There's just no way!

Certain parts of these recordings, Im sure no non native speaker who hasn’t lived in spain for like 8 years, could ever understand… I try listening to these once before reading them and it’s just mental…i can catch a word every now and then, some sentences are spoken slow enough that they are understandable… but for example the first line of this lesson “Tú no… ¿no? Eso de los vídeos veo que no te va, ¿eh?” just sounds like noise… I have no idea how anyone in their right mind could possibly make sense of the noise…even a native speaker!! I mean this is coming from someone who’s studied the language for nearly two and half years… After reading the transcript it seems that certain things are just missed, or not pronounced clearly enough, to the point where, if someone was mispronouncing things that much in english, it would come across to me as speaking poorly. I just don’t understand how a non native speaker can ever make sense of some of these things without a transcript…

Well, that recording certainly is a challenge but in my experience it is not that unusual compared to what you’ll actually hear when you are in Spain. Spanish people tend to speak much faster than Latin Americans. I found some things the guy said a bit difficult to understand at first (maybe this also had to do with his microphone), but all in all the recording sounds quite natural.

I may be a bit more used to that kind of speed, since I work a lot with Spanish people and one of my sisters-in-law is Spanish (so we speak Spanish at home as well).

But for learners of Spanish both the speed and probably the casual character of the conversation are certainly a major challenge.

Certainly is fast, but I’m sure Robert is right - it’s probably pretty natural to a native speaker.

I guess it couldn’t have been so bad as all that because even I could follow and understand some of it - and the only Romance language I would claim to speak is Italian.

It´s an “advanced 2” lesson, so I guess it´s supposed to be difficult.^^

" I mean this is coming from someone who’s studied the language for nearly two and half years"

This made me lol^^
At the time when I had studied English for two and a half years, I knew the names of animals, fruits and vegetables and was able to sing songs like “Hello! Hello! Hello! Good morning to you!”.

I should say I’ve lived in Spain and attended an institute in which only Spanish was spoken. Of course they didn’t speak like that, and it may sounds obvious coming from someone who is a native English speaker, but there aren’t many of my English speaking friends who skip sylabes and don’t pronounce in the same way as I hear in recordings like that one. I mean there is speaking fast and clearly which is most likely what I do in English, and then there’s speaking fast and skipping syllables and words which doesn’t help anyone. How I am supposed to associate a sound with a word, when in truth it could be any similar sounding word…

For example there is a radio show I listen to called “buenos Dias con javi y mar” and they do speak quickly and at a native speed, but I can still
Make out what is they say because they don’t mumble and they speak clearly even when they’re speaking at native speed. I can probably understand about 50% of it word to word and the rest I can get from the context. There are English speakers who I do rarely find it difficult to understand , usually because they are not pronouncing things properly enough to understand, much like in this case.

ad Corin: Mumbling certainly is a problem in any language, even when you talk to people in your own native tongue.

Still, I did not find that recording so unusual. It is pretty much what I hear when I watch discussions on TV or talk to native speakers of Spanish. Of course, there will always be people we understand more easily than others.

Even in my line of work, when I interpret at a conference, I sometimes have to ask my colleague to take over because I can’t follow the speaker as well as I’d need to in order to be able to interpret his/her speech. And sometimes my colleagues ask me to take over because they have problems with the way the person we are supposed to interpret speaks, while I don’t have any difficulties.

Btw, I was not trying to belittle your command of the Spanish language when I posted my comment.

“but there aren’t many of my English speaking friends who skip sylabes and don’t pronounce in the same way as I hear in recordings like that one. I mean there is speaking fast and clearly which is most likely what I do in English”

This coming from a Scotsman!

@ corin

I don’t think it is strange that you can’t understand some stuff like this after such a short time learning Spanish. I work in Vienna in English and some of the people I have been working with have been learning and using English for decades (sometimes 40 or 50 years in the cases of the retired professors). I have learned to speak my best English at all times. If I spoke like I did before I came here, nobody would understand anything I say.

They are speaking in an informal situation, laughing and with a slight stammer. For me is easy to understand but for a native speaker I dont think so!

I appreciate all the comments. It’s just frustrating when trying to study it, that’s all. hearing something like could literally sound similar to any different combinations of words…it’s hard to know exactly how to benefit from studying an audio text like that, especially when sometimes i’m just taking the transcripts word for it, because i can’t hear what the person who transcribed it did.

@Colin there are people whom I know of that of course have a very strong informal, suburban scottish accent, but I’d say that average person speaks very clearly in Scotland, just with an accent.

@lovelanguagesIII ha no worries, I didn’t think you were. I was responding to the other comment, as I can certainly do more than naming animals and singing :stuck_out_tongue:

" I was responding to the other comment, as I can certainly do more than naming animals and singing :P"

The guy who wrote the other comment is sorry for not knowing how good you are.

however, pretty much all I can remember of the german I had to study at school is animals, fruit and vegetables, and a few songs.

Well, I guess schools are good at teaching songs and the names of food and animals :slight_smile:
And it only takes a few years…

To me, the title of the lesson says it all!
The laughter makes it hard to understand. I have found the same with some German podcasts, so I listen to something else. However, in the case of this lesson, the transcript helps immensely so I agree with Esko. It isn’t too hard to understand. Personally, I don’t enjoy the vulgarity used in this lesson. Each to his own!

These are REAL conversations, Albert and I used to chat over Skype, but because he had auto-recording for every skype conversation, we decided to use some of them as lessons.

Like Robert says, in Spain we talk much faster than in Latin America. And also in the spoken language you do make a lot of noise sentences, you may start one sentence and then stop and start another one… etc.

When we had those conversations we didn’t know they would end up as lessons (except for the last ones, that we knew). This is the real thing :stuck_out_tongue:

By the way @Ginkgo, the “vulgarity of these lessons” is not such. In Spain we do use lots of swear words, it enriches the language, that’s how we speak here. And unless you use one swear word every 4 words, it’s not vulgar. In the 22th and 23th lesson we explain just that.

@Corin "it’s hard to know exactly how to benefit from studying an audio text like that, especially when sometimes i’m just taking the transcripts word for it, because i can’t hear what the person who transcribed it did. ". Just like Paule says these are Advanced 2 lessons, your command of the language has to be awfully high. Wait a bit and come back in the future, maybe they’ll be a bit easier and you’ll be able to enjoy them. Like I said before, this is the real thing. This is the purest “informal everyday language”.

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Does absolutely everyone talk like that? Certainly many people in Australia do, but not everyone. I didn’t hear it in every conversation between Spanish speakers when I sneakily listened in on conversations in public transport and so forth. I did hear it from a group of young people in a train in Australia a few months ago. There are different norms in different sections of society, for different occasions and between people of different ages. Language can be extraordinarily rich without such words thrown in. I did say, ‘each to his own’. Using such works is not compulsory. You can be understood perfectly well without them.

Ginko let me give you an example

  • ¿Qué haces?
  • ¿Qué coño haces?

The second sentence gives an extra punch, that “coño” there says it all, you don’t mean the same thing. And you can’t translate it into English as “cunt”, because then you’re horrified. Not here in Spain, we use coño a lot and it’s not offensive at all. It also counts the tone you give to the phrase.

The same with:

  • ¡Ya me acuerdo!
  • ¡Coño ya me acuerdo!

If you say to someone you hardly know “¡qué hijo de puta eres!” that is offensive. But if you say the same thing to a friend, it conveys love and appreciation to your friend.

Like I said before, if you overuse those words you are vulgar. But if you use it now and then it enriches the language.

If there is any Spanish out there, please tell me if I’m wrong.

I agree with Berta and I just asked my sister-in-law who is from Valladolid and she agrees too.

Even if you find certain words in a dictionary, this does not mean that when you translate them they will convey exactly the same feeling.

If you want to avoid sounding vulgar, Ginkgo58, I think the important thing is to know what is considered vulgar by native speakers and not by ourselves. This still leaves you and me with enough freedom to not use any of these expressions. I hardly ever do, but this does not automatically mean that I’d sound vulgar if I did.

There are different levels and registers of speech but the rules for using them are not identical in all languages. I guess in all languages it very much depends on who you talk to when and what about.

The conversation in that lesson is certainly not considered to be vulgar by the standards of Spanish native speakers given the setting in which it took place.

You could have said the same things differently, just as you can make sure to never ever use the word “damn” in English or “sh.t” or expressions like “what the hell” or “you are nuts” etc. In certain situations this will make your speech less natural, however, I think. I’m not saying that cursing per se is needed, I hardly every curse in German, but I sometimes use strong language to get my message across.

You don’t have to run around using four-letter words 24 h/day but if we want to sound natural I think we need to go by the standards of native speakers. Of course, we are all free to choose the linguistic register we feel most comfortable with. That’s part of our character.

Thank you Robert! ;=)

And Ginkgo in any case, you really need to know these words, even if you don’t ever want to use them.