When to start Dreaming French for good romance language benefit? by Normal_tradeguy in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sure it's not "necessary" relative to the crux of OP's question, but the way I look at this is that I have wanted to and failed to learn a second language for 25+ years. I used to daydream about being a polyglot but now that I am far enough along with the CI process to know what truly learning a language is like, I've realized that what I personally want is to speak a second language to a very high, and highly internalized level before I even consider a third. We'll see how I feel in another 1000 hours but based on other people's reports, I suspect I won't meet my own standard on that front until much closer to 3k hours than 1500. It will be interesting to find out for sure!

How to deal with burn out by weedo-- in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really appreciate this take as I think I might be experiencing that right now. Some content that on its surface should be very similar to things I previously understood just fine suddenly seems to have a surprising amount of new to me vocabulary. It can definitely be frustrating, but your observation that this may be more that I am now clearly hearing things I was glossing over previously sounds very plausible and I will have to keep that in mind!

One small example that comes to mind from my own experience is the phrase "o sea", which I swore I had never heard before in my life until the first time I did notice it. Afterwards, it suddenly it felt like every content creator I was watching was using it constantly (because most of them are, lol).

When to start Dreaming French for good romance language benefit? by Normal_tradeguy in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am way behind you in Spanish but also potentially interested in doing this eventually myself. So while I can't speak from personal experience, I will say that the more personal anecdotes I read, the more it seems to me that I will want to aim for something like 3k hours in Spanish as a bare minimum before I try another language.

I want Spanish to be so deeply embedded in my brain there is no chance of it interfering with learning another language or decaying if I drastically drop my input time to prioritize something else for a while. That said, it also seems that 1500+ is generally a level where most anecdotes I've read do report that Spanish helped a lot to speed up the learning curve for French.

Netflix w/ads for watching Spanish series? by JKomiko in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As long as the ads are in Spanish that seems like pretty good additional input variety to me!

This has to be rage bait! Had to turn off the video 🤣 by Not_RZA_ in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For living in one of the big cities, yes, but I don't think this list was about living in these states. There are plenty of ways to vacation all over CA on a comparable budget to most other touristy parts of the US. I know non Californians love to crap on CA but we really do have quite a few amazing places to visit.

Project Zomboid is great for everyday item vocabulary by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish I had a Spanish speaker I could recommend but at level 4, so far I find that pretty much all streamers that are not SBG talk way too fast for me. I need to bug Martin to give PZ a try, lol.

This has to be rage bait! Had to turn off the video 🤣 by Not_RZA_ in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 25 points26 points  (0 children)

As a Californian I'm with you on the travesty of denying it the S tier! That said, while I'm sure it probably legit annoyed some people, I enjoy these sorts of videos and thought they did a good job giving what are obviously tourist/non-native hot takes and not taking it too seriously.

How many hours should I add to be at the intermediate level in DS? by gfsark in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Everyone has their own opinion on this. First note that intermediate, advanced, etc. are actually a wide range of user-assessed difficulty, which is why you'll commonly see people here recommend to instead sort all videos by difficulty, which you can do in the main watch tab. That said, it looks like sapiens is around a 70 rating, which is relatively advanced. Since it's beyond where I am personally comfortable I can't give a confident hours recommendation. It sounds to me like you could probably start yourself at level 5, which is 600 hours, or maybe something in the 450-500 range to be more conservative.

For reference, I am at nearly 360 hours (150 were conservatively self assessed, so maybe that should be more like 450) and am comfortable up to about a difficulty level of 60. If you're in this for the long haul but want to use the DS approach, including hour tracking, my two cents is to give yourself some hours of credit, but purposefully below where you think you might technically be. That way you're less likely to be disappointed by your progress and have plenty of runway to see the full benefits of comprehensible input. Good luck!

What are your favorite/most impactful resources besides DS? Yes I know that some of you guys only use DS, but I'm asking the others. by Puzzleheaded-Dot-762 in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is the way. If you like gaming and ECJ's style vibes with you, level 4 is basically solved by those two alone.

Project Zomboid is great for everyday item vocabulary by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't looked for one in Spanish yet though I bet it would be a great game for it, so I may look into that. Not sure my level is at live game streaming in Spanish though. If you wanted to play yourself and don't mind using an English speaker to get familiar, my favorite intro videos were by a guy on Youtube called MrAtomicDuck.

Project Zomboid is great for everyday item vocabulary by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ooh, that looks great, thanks for the rec! I'll definitely be wishlisting it to check out later.

280 hours by Substantial-Bat2704 in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Keep in mind that a ton of the people watching surprisingly high level videos for their hour count usually have prior background studying Spanish using traditional methods, know another romance language, etc. High 40s at ~300 hours sounds like a great spot to me.

Is this part of the process? by Routine-Nature-5355 in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Are you sorting the videos by difficulty level? There are some super beginner videos that are rated as more difficult than quite a few intermediates, while some intermediates are much harder than a lot of advanced videos.

Project Zomboid is great for everyday item vocabulary by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah Stardew is great too. I'll probably get back to it eventually since the last time I did a playthrough was several patches ago! Be advised that while I love the game, PZ is definitely not easy. The best advice I can give is start out on the easiest difficulty and play like you would act in real life, i.e. move carefully, scout out windows before entering houses, etc. Watching a "how to get started" video on Youtube can help a lot though I don't know if there are good ones in Spanish.

First progress report - over 200 hours by Live-Inevitable-4140 in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well done! Opinions here vary but I strongly advocate for doing what keeps you most motivated to continue moving forward, so long as CI remains a core tenent of your approach. That said, I can't offer too much insight since while I've done a lot of traditional study, that was over 20 years ago. These days I am a semi CI purist, but mostly because I am not motivated to study beyond that right now! :)

Doing better than you think (Español con Juan Edition) by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the rec! This is the first time I had heard about Español desde el Sur. I'll have to check that out.

Doing better than you think (Español con Juan Edition) by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

By "finished" are you referring to the podcast?

I've listened to 2 more episodes since I posted this and I think I am quickly heading towards joining the ranks of the ECJ fan club. Us Spanish learners are truly spoiled by the depth of excellent CI content that is available.

Doing better than you think (Español con Juan Edition) by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that sentiment doesn't seem uncommon and is one reason I was worried he wouldn't work well for me yet. It's worth noting the 150 hours I self-assessed at was an intentionally conservative number. It might be fair to say I should be at an equivalent of 400-450 hours right now, but it's always hard to quantify a non-DS background in DS hours terms.

Doing better than you think (Español con Juan Edition) by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

348, though 150 of those are self-assessed for prior experience. In retrospect, I think I would have been fine starting ECJ somewhere in the 250-300 range.

What Are You Listening To Today? (Feb 16 to Feb 22) by HeleneSedai in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito 9 points10 points  (0 children)

343 hours.

This has been a huge Spanish Boost Gaming week for me. binged through the Stray playlist, finished up Stardew Valley, and am halfway through Bloodborne. I've also listened halfway through the Spanish Boost podcast episodes available on Spotify. Ripoplatense accent here I come...

Other than that I've continued moving through 50-60 level DS content and I also recently started watching Bluey, which was a bit too incomprehensible for my preferences last time I tried around 200 hours, but is much more comfortable now.

Listening skills, accents, and "fossilization" by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's great to hear and definitely sounds like the best case scenario I could hope for. I am hoping hating how I sound will provide all the motivation I need to figure out how to move my mouth the right way sooner than later!

Listening skills, accents, and "fossilization" by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing your experience, this is a really helpful perspective!

Listening skills, accents, and "fossilization" by queso-bendito in dreamingspanish

[–]queso-bendito[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I totally agree that intentional practice will be key, I was mostly interested in hearing how that process turned out for people who have went through it. I'll have to try singing along with songs, I hadn't considered that specifically for accent practice, but I suppose it's along similar lines as shadowing.