Comment by groggo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by groggo | Hacker News Reader

Podcasts are an important part of my language learning stack.

There's a few intermediate French podcasts I listen to. They intentionally speak more slowly and clearly. Sometimes I'll listen to them multiple times, understanding a little more each time. Or I'll re-listen to them with the transcript. Spotify has auto-generated transcripts for some!

Other times I'll listen to native French podcasts for news and stuff. These are much harder to understand, but I'm really excited to get to the level where I can understand these, there's just so much content! Unfortunately slowing them down with Spotify doesn't work great for me.

I listen to them while I run, or in the mornings I'll go outside with my cats and stand around and drink coffee and listen to podcasts.

I found that the voice of the speaker impacts my comprehension quite a lot. Usually lower voices help me.

If I may suggest a French podcast, there used to be history podcast by Jean des Cars "Au coeur de l'histoire" (maybe 5 years ago though). I could listen to him while doing something else and get what he said (I'm native French speaker though). When the speaker changed on the podcast, I remember I had to focus very hard to achieve the same level of understanding.

I had the same phenomenon in English, I used to struggle understanding what the remote team would say on the phone, except one person whose voice what very clear.

I don't know how to describe that other than "I don't hear them with my hears, I hear them with my brain".

Any favorite intermediate French ones? I already have One Thing In A French Day, Duolingo French, and Francais Authentique.

I've got a bunch of native French podcasts as well, mostly on science, but they're often past my limit. About the only one I can handle is Il était une fois, which is also very slow, targeted (I think) to Francophone children.

BTW: I use Pocket Casts. It does a really good job of rendering these at 80% or 90% speed, for a bit of extra help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com