The great thing with, what I consider, radio is the mix of talk and the chosen music. I like it even more because of the simplicity of listening to radio with a smartphone and through a web browser. I listen to radio almost every day, mostly P3, but also P1 and most interestingly "Radio Nacional de Colombia", the public service radio of Colombia.
The reason for this is that my girlfriend is from Colombia and listening to the Colombian public service radio teaches me a lot about the their culture and I get my daily lecture of Spanish. I found this web radio just the other week and I really appreciate the non-commercial mix of talk and music. They have high quality content which is really rare as I have been looking for south american radio for some time. When I got the idea of searching for their public service content I was gladly surprised of my findings.
I believe this holds true for our Swedish public service radio too. We are maybe not aware of it or we might take it for granted. But for me the great content of public service radio is truly important for the culture and the community.
What do you think? Have you ever listen to foreign radio?
That sounds wonderful, Niklas. I have not listened to other than english speaking radio shows, which is rather similar to the swedish ones, so I have no idea about how it feels. But I can imagine that a completely new world has shown itself to you.
ReplyDeleteTalking about foreign radio or radio in a foreign language, I'd like to add a rather up-side down view: Despite being born and having grown up in Finland I have until recently almost never listened to finnish radio. The reason is simple: My native language is swedish and SR (Swedish Radio) was, and still is, aired at Åland where I come from. After my sister moved to Turku in Finland I started to listen to some finnish radio there. Since my school-finnish is not very good, listening to spoken radio doesn't feel meaningful, but I like finnish rock-music, so commercial rock/pop stations work somehow. Listening to these commercial stations I noticed two things: They shout much louder in finnish radio, and more importantly, finnish commecial radio turn out to be quite easy to understand despite not being so skilled in the language. One reason for this is that the format is the same as in swedish commercial radio, another is that the language and overall sounds that are supposed to transfer information seems to be very strong and simple. This gives insight into the core of commercial radio: It should be easy to understand and entertaining. Which it is until I/you get bored/annoyed because it is so simple and repetitive. From a language learning perspective the repetitive nature might be a good thing – repetition is the mother of learning. (I've actually learnt many useful words and expressions from lisening to ads, crazy as it might sound.)
ReplyDeleteAt last I have to add that of course we have two stations of, quite good, swedish (meaning the language) public service radio in Finland. Some of you might also know that SR, I think P4 Stockholm at least, air some radio programs in finnish under the label Sisuradio. I did however not know that when I moved to Stockholm so you can figure out I was surprised when I turned on the local radio in Stockholm and heard finnish!
I have only listened to Swedish and English/American radio (or rather podcasts). I haven't even considered other languages although a specific tip about a Spanish-language podcast would be appreciated!
ReplyDeleteMy room mate when I was studying in USA was from Belgium and when I was going to visit her this summer she sent me a link to a website with all the belgian radio stations so that I could prepare myself for the visit. Then when I came to Belgium she asked me which station I liked the most and put that station on. That was quite fun, and actually not too annoying listening to the belgian language even though I don't know it :-)
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