hello everyone when i started learning
spanish last year i was pleasantly
surprised by how
simple the language is and by how easily
accessible it is to get resources
so if you're looking to learn spanish
you've come to the right place
because i'm going to share with you all
of my favorite apps youtube channels
podcasts resources and a really cool
google chrome extension that i found
before i start
the most important thing if you take
anything away from this video
is that you must use a combination of
resources
when people want to learn a new language
the first thing they usually do is
google
how to learn language name and you
probably get resources
like apps like duolingo which is good in
itself
but it shouldn't be your primary
resource because you're going to end up
saying stuff like
the purple cat is eating under the tall
table
and you don't even know how to order
coffee in spanish so for all the
resources i'm mentioning in this video
make sure to supplement it with
something else for your learning
okay without any further ado let's talk
about the apps that i use for spanish
the first one is a relatively new app
called forge
forge is specifically for spanish and as
a ui ux designer i really like the
interface it's so clean and beautiful
and there's so much in-depth grammar
explanations and the best thing is that
it is free
next the two dictionary apps i use are
spanish dict and conjugato
for spanish tick i use it to find the
meanings of words or to look up new
words that i haven't learned yet
they also have a website and an
instagram account where you can see a
word of the day
i actually subscribed to their word of
the day email a while ago
and i wrote down all of their example
sentences in here
some of the words are like really random
like fairy or
jam but by writing it in here i had
access to
the example sentences that they had and
i thought it was really great that
they're not just
giving you words but actually sentences
then if you're looking more for grammar
or vocabulary exercises
some apps i can recommend for spanish
number one is busu
it is a paid app i think there's a free
version to an extent
i made a full review video of busu here
so you can check that out
then for vocabulary you can look at
drops now be careful with drops
personally i think it is
a little repetitive and boring and very
slow because you're just matching like
words and pictures and it's just
vocabulary there's no example sentences
there is built-in sound so you know how
to pronounce the words
so if you're really just looking to up
your vocabulary based on themes
i do recommend drops for that purpose
but not as your main primary
resource for learning spanish again a
supplement that might be helpful
to pick up new words and then of course
we have the standard
memorize and duolingo memrise has a
bunch of courses on different topics
there's also videos
and sound and it is also free so you can
check out that
everybody knows duolingo i'm not gonna
go into depth but if i just switch to
spanish over here
the thing i use the most is the duolingo
stories
so you can see i've completed so many of
them already
uh they are really funny they have all
of these like plot twists and
it's just simple uh phrases related to
daily conversations
again chunking full sentences and
sentences that are actually used in
conversations
not just random stuff like the green
owl is eating a salad okay
then one of my favorite apps of all time
and i think if you've been watching my
youtube channel for
years you'll know that i mentioned them
way back in the day it's high native
high native is also free to some extent
where you can ask questions to native
speakers
right up here i have said that i am
learning spanish as well
so you can browse questions that people
have asked before
or you can just ask your own question
for example how do you say this does
this sound correct
blah blah super simple easy to use
excellent i find that the replies from
people come in pretty quickly so it's a
really good resource if you just want to
check something maybe you've created
some example sentences
and you want to see if those are right
speaking of sentences the two last apps
i want to recommend the first one is
close master
it's really fun it's like gamified you
there are so many languages you can
learn on there this is closed master
it's really cute and it is free to play
you don't even need to create an account
so you can just click
on playing for example here we have a
sentence where i need to fill in the
blanks it is
la chicago
i am sorry my spanish is not great yet
the girl has a scarf around her neck and
i know the word for scarf is
buffanda so i'm gonna click on this one
and there you go you just fill in the
words like that
super fun okay the other one is like
one of the weirdest language learning
apps i've seen it's just called
spanish sentence i don't know the title
is cut off actually spanish sentence
maker spanish sentence creator i don't
know
i i will put it in the video because i
can't say the title right now
uh yeah it's it's pretty weird looking i
think they kind of copied the ui from
from jobs but that doesn't really matter
they give you full
sentences and you need to say you need
to put the words in the correct order so
this
is uh he's the one isn't he so it is uh
esl no and then they tell you that you
are correct or wrong and there's also
audio the function i like the most is
where i go to this
little middle tab here and they give me
all of these sentences
in one space i don't know why they're
all in like random colors but hey
at least you have a free resource with a
whole lot of sentences
and finally the resource of all
resources is the bluebird app it is
not super beautiful i'm using it for
hungarian currently so the design is a
bit weird but they have
so many languages for free you can
differentiate between spain from mexico
and wow spanish from spain or spanish
from mexico so i'm just gonna choose a
mexican over here
and they give you a collection of audio
lessons so usually i listen to these
in the shower and yeah it's basically
free
audio lessons that you can access lots
of hours of listening practice
next my ultimate favorite way of getting
spanish immersion is through podcasts i
am obsessed with listening to podcasts
because i do a lot of creative designing
work i don't need to like type or focus
too much so i can listen to podcasts in
the background i use podcasts as
my main base to pick up vocabulary and i
don't actually write
vocab lists despite what i put in in in
this notebook i really don't write down
a lot of my vocab because
the more i listen to spanish the more
like these words are just going to pop
up and i'm going
like oh yeah that person said that word
before okay i know the word now right if
it's relevant to me
i will remember it the more i hear it i
have so many favorite podcasts but my
top
five are la vida mal it is
short sweet and simple content about
minimalism
then ike de gevas is pretty interesting
and then we have cristian burgos korea
so he
is a mexican celebrity who lives in
korea
and he talks about various topics in
spanish
diaspora which is more about social
design issues more relevant to my field
of work
and lastly entiende tumente which is
really cool too
so you should check all of these out on
a similar note for like listening
practice there is of course a plethora
of youtube channels i don't even know
where to start but let me just mention a
few quickly
the first one is mex talkie this is
specifically if you are learning
mexican accent spanish or like words and
phrases relevant to
mexico uh the two guys who run the
channel are really funny they talk about
like interesting daily topics so you
should definitely check out next talkie
then if you are learning spain spanish
what did i knock over oh my goodness
then if you are learning spain spanish
you can check out dreaming spanish my
friend pablo runs the channel we
actually made some videos together i'll
put those in the description
but i love his videos because he just
talks about general everyday topics
and he categorizes them into beginner
intermediate and advanced spanish
listening practice it's great for
picking up vocab and getting a natural
pace of
the spanish language and then because i
am very interested in minimalism there
is also a child
chat channel called paula simple
paula simple pola she talks about
minimalism
she is argentinian so her accent takes a
little bit of getting used to
uh but i think it's really cool to watch
something related to minimalism so
you can check out her channel okay as
you can obviously tell by now i don't
spend a lot of time like sitting at my
desk
studying from a textbook i like to more
integrate the spanish language into my
daily life kind of passively so one of
the coolest things i'm so excited to
tell you guys about
is a google chrome extension i found
called toucan
and basically what that does is takes
anything that you're reading in english
and changes a few words to spanish over
here i am reading an
article about user personas and you can
see
everywhere where there's blue it has
converted the english word into spanish
for me so the entire article is still in
english but there's these vocab words
that they replace for you
also something else i love about it is
that it has audio
so let's say i'm hovering over this word
which means knowledge and i don't know
exactly how to pronounce it
i will just click over here
let's try that again
look tucan even works on my own website
this is really cool look at that
funky they also have other languages
like french portuguese
german and italian and a little bird
pun intended tells me that they're going
to add new languages soon
from korean japanese maybe but yeah
super super cool i use this extension
like it's permanently on
on my google chrome so sometimes it's a
little weird when i get a brief at work
and we're talking about like tech
and design and then there's these like
random spanish words in there
um but i think it's amazing immersion
because when i'm just like passively
browsing and reading
i'll see all these spanish words which
are relevant to what i usually read
online basically how toucan works is you
just download the google chrome
extension for free and then you turn it
on
you can then turn it on and off easily
so it doesn't bug you when you need to
work
i'll put the link to toucan in the
description if you want to download it
and get some
fun immersive spanish learning
experiences right into your browser
continuing into the internet space i
love reading blogs
i follow this guy on instagram his name
is ivan he is from mexico and i realized
he has a blog about language learning
i don't know how to pronounce it i think
it is el ticcercito en ticercito el
teacher i
i don't know sorry but he is learning
french and he blogs about his language
learning journey in spanish so
really cool website to check out i
highly recommend that
and then probably the main source of my
reading is medium articles in spanish
you can just search a term that you're
interested in whether it's like history
art design
psychology relationships uh current
affairs whatever
and uh there are a lot of articles in
spanish as well as english
and when i do design research i
generally look it up in spanish on
medium to finish up let us talk about
books this book i absolutely love it is
called
short stories in spanish for
intermediate learners by
ollie richards it is amazing because the
stories are like really interesting and
funny
and they give you vocabulary words in it
already so all of the words that are
bolded are words that they think
is relevant to your level and then at
the end of the chapters that you read
you get an entire vocabulary list you
also get
a list of practice questions to test
your comprehension
there are eight stories in it and it's
really engaging and fun
and ali is a spanish language learner
himself
so it's like really crafted towards uh
language learners
i will put the amazon link to this book
in the description if you want to buy
the beginner or the intermediate version
of
short stories in spanish i also have it
for french and
arabic so yes i love it a lot let's just
put it
put it here yeah okay finally you will
see that i didn't mention
a lot of textbooks because your girl is
busy and
i don't really sit down to study but i
do have two textbooks that i use the
first one which i have talked about
before is
a japanese book it is called me diario
in espanol and it's basically on how to
write
a diary in spanish so it's really
relevant to me it's like daily topics if
i want to just journal in spanish
all of the ways i can do that are in
this book and
the next one is complete spanish grammar
by practice makes perfect
mcgraw-hill yes uh i used to use this
for japanese
and i just like that it is so like it's
just grammar that is nicely laid out i
haven't progressed very far in this book
but i will also put the link in the
description if you if you're like more
into grammar studies which i think is a
great supplement so if you're using
something like
toucan where you can glean a lot of the
vocabulary you do want to supplement
your vocab learning
with a grammar resource then lastly
speaking practice for spanish two apps
for language exchange the first one
is uh tandem i have spoken about tandem
in
this video you can check that out and
then also hello talk
which i've spoken about in this video
basically what you can do on those apps
is find native speakers
they are both free so you can find
people to talk to you can also create
your own like
daily vlogs where you practice speaking
and you just post it online there's a
ton of these speaking challenges you can
do
i think it's the 30 day record yourself
challenge just search for those on
instagram tumblr or twitter you can do
that
then again i take italki lessons
every monday for half an hour it's
really short but it's just enough for me
to feel comfortable
speaking at my basic level in spanish
i mean i could be talking to my own
spanish friends for instance but
sometimes it is really nerve-wracking
when you're a beginner
to just start talking to people you're
kind of worried you're going to make
mistakes
but i do feel like having conversational
or structured classes
is kind of a safe space where you are
allowed to make mistakes like the
teacher is not going to laugh at you
they're there to help you that is why i
take uh
conversational classes again this video
is not sponsored by italki
but if you do want to get a 10 free
credits
after you book your first lesson check
the link in the description
for that okay i can go on forever but
these are my top
resources for now i hope you found them
useful if you have any spanish resources
that you want to recommend
leave them in the comments and finally i
also have a spanish
resources page on my website which i
regularly update
so do check out lindybuetis.com
spanish-resources and
as usual have a wonderful wonderful week
and i will see you in the next video