News for dummies now available in podcast form

Date:April 7, 2006 / year-entry #126
Tags:non-computer
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060407-42/?p=31603
Comments:    17
Summary:I'm probably the only person who uses the "News for dummies" links in the navigation pane on this page, and now I'm going to use them even less. The Swedish news for dummies recently became available in podcast form [RSS], joining the German news for dummies, which has been available as a podcast [RSS] since...

I'm probably the only person who uses the "News for dummies" links in the navigation pane on this page, and now I'm going to use them even less. The Swedish news for dummies recently became available in podcast form [RSS], joining the German news for dummies, which has been available as a podcast [RSS] since the beginning of the year. (Both the Swedes and Germans have, of course, other podcast offerings beyond the news for dummies.)

Of the two, I prefer the Swedish news for dummies. The German news for dummies is still your standard news report, but spoken m-i-n-d   b-o-g-g-l-i-n-g-l-y   s-l-o-w-l-y. Which means I can hear every syllable clearly without actually understanding anything, since they still use all that fancy German vocabulary. The Swedish news for dummies, on the other hand, proceeds at a methodical (as opposed to mind-numbing) pace and, more importantly, explains the news using simpler words, words which I am much more likely to know.

(What's the lesson here? I dunno. If you want to speak Swedish with me, talk like those Klartext folks. if you want to speak German with me, do not talk like those folks over at Deutsche Welle's Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten because I won't understand you. But your best choice is probably English, since your English will be about twenty times better than my Swedish or German.)

Comments (17)
  1. Chester says:
    April 7, 2006 at 10:55 am

    It would be great if there was a Japanese News For Dummies – people say NHK is already at a moderated pace, but it is still too fast for students (and dummies, I guess :-) )

  2. Schwallex says:
    April 7, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    Hi Raymond,

    I just wanted to point out that in German,  possesive forms of proper names are built without using an apostrophe.

    Now, from the structure of the sentence in question, I’d say that the German part is probably supposed to begin with "langsam" while the "Deutsche Welle’s" part is supposed to be English — but just in case it ain’t, you should at least change it into "Deutsche Welles", or, better yet, "der Deutschen Welle".

  3. Raymond Chen - MSFT says:
    April 7, 2006 at 1:44 pm

    Thanks, Schwallex, but as you noted, the only German part was the "Langsam…". If I had wanted the other part to be German as well, I probably should have used the dative case on "gesprochenen"…

  4. David Conrad says:
    April 7, 2006 at 2:52 pm

    That’s fantastic, Raymond, I had never noticed those two links before.  I gave up on learning German some time ago, but maybe I should give it another go.  You don’t know of a similar resource for French by any chance, do you?

  5. peterchen says:
    April 8, 2006 at 7:41 am

    typically german I’d say.

    btw. does someone know something similar for english? (swedish style preferably)

  6. Elissa says:
    April 9, 2006 at 12:24 am

    Raymond, do you have any "news for dummies" links to share left over from when you were studying Mandarin?

  7. Chris Lienert says:
    April 9, 2006 at 10:26 pm

    If the regular Deutsche Welle news readers aren’t bad enough, there was one who managed to speak about twice as slowly as the others making it entirely incomprehensible. Each syl-la-ble was pro-nounced se-par-ate-ly so that by the end of the sen-tence the start was en-tire-ly for-got-ten. I suspect someone had a quiet word to her since they’re all fairly consistent now albeit, as noted, not the quickest.

  8. peterchen says:
    April 10, 2006 at 2:44 am

    > I suspect someone had a quiet

    or a few syllables :)

  9. Moi says:
    April 10, 2006 at 8:36 am

    typically german I’d say

    That’s okay. When speaking English to foreigners the "typically" English thing to do is SHOUT, BECAUSE THAT MAKES THE MEANING CLEAR, DOESN’T IT? :-)

    But if you want something "typically German" then how about the fact that on DE keyboards, putting on the Caps Lock also affects the number keys. Logisch, oder? <thumps head into desk>

  10. Luke says:
    April 10, 2006 at 9:37 am

    But if you want something "typically German" then how about the fact that on DE keyboards, putting on the Caps Lock also affects the number keys. Logisch, oder? <thumps head into desk>

    Actually this is the intended behaviour. But you can switch from the German (Germany) to the German (IBM) keyboard layout, where the number keys aren’t affected by CAPS LOCK

  11. Moi says:
    April 10, 2006 at 10:23 am

    Well I gathered it was "intended", but I still think it is silly. Logical, yes, but from a usability standpoint is a mistake (it depends whether you consider it a caps lock or shift lock, I guess). Thanks for the German (IBM) tip, I’ll change it right now.

  12. peterchen says:
    April 12, 2006 at 4:40 am

    BECAUSE THAT MAKES THE MEANING CLEAR, DOESN’T IT? :-)

    Heck yeah!

    I remember some english speaking people that happily repeated a phrase a dozen times, but never got the idea of going slower, or use a different wording.

    >> German (IBM)

    cool!

    (But I guess the german/germany has this setting because of the ! and ?)

  13. The Old New Thing : News for dummies in French and English says:
    April 12, 2006 at 10:00 am

    PingBack from http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/04/12/574928.aspx

  14. chcheese says:
    April 17, 2006 at 3:13 am

    Elissa: Raymond, do you have any "news for dummies" links to share left over from when you were studying Mandarin?

    Some info on:

    http://www.slate.com/id/2139939/

  15. dp says:
    April 18, 2006 at 5:08 am

    Watch out, Raymond.  The phrase "for Dummies" is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing and they will most likely send you a threatening letter if they see you using it (see my URL for example).

    As for learning German via the Deutsche Welle news, I found it quite easy going.  Mind you, living in Germany and hearing the language around me every day is a huge help aswell.

  16. mike's web log says:
    April 21, 2006 at 9:10 am

    Raymond Chen compares two radio broadcasts aimed at non-native speakers, one in Swedish and one in German. He observes that the Swedish broadcast focuses on using simple words, while the German one accommodates non-native listeners by speaking really

  17. The Old New Thing : How Raymond learns languages (and why it's not working) says:
    October 9, 2006 at 10:00 am

    PingBack from http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/10/09/808230.aspx

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