Hi folks,
I’m around A2 in Spanish, and I’m trying to find some good Spanish immersion books similar to the “Dino lernt Deutsch” books for German. My problem is that I prefer something with a bit of humor. I’ve tried Olly Richards’ books before, but they seem kinda humorless - at least the ones I’ve tried so far.
So does anyone have any recommendations?
I was actually thinking about just ramming it through deepL to get the “spanish” version =)
I’ve not had much luck with that myself either, I’ve mostly settled on just using some adult level books. There’s also a couple of news websites I’ve used. The articles can also be simplified with either LingQ “simplify” or chatgpt. Maybe I could try that with other fun books.
I don’t know if he has books, I know he has courses but maybe they are a little bit more intermediate. In any case, check “Español con Juan”, he has a Youtube channel, but this is the main website: https://1001reasonstolearnspanish.com/
He has a lot of content, maybe he updated it with some beginner text. I used to follow him a lot of time ago.
In any case, he is very good because he repeats a lot the same thing from many different angles. I would say that he is very pedagogic and funny as well.
Saw a recommendation in reddit for Juan Fernandez books:
Amazon.com: Juan Fernández: books, biography, latest update
Specifically mentioned the Un Hombre Fascinante and La Profe de Español books, both A2. Post said they were funny.
The former’s description actually sounds very “Dino-esque”: Spanish For Beginners: Un hombre fascinante (Spanish Edition) - Kindle edition by Fernández, Juan. Reference Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
I do have one of the B2 level books, but I think I was trying to hard to punch above my level and was pretty lost, even with the help of LingQ.
I actually did that last week with Cafe in Berlin. There are a few problems with it, the biggest being that there is no MP3 audio for it, so I have to rely on LingQ’s auto-generated audio, which keeps stopping. To get it to start up again, I have to skip 5 seconds ahead, exit the lesson and open it again. This happens every page or so. Not sure if it’s a known bug, or whether it’s just my computer causing it, but it makes listening really frustrating.
Anyway, it works if I just want to read, but it’s not the best solution.
Strange about the audio stopping.
You could try replacing the audio with something a little better…you could open up the “print lesson” in Edge browser and use one of the voices there (much better than LingQ). You have to record the mp3 with something like audacity though. Then you can upload it to the lesson. Not particularly hard…just a lot of extra work. Not good for someone lazy like me but I do it from time to time.
BTW, here’s another thread I found with some other ideas:
Spanish Book Recommendations - A language learners’ forum (language-learners.org)
Do you prefer reading bilingual readers? For example, there is one Spanish-English. It also has corresponding audio. i.e The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.
Thanks, David and Eric, for the recommendation of Juan Fernández’s books and website. I will definitely give his stuff a try. I see on Amazon he has a book “Hola Lola” for A1, so I’ll give that a go first.
Thanks for the suggestion, Asad. I try to stay away from the bilingual stuff. For some reason it never works for me. I feel it’s always too easy for me to look at the translation, rather than try to guess the meaning from the context. So I prefer full immersion.
Np! Unfortunately I couldn’t find audiobook for these. So again, lacking in audio =(.
Dreaming Spanish youtube channel is pretty fun…if you’ve not seen it before. Lots of good content for all levels (audio only-although you can import into LingQ to get whisper ai transcript).
I guess I’ll just have to force myself to get through LingQ’s mini stories, or import some “Why Not Spanish” or “Dreaming Spanish”, to get my audio fix.
This happened to me as well during a short period of time. Maybe they were working on something and this problem came out. I would suggest you to try with another material, for example, importing a couple of articles in Spanish and generate the audio.
Then trying to import again that text to create a new lesson, and generate the audio.
In this way you can see if the problem is specific to that text or it’s an overall problem with your language.
If it doesn’t work again, you should write a dedicated thread to the support here or write to them by email with this problem.
Same for me, never found any love for the bilingual stuff even if there are many people that advocate for it. So, I don’t have any suggestion for it.
Unfortunately I have started to use LingQ with Spanish just for maintenance, so I don’t have any beginner material to suggest you.
But I want to suggest you another website for when you will be more intermediate. You can check this out even now if you want to.
They have a lot of audio about South America, it’s awesome, a lot of interesting stories. You find the audio and the transcription for free.
Maybe they have also other material, I don’t know about it. But you can definitely have a lot of audio+ text there.
Speaking of Juan Fernandez, my absolute favorite thing among all his content is his podcast, Español con Juan. My recommendation would be to go back to the beginning in 2017 and work your way forward - hours of very entertaining, frequently very funny, content. The level is probably a little above A2, but he speaks very clearly and repeats most important sentences and phrases multiple times in a very seamless and natural way that makes comprehension much easier.
Regarding books, I highly recommend Spanish translations of famous English young adult books. Some of my favorites (all very funny) are:
I would say at the early stages you just have to push through. With limited vocabulario expression is quite limited. If you are around beginner 2, approaching intermediate 1 in lingq, you will soon have lot’s of material that you can trial. Although at first might be a bit hard, it soon get’s easier once you have better grasp of the key vocabulario. I started late stages of beginner 2 using Unlimited Spanish podcast and some of the children’s stories that seemed appropriate to that level. Unlimited Spanish was what maybe helped me the most because it has fairly similar vocabulary and way of expressing in all episodios. After a while using a bit more effort it became easier with mostly new words giving trouble. Same probably applies to most podcasts. With the childrens stories, there is more variety in ways of expressing. One might be easy to read through despite new words and other might bend your brain when most of sentences are structured in a more complex way.
Also at your stage I would recommend Dreaming Spanish and Spanish with Alma (which is one of the hosts of DS). There is a lot of beginner content and in my oppinion that content will quite soon become a bit too easy so it’s better take advantage of it. Once you can understand that all you will want to and should look for content that is a bit more challenging.
Another possiblity (maybe) are some of these books:
Amazon.com: Paco Ardit: books, biography, latest update
I have not read any of these so I can’t say for sure how good they are, but he has them for all levels. I think there may be audiobooks for these as well. On amazon they are pretty cheap, so might be worth trying one or two to see if they fit.
Oh, these look perfect! They even have audiobooks, just like the “Dino lernt Deutsch” series. As long as I can find versions that allow me to convert the books into txt format and the audio into MP3 (only for my own use of course - I wouldn’t want to mess with the author’s copyright), they should work perfectly.
I found the author’s home page, and he has a few samples available - it sounds like it’s just what I’m looking for - and the accent is Argentinian (I like the accent), so that’s an added benefit.
I’ll buy the first one and see if it works.
Great! Let us know how they are.
I spent some more time on Paco Ardit’s website. The books come in a mix of Argentinian, Mexican, and Spanish accents.
I bought the first book in the first series (Muerte en Buenos Aires, CEFR A1). I set it all up as a private lesson in LingQ and did a couple of chapters today, but I’ll test it out properly tomorrow (I’ll see if I can read the whole first book). So far it looks and sounds good. The story is in 60 tiny chapters of just a few sentences each (less than a page on LingQ). They got what sounds like a professional voice actor to do the voice, so it sounds very professional (though a bit melodramatic, but it fits with the detective story theme).
I assume the more advanced books will have longer chapters. I guess we’ll see.
I guess it depends what kind of humour you like, but I had fun with the ‘Lola Lago’ and ’ Pepa Villa, taxista en Barcelona’ (by the same author) graded readers. I’m not sure how many there are but I read 7 or 8 of them. They’re aimed at levels A1-B2. They’re decent little stories, narrated well (they come with audio), and they also contain a tiny bit of slang/swear words. Definitely aimed at adults.
If you go on amazon via the web, you can go to some of the individual stories and “Read sample”.
It’s a little hard to tell because the sample cuts off in some cases, but it looks like through B1 the chapters are relatively short (less than a page). B2 and above they appear to be much longer (probably progressively longer)