listening to slow "folk" music usually is a good language learning tool, and Cuba Libre by Carlos Puebla is a very easy to understand album. Mira Yanki como nos reimos is also a good meme source.

Edit: I also recently discovered Por qué No Se Van which is also really cool, but it is from Chile so their slightly different pronunciation might trip some folks.

Here's a playlist on YouTube that includes 'game movies'. Someone has taken all the story parts of games and edited them together into movies. The whole list is in Spanish but note that some only have Spanish subtitles whereas others have Spanish subtitles and Spanish audio.

Invidious link: https://yewtu.be/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fplaylist%3Flist%3DPLWxBoZFZCce1LUbtciI2xzDvcXiI8WXH5

Anki is spaced-repetition software. It works on the basis of the 'forgetting curve'. The idea is that new information is soon forgotten but if you remind yourself an hour later, you'll remember till the next day; and if you remind yourself the next day, you'll remember till next week; and if you remind yourself next week, you'll remember for a month, etc.

I've heard that one of the better ways to use Anki is creating your own decks. Personally, I find this to be a lot of effort. Too much for me to bother making individual cards.

I am experimenting with new ways to make cards. I'm no expert but here's what I have found.

The first way is to use Google sheets. In column 1, include a native language word or phrase. There's a formula to translate each of these into your target language using country codes.

For English to Spanish, click cell B1 and enter =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A1,"en","es"). Tap enter. Now click cell B1 then click and hold the 'drag button' in the bottom right of the cell and drag this down column B to the end of the list in column A. This should translate everything. English column A, Spanish column B.

Save the document as a csv file with text separated by tabs or semicolons. Open the Anki app, create a new deck, and import. Find the csv file, play with the settings. Voila.

One way of making lists of useful (to you) words is through Calibre. Put an ebook that you want to read into calibre. Find it in the list, right-click and press 'Edit book'. When the new window opens, click Tools > Reports > Words. Sort by 'Times used'. This arranges all the words in the book by frequency. You can copy this list into Google sheets, as above. If you're new to the language, sort by most frequent as you'll get a better payoff for the effort.

(Be warned that a lot of high frequency words are functional and/or have many, many meanings. If e.g. Spanish is a new language, one or two key definitions is fine to start with. You can add nuance later. You can also delete the proper nouns: e.g. you don't need a translation of 'Marx' if it's the same in both languages.)

If you have a better vocabulary, scroll down and grab the words that are used only e.g. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 times in the book. Getting Anki lists like this, you can front-load the vocabulary for a book that you want to read and memorise the relevant vocab on the bus or the toilet.

(What does Lenin's Imperialismo: fase superior del capitalismo look like word frequency-wise? The top 12 words are de, la, en, el, los, y, que, del, a, las, se, por. The most frequent substantive word, at number 13, used 369 times, is 'desconocido'. Later comes 'Capital' m, used 207 times. 'Imperialismo' 183. 'Bancos' 170. 'Millones' 155. 'Capitalismo' 131. …)

If you read the book at the same time, you'll recognise the vocab as you read. (It might take a long time to come across the less frequent words—one that's only used once might be on the last page.)

Another way of creating lists is using your favourite song lyrics. Get these from a search engine, search for 'song name+letra' then search for the 'song name+lyrics English' to see if there's a translation. If not you can decide how fun it will be for you to translate it yourself or you could use the Google sheets method. Then put one language in one column and the other in the next column. If you have a translation, you can probably use any spreadsheet software. But the cvs file needs to be in UTF-8, I believe.

Another method involves reading books on Kindle. Every time you don't know a word or sentence, click it and get the translation. Then either highlight that word or the whole sentence (for context). Once finished with the book (because it's too hard, boring, or you get to the end) the highlights ('notes') can be exported. (If you read through your notes to recap all the words/sentences that you struggled with, and do it again a week later, it's spaced repetition.)

There's also a way to transfer these notes into Anki cards. There are some scripts/programs in GitHub that could be useful for this. I've not played with it yet but VocabSieve should allow you to import Kindle lookups, translate them, and export this data as a file that can be imported to Anki.

With all these methods, you kind of have to trust the translation software. I've found it to be good enough for English to Spanish. The odd translation is obviously wrong but otherwise, it's fine.

Hopefully these help someone else to avoid the tedium of making Anki decks but in a way that ensures the vocab in your decks is relevant to you.

You can, of course, do things the not-so-old fashioned way. Rather than importing your vocab to Anki, use your spreadsheet. You'll just have to work out the timings for yourself. Then you could hide the first column, and type the translation of the word in the second column into the third column. The next day, hide the first two columns and type the translation of the words in the third column into the fourth column. You can change the colour of rows of words that become too easy and create a colour-coded system for reviewing these monthly, yearly, etc.

Hola amigos,

Hay muchos videojuegos divertidos. Muchos menos con audio o subtítulos españoles. Pero hay algunos.

Skyrim y Fallout 4 continenen muchísimos textos y audios. También Batman: Arkham Knight, Dying Light, Civilisation VI y Dragon Age: Inquisition. Quizás Spiderman. Last of Us, Unchartered, tienen audios y textos pero no tanto cómo estos otros. Pienso FIFA también. (Ten cuidado con Batman y Spiderman porque es fácil que utilizo dinero real en los menus cuando el idioma está menos familiares. No caes en esa trampa.)

Divinity: Original Sin y Red Dead Redemption (y otros juegos rockstargames) tienen textos españoles al menos. Pensé que Divinity tiene audios pero parece que no.

Esto es un listo mas largo de R****t:

• Bethesda stuff (Elder Scrolls, Fallout)
• Blizzard stuff (Diablo, WoW)
• Cyberpunk
• Monster Hunter World
• Witcher 1 [Witcher 3 has Spanish menus, subtitles, etc, but not audio]
• Lost Ark
• Battle Chasers: Nightwar
• Bloodborne/Demon's Souls (maybe not enough voice acting)
• Fable series
• Neverwinter Nights 2
• Lord of the Rings: War in the North
• Sudeki…
• Playstation Studios stuff (God of War, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us, Uncharted, Spiderman, etc.)
• Assassin's Creed series
• Destiny games
• Borderlands series
• Darksiders series (Genesis is an ARPG)
• XCOM series (also Gears Tactics)
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor/War
• Bioshock series
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Sekiro
• Death Stranding
• The newer Deus Ex games
• Ghostwire Tokyo
• Jedi Fallen Order
• Beyond Good and Evil
• Breath of the Wild (minimal voice acting)
• Child of Light (minimal voice acting?)

I'm unsure if all these have audio but they should have the text language in Spanish. Sometimes, on a console, you'll have to download a language pack. With some games the language can be changed at any time: it's either set by your console language or in the game settings. With e.g. [Assassin's Creed], I believe you get one chance to set the language at the start of the save file.

@rjs001@lemmygrad.ml I found four text based games:

• Ord – this is very fun, very straightforward. Play it with a DeepL or Google translate window/app open on another device to look up words quickly.
• Darkside Detective (there's a sequel, too)
• A Place for the Unwilling (this is English-only audio but it looks mainly text-based so it might be possible to just mute the audio and play it as if it's solely text-based)
• Grim Fandango

There is also this list, but I am unsure how safe it is to buy from itch.io or to play the free games in your browser: https://itch.io/games/lang-es/tag-text-based (will you let me know if you have any luck/fun with any of these?)

Edit: forgot to add an example.

This is a parallel text experiment. It's not a my translation. It's the text from the Spanish and English editions on Marxists.org. There are some differences. I won't indent – it's all quotes, from the title onwards. (Edit: footnotes removed.) I'll split it into this into a post and a comment. Hispanohablantes, feel free to point out and correct errors.

Spanish first, then the English, alternating paragraphs.

Déjame saber si este es útil.

Let me know if this is useful.

Pensé que el texto seleccionado es relativamente fácil entender.

I thought that the text selected is relatively easy to understand.

**Mao Tse-tung, 'Stalin: Amigo del pueblo chino'.

… 'Stalin: Friend of the Chinese people'**

Este veintiuno de diciembre, el camarada Stalin cumplirá sesenta[uno] años. Es fácil imaginar que su cumpleaños suscitará cálidas y afectuosas congratulaciones en los corazones de todos los revolucionarios del mundo que conocen esta fecha.

On the Twenty-first of December, Comrade Stalin will be sixty[one] years old. We can be sure that his birthday will evoke warm and affectionate congratulations from the hearts of all revolutionary people throughout the world who know of the occasion.

Felicitar a Stalin no es una formalidad. Felicitar a Stalin significa apoyarlo, apoyar su causa, la victoria del socialismo y el rumbo que él señala a la humanidad, significa apoyar a un amigo querido. Pues hoy la gran mayoría de la humanidad está sufriendo y sólo puede liberarse de sus sufrimientos siguiendo el rumbo señalado por Stalin y contando con su ayuda.

Congratulating Stalin is not a formality. Congratulating Stalin means supporting him and his cause, supporting the victory of socialism, and the way forward for mankind which he points out, it means supporting a dear friend. For the great majority of mankind today are suffering, and mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help.

Nosotros, el pueblo chino, estamos atravesando el período de los más amargos sufrimientos de nuestra historia, un período en que necesitamos más que nunca de la ayuda de otros. Como dice el Libro de las odas, "El ave canta buscando el eco de sus amigos." Este es precisamente nuestro caso.

Living in a period of the bitterest suffering in our history, we Chinese people most urgently need help from others. The Book of Odes says, "A bird sings out to draw a friend's response." This aptly describes our present situation.

Pero ¿quienes son nuestros amigos?

But who are our friends?

Una clase de "amigos" son los que se adjudican ellos mismos el título de amigos del pueblo chino; algunos chinos, irreflexivamente, los llaman también amigos. Pero tales "amigos" no pertenecen sino a la categoría de Li Lin-fu, primer ministro de la dinastía Tang, que tenía fama de ser un hombre con "miel en los labios y ponzoña en el corazón". Son, en efecto, amigos de ese tipo. ¿De quiénes se trata? De lo imperialistas, que declaran tener simpatía por China.

There are so-called friends, self-styled friends of the Chinese people, whom even some Chinese unthinkingly accept as friends. But such friends can only be classed with Li Lin-fu, the prime minister in the Tang Dynasty who was notorious as a man with "honey on his lips and murder in his heart". They are indeed "friends" with "honey on their lips and murder in their hearts". Who are these people? They are the imperialists who profess sympathy with China.

En cambio, hay otra clase de amigos, los que sienten real simpatía por nosotros y nos tratan como hermanos. ¿Quiénes son? El pueblo soviético y Stalin.

However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin.

Ningún otro país ha renunciado a sus privilegios en China; únicamente la Unión Soviética lo ha hecho.

No other country has renounced its privileges in China; the Soviet Union alone has done so.

Durante nuestra Primera Gran Revolución, todos los imperialistas se opusieron a nosotros; únicamente la Unión Soviética nos ayudó.

All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us.

Hopefully this works. It might be time limited.

The 'Shorts' reel on the CGTN Español YouTube channel includes loads of short Xi quotes. The text is in English but the audio is in Spanish and there are Spanish subtitles. Looks like a good way to absorb some Spanish vocab, grammar, and pronunciation while learning about Xi.

Edit: better link (I hope)

I've not used this yet, but it could be useful for creating parallel texts for Spanish learners.

El conflicto ucraniano desenmascara a Occidente.

Rusia sigue luchando por la formación de un nuevo orden mundial justo, en el que terminará con la dictadura de Estados Unidos y surgirán nuevos polos de fuerza del mundo multipolar; y uno de ellos será la América Latina. …

No es nada nueva la política estadounidense de sabotear a los gobiernos soberanos, autónomos que no se les arrodillan, ¡revisemos la historia! durante la Guerra fría por ejemplo, Washington financió a los rebeldes radicales en la América Latina y participó activamente en el derrocamiento de los gobiernos latinoamericanos electos legítimamente, principalmente aquellos que colaboraron con La Unión soviética. Para esa fecha, la casa Blanca exhibía públicamente y sin pudor su ambición, convertir nuestro continente en su patio trasero y controlar rigurosamente todos los procesos que se desarrollan en la región. …

Una vez más la crisis de Ucrania demostró la arrogancia y el descaro de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos y el gran desprecio que sienten por los intereses legítimos de los estados. Sus intentos de mantener la dominación mundial tuvieron efecto contrario y provocaron el surgimiento de los nuevos centros de poder en la arena internacional y evidentemente entre ellos los países de América Latina.

I’m about 80% through the Duolingo tree but I know there’s absolutely tons of words I still don’t know. Are they any IOS apps, websites or even games you could recommend to me?

For example the matching game on Duolingo is very helpful but it cycles through the same 100 or so words for me plus I don’t even have it anymore probably since I have not updated the app is over a year.

Thanks!

"Entre los días 5 al 10 de junio de 1967 las fuerzas sionistas, atacaron a los ejércitos de Egipto, Siria, Irak y Jordania bajo el pretexto, que las fuerzas egipcias apostadas en la península del Sinaí representaban un peligro para Israel. …"

('apostadas' significa 'posted'/'stationed')

Este artículo debe ser bastante comprensible para Marxistas aun si ya no logró un nivel alto en español.

Algunos cuestiones para otro aprendices de español:

1. ¿Que sucede en Asia Occidental en mil novecientos sesenta y siete?
2. ¿Quiénes eran los beligerantes?
3. ¿Que significa 'tergiversar'? (Lenin también usa mucho este palabra.)
4. ¿Qué te gusta o no gusta de este artículo?

Hispanohablantes, sentir bienvenidos a responder también.

(Feel free to correct my Spanish.)

This is probably really simple but I keep getting confused by which form I’m meant to use. Do I match it to the person I’m talking about or do I match it to the gender of the noun? And which part of the sentence do I use to determine whether I use the singular or plural?

For example “Le mando notas” means I send him notes. What about a singular note? If I’m sending her notes does it become la? If I was sending them notes would it be las or les? If notas is feminine why don’t I use la?

Is there a simple way to remember whatever the rule is? Thanks!

It's been a while since there was activity here. How's everyone's language study going? (Whether it's Spanish or another language)

Este orador es claro si quieres escuchar una defensa de Stalin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXzWMIRngGU

¿Que piensas?

(Habladores nativos: es aceptable usar "piensas" aqui en sitio de "piensa usted"?)

¿Cualquiera ha leído Sidi por Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Yo fue disfrutandola pero la historia tornó islamófobo de repente y luego se fue arruinar para mi. No lo sé si continuar con el libro.

Entonces yo busqué sus nombre y 'islamofobia' y retornó un artículo – sobre otra obra de él – cuyo introducción explicarlo perfectamente (https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/La-historia-de-Europa-segun-Perez-Reverte-una-leccion-de-ignorancia-islamofobia-y-neocolonialismo). Él utiliza

la lógica binaria "salvaje - civilizado", que tanto sirvió para deshumanizar a las gentes racializadas desde los tiempos de la explotación colonial, y para marginar y/o expulsar a todos aquellos que no cumplían con la "normalidad" …

Pero la "normalidad" de este libro parece europeos cristianos (y quizás los blancos).

¿Cualquiera has encontraste algo similar con otras novelas?

¿Es tan decepcionando, no?

(Si hay errores en mi español, correctalo si te quieras, pero no hace falta si no quieres.)

I thought to do this when I started reading the pinned post titled 'Listening-Reading Method and Spanish'.

https://farkastranslations.com/bilingual_books.php

I encoded it in 112kbps opus to an ogg file using ffmpeg (it's mono, ~731MB, 15:12:58 long): https://github.com/holdengreen/lingtool/blob/main/streams/center-earth-journey-es-en-original-botched.ogg

I wrote the script to process the text file at: https://farkastranslations.com/books/Verne_Jules-Voyage_au_Centre_de_la_Terre-fr-en-es-hu-nl.zip

Here is the script (https://github.com/holdengreen/lingtool/blob/main/src/center-earth-parallel.py):

import re
import sys
import torch

import numpy as np
MAX_WAV_VALUE = 32768.0

sample_rate = 48000

accelerator = 'cpu'
device = torch.device(accelerator)

class SpanishTTS:
    language = 'es'
    model_id = 'v3_es'
    speaker = 'es_1'

    def __init__(self):
        self.model, example_text = torch.hub.load(repo_or_dir='snakers4/silero-models',
                                                model='silero_tts',
                                                language=self.language,
                                                speaker=self.model_id)

        self.model.to(device)  # gpu or cpu

    def apply(self, text):
        return self.model.apply_tts(text=text,
                        speaker=self.speaker,
                        sample_rate=sample_rate) * MAX_WAV_VALUE


class EnglishTTS:
    language = 'en'
    model_id = 'v3_en'
    speaker = 'en_117'

    def __init__(self):
        self.model, example_text = torch.hub.load(repo_or_dir='snakers4/silero-models',
                                                model='silero_tts',
                                                language=self.language,
                                                speaker=self.model_id)

        self.model.to(device)  # gpu or cpu

    def apply(self, text):
        return self.model.apply_tts(text=text,
                        speaker=self.speaker,
                        sample_rate=sample_rate) * MAX_WAV_VALUE


spanishtts = SpanishTTS()
englishtts = EnglishTTS()


FFMPEG_BIN = "ffmpeg"

import subprocess as sp
from fcntl import fcntl, F_GETFL, F_SETFL
from os import O_NONBLOCK, read



fl = open("res/foreign/parallel-translations/Verne_Jules-Voyage_au_Centre_de_la_Terre-fr-en-es-hu-nl.farkastranslations.com/Verne_Jules-Voyage_au_Centre_de_la_Terre-fr-en-es-hu-nl.txt", 'r')
t = fl.read()
fl.close()


errfl = open("log/err.txt", 'a+')

proc = sp.Popen([ FFMPEG_BIN,
       '-y', # (optional) means overwrite the output file if it already exists.
       "-f", 's16le', # means 16bit input
       "-acodec", "pcm_s16le", # means raw 16bit input
       '-ar', str(sample_rate), # the input will have 48000 Hz
       '-ac','1', # the input will have 2 channels (stereo)
       '-i', 'pipe:0', # means that the input will arrive from the pipe
       '-vn', # means "don't expect any video input"
       '-acodec', "libopus", # output audio codec
       '-b:a', "112k", # output bitrate (=quality).
       'streams/center-earth-journey-es-en-1.ogg',
       '-loglevel', 'debug'
       ],
        stdin=sp.PIPE,stdout=errfl, stderr=errfl, shell=False)


#flags = fcntl(proc.stdout, F_GETFL) # get current p.stdout flags
#fcntl(proc.stdout, F_SETFL, flags | O_NONBLOCK)


def readlines():
    #print(proc.stdout.readlines())

    #while True:
    while False:
        try:
            print(read(proc.stdout.fileno(), 1024))
        except OSError:
            # the os throws an exception if there is no data
            print('[No more data]')
            break

#print(ascii(t))

t = t.split('\n')

max_ln = len(t)
ln_cnt = 1
for e in t:
    print("processing {0}/{1}".format(str(ln_cnt), str(max_ln)))

    g = re.split(r'\t+', e)

    try:

        #spanish
        proc.stdin.write(np.asarray(spanishtts.apply(g[2]), dtype=np.int16).tobytes())

        #1 second pause
        proc.stdin.write(np.asarray([0] * sample_rate, dtype=np.int16).tobytes())


        # english
        proc.stdin.write(np.asarray(englishtts.apply(g[1]), dtype=np.int16).tobytes())

        #2 second pause
        proc.stdin.write(np.asarray([0] * (sample_rate*2), dtype=np.int16).tobytes())

    except Exception as e:
        print(repr(e))
        
        print("occured for lines: ")
        print(g[2])
        print(g[1])


    ln_cnt += 1

Run it with python3.9 and use python3.9 -m pip install to install the dependencies such as PyTorch.

This took maybe five hours to generate on my i7 6700HQ laptop. And btw I counted 13 exceptions either Exception("Model couldn't generate your text, probably it's too long") or one was UserWarning: Text string is longer than 1000 symbols.. This means I think the text is too big or there were some symbols or something it can't handle. I will investigate. ValueError(s) don't seem to be much of an issue tho.

There were 2155 translation pairs in total (most being large paragraphs) so missing 13 isn't a huge deal. The format of the file is separated by \t and \n. It comes in chunks where the paragraphs in different languages are seperated by the tabs and those chunks where the parallel translation moves on to the next set of equivalent paragraphs are separated by new lines. English is at index 1 and spanish at index 2.

Can't wait to use this tomorrow on my walks.

Hello Deplorable Spanish-learning Tankies.

I want to draw your attention to The Linguistics of Spanish.

If you are learning Spanish, you may find it useful to read up on the linguistics. The following link gives

"information and analysis on the following subjects:

• the pronunciation of standard European Spanish
• variation in the Spanish-speaking world
• aspects of Spanish syntax
• the history of Spanish"

This website is very useful for helping you understand the sounds of Spanish, to better understand / parse what you hear, and how to improve your accent. The section on phonemes and minimal pairs is especially helpful.

Minimal pairs will help you learn to distinguish the different sounds in Spanish. These allow you to learn what each letter sounds like when it is next to each other letter.

Once you read the theory, you can search Youtube for audio examples. You can also practice speaking the minimal pairs if you struggle with any of them, although I advise you to listen first and lots to ensure that you are practicing the correct sound. Some minimal pair examples:

paso, peso, piso, poso, puso

And:

capa, cata, caca, cava, cada, caga, caza, casa, etc

Do any of you other Spanish learners / speakers have any other useful suggestions for learning about Spanish linguistics?

Any tips on pronouncing the 'lr' sound in e.g. 'alrededor' will be welcome!

I used the listening-reading method to learn Spanish (or to jump-start my Spanish, anyway). I thought I would post the link to the method and make some suggestions for books to read for others.

Listening-reading, by aYa/Phi-Staszek

What is Listening-Reading (LR)?

LR is a method. Read a book in English and listen to it in Spanish at the same time.§

§ Or any other target language.

This sounds difficult / impossible, but it works, and it gets easier with practice.

The trick is to read a sentence in English then listen to the Spanish. This is possible because you can (probably) read a lot faster than people can speak.

This is a rather efficient method because it exposes you to a lot of (comprehensible) words per minute.

You're supposed to use parallel texts. There are some here to get you started: Farkas Translations. You could also find the PDFs in English and Spanish for the same book. Or you could look here: Bilingual Fiction – warning: http link.

Personally, I prefer just to use a physical copy of the English book.

For the first 2-250 hours of LRing (see below), you want to use a few long books, which you will listen to more than once. aYa suggests 3 times. So you might LR a 33 hour book three times, which equals 100 hours.

Do the same for a second book, and you will likely be able to listen to the third book without relying on the English, especially if these are three (or more books) in the same series, by the same author (like Ken Follett: see below). (You may have to just listen to the third book twice or three times, but you will not need the English translation.)

Notes

aYa recommends 12 hour days over three weeks to jump from knowing only a summary of the grammar to reaching 'natural listening' (i.e. enjoying native content without (much) help).

'Natural listening' does not mean that you will understand everything, but you should understand enough to follow along, especially Marxist lectures (the content will be familiar to Lemmygradders; plus, anything in formal Spanish is easier to understand for native English speakers because formal English (as with formal Spanish) still mostly rely on words with Latin roots, and these formal words have not changed much).

(Enrique Dussel's lectures are easy enough to follow.)

LRing for 2+ hours per day works, too, although it will then take a little longer (i.e. a couple of months rather than 3 weeks) to enjoy native content without help (it still takes 2–250 hours of LRing to get to 'natural listening', so divide 250 by LR-hours-per-day for a rough estimate of how long it would take you).

Personally, I find I get into the flow after about an hour. And after that hour, it's like I'm in a new zone where Spanish just makes sense. So the longer 'chunks' that you can manage, the better. Probably.

I would not recommend jumping in without knowing much / any grammar, because knowing some grammar will help to make the audio more comprehensible. But, going back to more complex grammar explanations is a lot easier after doing LR and some reading.

Tips and Tricks

If you are a slower reader, you can read one page / paragraph first with the audio paused (so you know what is happening), then LR the same page / paragraph. Work out what works for you. When you start out, you may want to try this way first (reading a page at a time before LRing the same page) while you get the hang of it.

It helps to pick the right book. The link above includes 'levels' of books. You may want to start at the beginning and work your way up. Know, however, that the longer the book, the easier this will be. Because after 20–50 pages, you will have already encountered the most used words in the book. So the longer the book, the more repetition you will hear of words that you have already (partially) understood.

As for learning enough grammar to make the most out of LRing, start simple. Use the brief grammar explanations in the middle of / at the start / end of a Spanish-English dictionary. Or take a look at a phrase book.

Books that I enjoyed LRing

As for choosing a book to LR, Sally Rooney's Gente Normal (Normal People) is nicely narrated and a great novel. As is Dónde Estás, Mundo Bello (Beautiful World, Where are You). Rooney is a Marxist, too, and it comes through subtly in her writing.

Ken Follett's Las Tinieblas y el Alba (The Evening and the Morning) and Los Pilares de la Tierra (Pilars of the Earth) are good. Both narrated by Jordi Boixaderas, who is great. If you enjoy the books, there are two more in the series (I haven't read these yet). These novels talk about feudal England, which provides some useful vocabulary for those who want to jump into Marxist texts.

And if you get used to Boixaderas' voice, you may find it easier to then follow up with something by Isabel Allende as he narrates some of her work (Largo Pétalo de la Mar (Long Petal of the Sea – i.e. Chile) for example).

Another audiobook that was pleasant to LR was Phillip Pullman's El Libro de la Oscuridad I: La Bella Salvaje (The Book of Dust I: La Belle Sauvage).

Conclusion

aYa wrote:

I believe in learning a huge bit every minute. Plenty of people can drive a car. L-R is Formula One. Now you know what to expect.

And:

The most important things happen in your head. Your emotions, your memories, the way you think, what you already know, they are all holographic, everything happens at once. You cannot show or describe how you really learn. You can only write about some tricks or tools, and that’s about it.

This is not magic, but it does work, and it's quite enjoyable because you can jump straight into content that you could otherwise enjoy in English. You will likely need to study some grammar afterwards, especially if Spanish is your first second language. And it still takes a long time to become 'fluent' (whatever that means). But LR seems to speed up the process of getting to an intermediate level. It did for me, anyway.

I'm happy to answer questions, although you may find most of your questions answered in the website that aYa wrote in the link, above.

Hope this helps someone.

Who are your favourite Spanish-speaking artists?

I quite like Rosalía, especially her newer music. I have heard people say she is guilty of cultural appropriation, but I'm unclear on the whole story there, and my Spanish is not good enough to understand all her lyrics (i.e. if the reactionary lyrics are obvious but I'm missing their meaning).

Ana Tijoux is good, too. Revolutionary-adjacent music, so far as I can work out. She is French-Chilean. Her parents had to flee Pinochet.

Any revolutionary artists I should try? Hip hop or rap especially. Immortal Technique is great but there's generally too much English in his songs to use them to improve my Spanish.

Puedes responder a cualquier cantidad de las siguientes preguntas que quieres, son solo para practicar. Toma nota que yo tambien aprendo español, asi que mis posts van a contenir errores.

1. Cual es tu nivel de español?

2. Si estudies español (u otro idioma), tienes una rutina?

3. Por qué aprendes español/otro idioma? (Cual es tu meta?)

4. Comparte una cancion, pelicula, serie, obra de literatura, etc. en español que te gusta (o un escritor/teorico que escribe principalmente en español)

esa es mi método

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2000/2000-h/2000-h.htm

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/996/996-h/996-h.htm

Text (miscellaneous)

• Granma: articles from the Communist Party of Cuba

• teleSUR: news network sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua

• EL PAÍS: bourgeois Spanish propaganda outlet (which uses simple Spanish)

• Spanish Grammar in Context

• Books in English and Spanish side-by-side

Audio/video

• The "Language Transfer" series on Spanish, can be streamed or downloaded as an archive

• Podcast de Granma, the podcast of the aforementioned Granma

• Butterfly Spanish: YouTube channel with Spanish lessons

• How to Spanish: podcast and lessons

• Jabiertzo: casual YouTube channel with videos in/about China

• Linguriosa: YouTube channel that discusses quirks of Spanish grammar, etymology, language history, etc.

Interactive Stuff(TM)

• Duolingo's Spanish course

• Beelinguapp

• LingQ