Introduction
Dia daoibh, friends and neighbors! That’s Irish for “Hello y’all!” What? You know I also want to learn Irish, right? 😁 I gotta start somewhere with it! Eventually I’ll move from Spanglish into SpIrnglish!
Bienvenido de nuevo a mi blog. This week I take a look at some ways YouTube helps me learn, for now, Spanish. The channels I discuss here are Spanish-learning or -language channels; when I start in with Irish, I will make a post for Irish-language channels.
YouTube is quite the useful tool for both immersing yourself in a language and for getting instruction in that language. YouTube is also easy to watch on my phone for language practice on-the-go.
By and large I’ve found the channels to be very useful. There are an extraordinary number of channels dedicated to language learning out there. Of course, there are also plenty of channels for language enjoyment. There are enough channels that it’s a simple matter to weed out the annoying ones and still have super-useful channels remaining. I generally decide within a video or two about if I want to subscribe or ignore. I have a pretty decent lineup in my subscription list, so these days a channel needs to really impress me before I’ll subscribe to it.
Channel/Video Types
When I look for channels on YouTube, I’m primarily looking for teaching channels. I feel that’s due to my self-confidence levels; I sometimes don’t trust myself to listen and understand. I’m working on it. I do have some “enjoyment” channels, and I’m trying to incorporate more of those into my subscription list.
Teaching channels tend to be in a mix of English and Spanish, or the teacher’s speaking is well-enunciated. With a few channels they may also speak slower than they do naturally. Some presenters try to convey specifics about verb usage or other grammatical information. Some of them also incorporate structured listening practice with questions the viewer can pause to answer. There are a couple I’ve encountered that are specifically listening practice channels. Most channels will also have videos discussing regional slang, like “¿Qué onda?”* that you won’t find in the language text books, by and large.
Enjoyment channels run the gamut of anything you’d watch in your native language. Singers, news, science, and information. Cats and dogs. I find these to be useful because they’re just the video creator trying to make entertaining or interesting content. It’s a good way to get a feel for the natural conversational flow of the language. TV shows and movies are okay, but I sometimes think, “Real people don’t talk like that!” Hearing native speakers just being themselves and making cool videos about things they enjoy—that’s a great way to dive into the flow of the language.
Find some enjoyment channels that click with you, so that you’ll actually watch them. Musicians, how-to videos, history videos, anything you like. You’ll soon start actively hearing the idiomatic sayings that the language learning videos discussed. I still get that feeling of satisfaction and joy when I hear and recognize some of those sayings! And some of them are really weird, to my USA thinking! Like, “Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente.”
I’ll let you Google that; it’s SFW. 😁
Configuration
You might want to consider how your personal YouTube account is set up to watch these videos. Do you want them all mixed in with your other subscriptions and viewing history, or would you rather they be isolated both for ease of access and to keep your primary YouTube feed focused on whatever is your primary viewing interest? Personally, I have all my subscriptions a-jumble in my primary account. I have a separate Netflix profile for Spanish-language shows, but on YouTube I just have my primary channel.
For now.
I have created a new channel that will only have language stuff on it. Accessing it requires tapping on the profile avatar and choosing “Switch Account”, though, and, well, that’s a lot of work, right? I’m too lazy for my own good… 🙄
If you want to encapsulate your language YouTube, it’s easy, but not intuitive. You don’t have to make a separate account, just a new channel. Especially if you are a YouTube Premium subscriber, use a new channel instead of making a brand-new Google account. That way your ad-free watching will extend to the new channel.
In YouTube on the desktop, click on your account icon in the upper right corner of the browser. You’ll see the menu there, and the second item should be “Switch Account”. Click that, and you'll see the accounts you’re in charge of there. Under that list (or that one) you should see an “View all channels” menu item. Click that and go through the New Channel steps of filling out the name, etc. When that’s created, you can easily switch between your channels with that “Switch Account” menu item. Easy-peasy! The YouTube algorithm will feed you more of what you watch in that channel only in that channel.
My Favorite (Spanish) Channels
There are a couple things that really endear a language-learning channel to me. Closed captions are important; I look for captions to be “Spanish”, not “Spanish (auto-generated)”. I want the subtitles the creator deliberately included in the video. Some video creators embed captions in the video itself, so the YouTube captions need to be turned off. Otherwise, the YouTube captions will block out the in-video captions. Alright, here are my personal favorite channels!
My current top favorite for learning in Hola Spanish. The instructor is Brenda Romaniello and, as far as I know, she’s an actual qualified Spanish teacher. She’s Argentinian but lives in Australia. I find her content absolutely rock-solid. Her accent is more neutral, and she mainly teaches Latin American Spanish. Her enunciation is superb, and her speaking pace is quite accessible. She is actually teaching, usually in 20- to 30-minute lessons. She also has some listening exercise videos where she’ll tell a story and then ask questions about it. She does include captions directly in the video but not for every second of the video. I find her easy to understand even if I don’t know the word(s) she says. I highly recommend this channel. Hola Spanish posts videos regularly.
Spanish After Hours is another channel I fervently recommend. She hasn’t been posting regularly as of late, but her Beginner Spanish, Intermediate Spanish, and Comprehensible Input playlists are just fantastic. She is Spanish, I think from the south of Spain, so her accent is more akin to Latin American Spanish, but she uses vos/vosotros conjugations. Regardless of which dialect you focus on, go subscribe and work through all her videos. She does have YouTube captions and enunciates quite well. She is also charming and amusing, so easy to watch and learn from. I hope she can get back to creating new videos!
Another channel I really love is Spring Spanish, where they focus a lot on learning chunks, or phrases. The channel has several teachers, and they tend to focus on Mexican Spanish. I find their speaking to be very well enunciated and at a comfortable pace. Their videos tend to be relatively short, 10-20 minutes. Many of their videos also focus on idioms that one might encounter in Mexico or how to speak more colloquially. They also have the occasional listening practice video, but as most of their videos are mostly in Spanish, each video is, in itself, listening practice.
This one is a teaching channel but with a lot of on-the-street question-and-answer with local people. The channel is Easy Spanish. They are a mix between Spanish and Mexican Spanish, in separate videos, of course! Their captions are embedded in video and include both Spanish and English. This is as much cultural learning as it is language learning; I find it interesting to hear local answers to questions, and their teaching videos are generally quite useful.
I love this next creator so much! This for me is an enjoyment channel. Several years ago, she posted teaching videos, but nowadays focuses on linguistics. The channel is Linguriosa, and her old teaching videos are absolutely worth going back to watch. I find her current linguistics videos superinteresante and extremely entertaining, as well as actually informative. She is northern-ish Spanish and has the accent to match, plus she speaks rapid-fire. She enunciates superbly, so if you want some practice listening to fast (or normal for them, I reckon) speakers, thumbs-up for this creator. She does upload YouTube captions, but also embeds some captions in her videos, in addition to her on-screen placards and whatnot. Sometimes the YouTube captions can obscure those, but my ears don’t yet go fast enough to keep up without the captions.
For Spanish you can find other content creators, like Karol G or Shakira or other musicians. Beyond Linguriosa I haven’t branched out much for plumbing or kittens or other non-language-learning content. Oh, I do watch Paola Hermosín, a Spanish guitarrista. She plays and teaches music, and her videos are very entertaining. She occasionally dips into English, but sticks to her native Spanish most of the time. She’s also a superb guitar player.
Go Forth and ‘Tube!
Welp, that’s the short list of my most-watched YouTube channels for Spanish learning. There are a few others that I’m subscribed to, and I might or might not watch them if they pop up in my Recommended feed. The channels I’ve listed above are ones that I seek out to watch their new videos. Several of them also have paid classes and resources that they talk about in their videos, but that’s fine. Their videos are entertaining and full of useful content, so I don’t mind them talking about their paid stuff for a minute or two.
Do you have any specific YouTube channels for learning Spanish (or Irish, maybe? 😁)? If so, leave a comment below with your favorite(s)! And, si has estado, ¡gracias por leer! ¡Hasta la próxima!
Footnotes:
* ¿Qué onda? – Literally “what wave?” but is slang in [Mexico] for “What’s up?” or “How’s it going?”