Our local paper reported today that the most watched station in the Phoenix area for the 18-49 year old age group is the affiliate of the Spanish language network Univision. Heck, I watch it, too, almost every weekday afternoon.

Univision provides a nice mix of programming, that the English language networks seem to have forgotten about. They run a fair number of soap operas in the evening, but unlike English language soaps which go on endlessly and in which every relationship lasts exactly as long as it helps the ratings, the Spanish ones are actually 'novellas' with a beginning, middle and end, and good couples are permitted to stay together in the end.

I just watch a news magazine show in the afternoon. It's interesting for a number of reasons. There is obvious pride in speaking Spanish, but there is also an attitude that speaking English is a fun and classy thing to do, not in anyway a burden on the Latin American community, here. The Latin stars who are interviewed, often throw in an English word or expression, when they can't think of a Spanish one at the moment. Usually the interviewer doesn't feel the need to translate it into Spanish for the viewers. In fact one of the biggest sponsors is an outfit that sells a huge teach-yourself English course.

The US news is very much what you'd see on the English stations with only one or two stories a night picked because latinos (not necessarily Spanish speakers) are involved. The international news is slanted toward Central and South America instead of Europe as every English-language network's news is, which makes for a fresh outlook on things.

There are other Spanish stations. The rival Galavision, owned by NBC, has similar programming, but over all is a fairly crude operation by comparison. The fairly new network Telemundo is owned by Univision. It mostly runs movies, both movies from everywhere south of the border, and dubbed recent English language films. I watched BtVS the movie on Telemundo one evening and have to say the Spanish-language version was significantly less dumb!
ext_15252: (compgeek)

From: [identity profile] masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com


I have always wanted to use Spanish language soap operas to learn Spanish. It seems highly motivating: "Darn! Was it Enrico's baby or Eduardos? I didn't catch what she said!" Of course, I imagine it would be a boot-strapping process. Following the soaps to learn Spanish, learning Spanish to follow the soaps.

From: [identity profile] cactuswatcher.livejournal.com


It certainly works that way with the news programs. It's been a long time since high school Spanish!... But, you get comfortable with it after a while.
ext_15252: (Default)

From: [identity profile] masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com


The news programs might actually be a better bet because if it's a story you're familiar with, you have less blanks to fill in than with fictional fare.

From: [identity profile] cactuswatcher.livejournal.com


Plus, they use a lot of canned phrases... 'Gran Manzana' literally "The Big Apple" for New York City; 'tras las rejas' for "behind bars" and so on. You catch on
.

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