I’m at a point in some of my languages where I’m starting to get bored with the content available to me. I listen to YouTube a lot, and it hasn’t been recommending anything new.
How can I find more content in my target languages? It can be of any subject, any style, anything that holds my interest. Ideally its only audio or doesn’t require to be watched (unlike a tv show).
Sources other than YouTube also welcome.
My current target languages are Hebrew, Swahili, and Spanish.
Maybe LingQ or a volunteer can make a big massive list of content sources in different languages. For example, the other day I accidentally found a German tech channel with extremely clear audio that should definitely be a listed resource for German learners.
You can create a dedicated YouTube account in your target language, or one for each. If you make sure to only watch / like videos in this language, the algorithm will pick up on that and start recommending you videos in your target language.
If you are interested in finding content with soft subs (CC) that can be imported into LingQ, here are some suggestions:
As a basic approach you can just search for videos with CC on YouTube:
As @bambozzled recommended, creating a dedicated YouTube account for each TL means you only get language-specific recommendations, as the algorithm thinks you only understand that one language. I do something very similar, but through a private browser, so it essentially is ‘fresh’ whenever I restart my device.
I’d also recommend googling in your TL or searching Reddit (on each language-specific reddit). Specifically on topics you are interested in, eg. working out, tennis, language learning, stand-up comedy, etc. For podcasts, search your favourite podcast app in that particular language. For (audio)books, try and find the local lists of awards. Eg. A quick Internet search returns in Israel they have the Geffen Award (best sci-fi and fantasy books).
There are many ways to find google content in your TL.
Agree with the others. Create accounts for each target language you are interested. Only watch content from the target language on these accounts and you will get recommended videos in these languages. It takes a little bit of time for it to recommend almost solely target language but it will. If you accidentally watch something not in the target language for that account, delete it from the history.
Also search on these accounts using your target language. In other words, if you are interesting in cooking, don’t search on “cooking”. Use the word from your target language.
You can also set the search filter to specify cc, although I think this will still return videos that have autogenerated subtitles. Best bet is to find the channels that regularly have non auto generated subtitles.
I haven’t checked it out, but you might look at Easy Spanish youtube channel. The German one is great. They do street interviews so you get lots of impromptu dialogue and native to native speaking. Presumably the Easy Spanish one is similar. They have both the English and Spanish/German subtitles burned in though so there’s some work if you want to import the real subtitles. (if you try to import you will get the auto generated ones). You can simply enjoy them on youtube, or if you get a patreon account you can get the transcripts which you can import into youtube. This is the case for German, so I assume it’s the case for Spanish.
The other languages will be tougher to find content I’m sure.
There was another website called zerotohero that LingQ Eric always would recommend. It looks like they’ve changed the name to languageplayer.io. It also looks like you may need to set up at least a free account. The search used to bring up only youtube videos, but now it seems like they’ve curated some content, not just from youtube???
You can change the language at the upper right hand corner.
Other option would be to find content in English with real transcripts and then drop the transcript in deepl or google to translate it to your target language. It might not be perfect, but might be an option if you’re lacking in interesting content.
To look for more specfic content, just search for that key word on Youtube and filter results that contain CC. For instance if you are interested in the “Ukraine war” search for that term in your target language.