Learning Spanish — Part 9

I have finally hit 500 hours of comprehensible input tracked in the Dreaming Spanish app. First, a look at my stats.

My stats for Dreaming Spanish as of 2026–05–17

2,596 videos watched on DS. 98 beginner videos remaining I haven’t seen yet / 32.5 hours of beginner content left (they add a video like every day, but it’s a small fraction of the 1 hour minimum I get every day). I’ve reached videos in elo rating 49, now, just going through the playlist.

My last 100 hour (400) update was on February 23rd, 2026. I’ll run through the Dreaming Spanish difficulty levels, picking a video for each, and describe how it feels now, which I’ve been wondering about since I’ve been staying in “beginner” for so long.

Hardest Beginner Video One ❤️ One Not Always Two (8/10) (elo 62) — I saw the first 5 minutes for the first time. I felt like I understood most of it, like 90%. There were like 3–4 sentences that threw me off, but easily got the gist of what was literally happening. It’s harder to follow this story in depth than it would be, say, watching “Friends” in English.

Easiest Intermediate Video Pasapalabra: Grand Tournament | Round 2 (elo 45) — This is part of a new series, and the easiest-rated intermediate video I hadn’t seen yet. At the beginning, Andres does say you should watch the first episode to know the rules of the game they (Andres, Natalia and Ester are playing). They go through each letter of the alphabet and have the “contestant” (Ester at the start) answer a question with a word that starts with that letter. If they “pasa palabra” / “pasamos el turno”, then it goes to the other contestant (Natalia). I watched 5 minutes of it. It felt pretty easy to follow and similar in comprehension to the One ❤ One Not Always Two video.

Hardest Intermediate Video Is Barcelona Safe? (elo 82) — I picked up where I had apparently left off at one point at 5 minutes in, and watched about 3.5 minutes of it. In this video, Andres is interviewing native speakers in Spain. It’s too advanced for me. I felt I could tell what they are talking about, but I couldn’t tell you what they said about it through much of what I watched.

Easiest Advanced Video Meryl Streep: The Art of Total Versatility (elo 52) — I skipped over all of Augustina’s Geoguesser/Timeguesser/etc. videos to get to this one. If I hadn’t, her videos are like elo 45. Natalia talks about how Meryl makes it look easy to change every aspect of how she portrays one character versus another, but that it’s actually really hard. I watched 5 minutes. I felt it was comparable to the easiest intermediate video I chose for this post.

Hardest Advanced Video Marce’s hilarious stand up routine (elo 93) — It literally has the description “A big challenge for your comprehension”. It truly is, it is too advanced, but I found it easier to understand a lot of the phrases she used than the natives in the video “Is Barcelona Safe?” I watched 3 minutes of it.

Power Rangers — Episode 1 El Inicio There’s still entire sentences I’m not comprehending (not that I can’t infer from context), and my comprehension kind of wavers in and out a bit. If this was a Dreaming Spanish video, I’d say it was too advanced. When Zordon is giving out the Zords, and gets to Kimberly, does he really say “Kimberly, gracioso y pequeña”? Funny and small? I reviewed the first ~10 minutes of the episode.

Sheera — Episode 1 I reviewed about 1/2 of the episode and I would say I can understand most of what is being said without any visual context — even the faster dialogue, like when Glimmer and her mother are having the argument over whether she should fight back against The Horde, which is likely heavily biased due to my having the episode pretty well memorized by now.

My Little Pony: La Magia de la Amistad (episode 1 / parte 1) (TV-Y) Last time I gave myself 60–70% comprehension. This time, I rewatched about half of it, and I’d say it’s closer to a solid “70%” feel.

Moving Forward

Some thoughts… First of all, of the 1,602 beginner videos (over 273 hours of content) that are on the Dreaming Spanish app, I have watched 1,504 of them. This is an accomplishment in and of itself. While the app/site expects you to be watching exclusively “Intermediate” level videos at this stage, there are 100 hours left until the site/app rates me “level 5”. Already, the beginner videos are into elo 49, and when I felt I’d hit a plateau before, it was around elo 52 in intermediate. My plan now is to try again, and if I struggle, “brute force” it for awhile hoping that it becomes easier with more exposure to the broader vocabulary and faster speech in the intermediate category. The goal isn’t to watch every video on the site, the goal is to keep improving. Becoming fluent in a language while having a full-time career, spending at least some time on hobbies, and home life activities is a big challenge, which I will overcome with consistent tenacity.

I also think now that I’m freeing myself from just watching beginner videos, I’ll include more diversity in my sources of content again during my “focused” input time.

I also plan to dig into this incredible-looking google document for comprehensible input sources. I might try comprensi. I might search through this wiki. Maybe I’ll try language reactor. One site I liked outside of Dreaming Spanish was called “cibubble”, but it looks like it’s down and was just someone’s small project, so they may not even own the domain anymore, so I wouldn’t advise visiting it — it is disappointing, though.

I also feel I didn’t have as much energy for this post as I’ve had in my previous posts. Maybe I’ll feel better next time!

Well, it’s late and I want to wrap this up for now. I expect I’ll write another post once I reach 600 hours, at which the Dreaming Spanish theory says “if you do start speaking and reading it’s not a big deal by this point” and “Easier TV programs and cartoons should be accessible”, and probably another in-between.

It’s going to be really awesome when I finally get to a point where I can confidently make friends using only Spanish, enjoy native content casually, and get more perspective from another culture. I really look forward to that.