Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: Coffee Break Spanish

Posted by Maximum Fun on 13th September 2010

Vital stats:
Format: Spanish class
Duration: 15m-20m
Frequency: every week or two
Archive available on iTunes: all

Both the weirdest and most obvious thing about this show is that its hosts are Scottish. This isn’t terribly strange in itself, though most podcast listeners seem to hail from North America, where voices with full-blown Scots accents remain rare. What’s mildly unnerving is having such a voice teach you Spanish. These particular Scots are good at what they do, no doubt about it, but if you’re a Yank like me, it’ll be all you can to do keep your “Ach!”s, haggis references, and Groundskeeper Willie quotations to a minimum.



But it would be unfair to focus on the exotic provenance of Coffee Break Spanish [RSS] [iTunes], especially since this kind of unexpected internationalism is one of those special delights podcasting has made possible. Stand back and ponder the fact that you can get a grasp on most any reasonably widely-used language — we remain in wait for most of the ones involving tongue clicks — quickly and for free, just by downloading and listening to a few audio files. I don’t know anybody who’s become fluent in a foreign language through podcasts and podcasts alone, but that’s not the point; the point is to get you going.



This is one of the most popular language podcasts around — hell, one of the most popular podcasts around. I chalk this up to two things. First and foremost, the Spanish language itself seems to be in healthy demand. Us North Americites, especially those of us in the southern border states, most likely want to be able to talk with our friends in Mexico. I myself have a jones to visit Mexico City, which seems just strange enough to be deeply fascinating. Failing that, we tend to try to “find ourselves” with extended backpacking journeys across Guatemala. Being from Scotland — er, Escocia — I would bet that the hosts, teacher Mark and student Kara, are more interested in Spain. Y’know, Barcelona. Madrid. García Lorca. Frank Gehry. All that.



This introduces another accentual quality that some might find off-putting: they usually use Spanish rather than the Latin American pronunciation. This strikes me as no big deal, since the latter sounds — from what I can tell — to be a lisp-intensive version of the former, but I sense that some listeners have written concerned e-mails to the producer. In the same way, you may or may not enjoy the goofy sense of humor that periodically surfaces, as when Mark expresses shock and dismay that Kara lacks a rock-solid grasp on the work of Billy Joel, but I can’t say as I mind it. I eventually did get a little irked by the cha-cha-cha flavor of the interstitial production, since it reminds me of everything I disliked about high school Spanish classes.



Yes, I took four years of this language back then, but the merciless sands of time have since reduced my Spanish to ruins. Given my aforementioned Mexico City jones, I figured I’d use Coffee Break Spanish as a first step toward rebuilding my skills. The show claims to be geared toward the absolute beginner, and, for the first few dozen episodes, boy is it: your holas, you buenos diases, etc. If you really are just starting down the Spanish road, it’s one of the easier, friendlier, more accessible ways to do it. There’s nothing especially innovative about the actual linguistic education it imparts — Mark introduces new material every time, Kara learns it, the listener’s given plenty of time to answer themselves, sometimes unusual things happen like cultural discussions or appearances by what sounds like a toddler — but nor is there anything to complain about.



This brings me to the second reason the podcast is so popular: consistency. Language shows tend to podfade rather quickly; they’re second only to maybe hey-my-buddies-are-kinda-funny comedy podcasts in that regard. But Coffee Break Spanish has endured with supreme clarity and regularity. For my own purposes, I wish they’d move a little faster, but hope has appeared on the horizon: about 50 episodes in, they get to the past tense, on which I could use some additional tutelage. The price is definitely right. (Unless you step up to this “freemium”-model show’s additional materials, in which case you’ll have to decide how right the price is yourself.)


[Podthinker Colin Marshall also happens to be the host and producer of public radio’s The Marketplace of Ideas, the blogger of The War on Mediocrity and the writer of The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project.]