Free German, on the Web

While stretching, I have started listening to German news radio, free via the Internet. 

German Radio on the Web

I didn’t do this with previous languages, but it’s great. 

German sounds markedly slower to me than Spanish. Is it?

Even though I feel my skills are weaker in German, I am pretty sure I understand more of what I hear on the German radio stations than I understood of Spanish television earlier this year. And television offers visual cues, too!

There is no question I am understanding German news way better than I would have one month ago. Bolstering my vocabulary has helped tremendously, though I continue to have trouble with similar-looking words in German, things like this:

• Ausdruck – expression
• Andruck – pressure
• Aufdruck – imprint

If I just paid more attention to prefixes, it would help, but when someone is slinging conversational-speed German at you, even if it is slower than Spanish, it is kind of hard to find time to contemplate the meaning of a prefix, and how it might affect the overall meaning of the word in which it appears.