. TheFableCottage is a multilingual library of bedtime stories written in French, German, Spanish, and also Italian! Each story has a few features that make it really helpful for beginning students: audio recordings, captioned video animations, illustrations, and English translations if you get stuck. All of their free short stories can be found on each language’s respective website: TheFrenchExperiment.com, TheGermanProject.com, and TheSpanishExperiment.com. (Stories can also be accessed on TheFableCottage, but not all of them are free.) This is a great resource for beginner-level students, as the grammar and vocabulary are written using everyday and simple language. These stories expand upon the beginner-level language you’ve learned so far using a story you’re likely already familiar with. Having an additional resource like this can supplement what you learn in class and in your textbook by creating a new context where you use your target language. For example, you may have introduced a photo of your family to your 100-level class, but you can practice that same family vocabulary in the context of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I found the short stories on TheFableCottage to be the perfect resource for anyone in their first year of a language class, and I recommend that you check it out!

Posted on

Heal your inner child with Chinese kids’ cartoons!

Reading Sara’s post on Soviet Winnie the Pooh truly inspired me. As a beginning Chinese student, I love watching C-dramas, but sometimes it’s a bit challenging to understand what’s going on, especially with the complex love triangles! Children’s cartoons are a great way to introduce yourself to more Chinese media, especially because they’re designed to use elementary-friendly language. Even if they don’t have captions in English, the animation style can make it easy to pick up on the story and characters. Here are some recommendations I’ve found, plus a bonus C-drama recommendation!

喜羊羊与灰太狼 – Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf

Continue reading “Heal your inner child with Chinese kids’ cartoons!”
Posted on

Practice your French and learn some science!

Sometimes the best way to practice a language is by just passively listening to it. This could be in a movie with subtitles, or just an interesting video on YouTube. I see it as letting your subconscious absorb the language through osmosis. Is that even a thing? Maybe there’s a science channel that talks about science-y stuff like that. Wait… there is!

C’est Pas Sorcier is a TV show available on YouTube that explains all kinds of science-related stuff in French. They’re meant for middle and high school students whose first language is French, so they do speak a little fast. I would recommend it for intermediate French speakers (A2 level). My personal favorite is “Comment fonctionne notre électroménager?”, it’s very interesting and the characters are really funny. This show is shown A LOT in French high schools, it’s very nostalgic and even though they’re still releasing new videos, they’ve kept their vintage essence. Go check it out!

Here’s the link to the channel! https://www.youtube.com/@Cestpassorcierofficiel