Best Spanish Podcast Sites: Desde el Baño

Podcasts are an excellent way to keep your Spanish skills tuned up. There are many podcasts available but for the language learner not all podcasts are created equal.

Here is a sweet little treasure. This podcast is done by an Argentinian named Sofia.

Her podcast description reads:

"La idea del Podcast es darle la posibilidad a todos los que estén interesados, de aprender el vocabulario y las expresiones más comunes de la Argentina. Para poder aprovecharlo, es necesario tener un conocimiento previo de español."

"The idea of the podcast is to give you the possibility to learn vocabulary and common Argentinian expressions. To benefit a previous knowledge of Spanish is needed."

These podcasts are perhaps most suited to advanced-intermediate (and up) learners. Although, if you slow the speed of your player*, an intermediate-level listener could probably follow the podcast pretty well.

The podcast is inactive; the last entry is dated September 30, 2007. However, fortunately for us, the site is still up and the archives are available.

Some examples of her tags/topics are:

Acentos(6), Errores(3), Fotos(6), Futbol(4), Peliculas(3), Preguntas de oyentes(2), and Vocabulario(10).

Her delivery is pretty speedy but her sentence are fairly short. She uses a lot of rephrasing and question and answer structures which make the presentation easier to follow. She speaks in full sentences and controls the level of vocabulary and slang. In one podcast she mentions that she doesn't speak as quickly as she does with her friends nor does she use slang and sentence fragments as she would with them.

The sound quality of the podcast clean, consistent and well-edited.

*If you have difficulty following the podcast, you might try downloading the file and playing it in Windows Media. You can slow down the speed and make it easier to understand.

If you like the podcasts, there are a couple of her quizzes on the Quizilla site.


I highly recommend Desde el Baño as one of my picks for Best Spanish Podcast Sites.

Tip.1. Speak Spanish while Talking on the Telephone to Invisible People

Our last series of four tips on learning Spanish...
concentrated on finding opportunities to speak out loud to yourselves while doing various activities. Those activities do not require the input of another live human and are thus less stressful for you.

The next series of tips...
eases you into the wonderful world of trying out your Spanish on real people. However, to keep the stress level down you can start by talking to invisible people.

Tip 1. Use Local Spanish Resources.

Locally: larger cities have Spanish community centres. Call them on the phone and
ask about events, facilities, activities or classes.

You don't have to go to the events, facilities or classes, your goal is just talk to somebody over the phone in Spanish about something. You might prep a few questions so you don't stumble out of the gate and make them switch into English. People in these positions are delighted to talk to you.