Climbing Content in Spanish/French

Maybe a question for the international thread? I feel like most of you just look in the latest posts anyway haha.

Does anyone know any climbing youtubers/videos that are based in Mexico, Spain, or France? I've just started taking Spanish courses and I think it could be helpful to submerge myself in Spanish content. I started watching Jon Arcocha and what I like the most is that he talks at a normal pace (fast for me) and they're auto dubbed so I can listen to the original audio (Spanish) with spanish subtitles, then go back over it with English audio and spanish subtitles, and toggle between the two to make sure I'm understanding what's being said.

I've also been quite shit at French ever since taking it in high school, so French videos/youtubers would also be appreciated.

In other words, is there a more euro Magnus Mitdbo?

Edu Marin comes to mind for Spanish. Bassa and Mickaël Mawem for French.

For French Podcasts that are climbing related here are a couple

-Allez! Le podcaste qui parle d’escalade

-Ascension Grimpe (Leo Pasek)

-La Voix des Grimpeurs , podcast d’escalade

Theres some seb bouin videos in French (some in English). His hidden gems series is one of the best on youtube in my opinion.

in french-
For YouTube, you could try Vincente Grimpe.
For reading, I think Vertige Media is far and away the best source for honest analysis of the climbing world. Pretty progressive, which is a plus for me but ymmv 

Thanks guys! These are all super helpful.

Jack M wrote:

Theres some seb bouin videos in French (some in English). His hidden gems series is one of the best on youtube in my opinion.

Seb Bouin Hidden Gem series is one of the best climbing serie out there. So is his vintage tour. Just pure quality climbing, and an piece of climbing history.

If you haven't seen his video of the jumbo love extension it's one of the most mind blowing things I've seen in climbing. Wish I had 1/1000th of his endurance haha. 

If anyone tapped into this for Spanish videos, I just stumbled across ARPA made by Ana Argudo and Simnon Padin. They have really high quality climbing videos in spanish and offer auto dubbing. If nothing else, it's cool to see area that I know nothing about and it's a great way to practice Spanish.

As a help, for video source:-

North French is slower than South French, i learnt in Toulouse, so i think Normandy is dead slow.

South American Spanish is much slower than Spain(ish), and much less "missing" words, i can follow a conversation without a brain overload (in for example Peru).

Diego Canavati is pretty good. He has a reasonably popular Instagram and YouTube and puts out good stuff. Definitely will help improve your Mexican Spanish.

https://youtu.be/mUkZymFLhIw?si=nzYE4BfBlOLRj0uv

Kevin K wrote:

Diego Canavati is pretty good. He has a reasonably popular Instagram and YouTube and puts out good stuff. Definitely will help improve your Mexican Spanish.

https://youtu.be/mUkZymFLhIw?si=nzYE4BfBlOLRj0uv

Sus videos se ve guay. Muchas gracias!

I have used this website to quickly check various terms in French. Seems like maybe a good opportunity to put this into an anki deck to supplement your input from the videos and podcasts suggested above.  https://www.gdargaud.net/Climbing/Lex_En.html

Okay it's been 8 months since I posted this and I just got back from a one month trip to Europe!

I was actually able to get by quite well with my French and spent 3 of the weeks there. I didn't use my Spanish much at all, but I think these practices and my experiences with them would be the same. Here's what I did and how much I think it helped.

1. 5/5 Like and watch as many French tiktok videos as possible
   1. The reason this is my number one is probably because I spend so much time on my phone. You hear so many different voices, memes, jokes, weird slang, and accents this way. People talk at their regular pace and because the videos naturally recycle, you can watch a video multiple times until you fully understand what they're saying. Also, there's often subtitles which can be really helpful.
2. 3/5 Watch French movies/climbing videos
   1. I think this was essential because I was watching a lot of movies and motivated to watch the French classics, so I immersed myself in the language. That being said, without subtitles I would miss a lot of stuff and with English subtitles I still wouldn't know how to spell certain words in French. If there was a subtitle system where I could read both English and French at the same time, that would maybe work? But it would ruin the movie watching experience.
3. 3/5 Take French classes
   1. Learning grammar rules and different structures is important to understand things on a deeper level, but at a certain point the classes are not super helpful. Also, having to do them online means that connection can be an issue and having your video buffer and break up when you're barely getting out sentences is kind of a struggle. I would say the biggest benefit of these classes was to have consistency. You schedule your classes and therefore know that at the very least you will be learning a bit of french at that day and time. It helps keep it in your mind when the motivation is low.
4. 4/5 Speak French in the wild
   1. Most people rank this as the number one thing you can do to learn French, but I don't think it's actually the absolute best. It's obviously necessary, but often times you are limited by the lowest common denominator of your knowledge and the person you're speaking with. In other words, if you speak to someone who is fluent in French and English, it's super helpful, but if you barely know French and the person you're speaking to barely knows English, there's no way to bridge the gap between words you're thinking of and their translation. Someone who is fluent in both can help you search for the word you want to say and even tell you the word they would commonly use. Also, if you don't perfectly pronounce something, they can often pick up and help you correct it. You might be thinking, well if the other person is bad, we can just bridge the gap with google translate. The issue with that is that google translate is really slow which breaks the conversation pace down and leads them to try less words, as they don't think you'll understand what they're saying. Also, often times google translate gives you a word which technically is correct, but almost never used and oftentimes too literal. Then at best, you end up memorizing a word which a native speaker would never use, and that you can barely memorize because it's technically only meant to describe that word you looked up.
5. 3/5 Read French books
   1. Depending on your French level, it might require you to get a digital version of whatever you're reading because you will have to frequently look up words. This is still super valuable, but it doesn't get the pronunciation involved and can be quite time consuming if your French is only intermediate.
6. 3.5/5 Listen to French podcasts
   1. Unlike movies, you really get the pacing of how people speak. Also, you will probably miss a lot of things, but this is the closest thing you can find to natural conversation and its super low effort. You can just have a french podcast constantly playing and be accidentally learning french without even doing much. Kind of like a baby listening to their parents talk.
7. 2/5 Duolingo
   1. Far too simple, limited access, really only teaches you vocab and you'd be better off teaching yourself those things.