Podcast Review – Romanian Podcast.Net

I promised a few podcast reviews some time ago so I’m working slowly through the list of sites I bookmarked. I’ve decided to continue my series of podcast reviews with a review of Romanian-Podcast.Net, a podcast series which teaches basic Romanian.

The site has been online for about a year and has a total of 16 episodes thus far. New episodes are added once a month and come with handy (and free!) transcripts. The episodes themselves are quite thorough and are mostly thematic (e.g. telling the time, ordering coffees at a cafe). A lot of new words and expressions are taught in each lesson and some basic grammar is also covered, though not in great detail.

What I like about this podcast series is that the presenter, Florin, focuses on teaching the language rather than initiating silly conversations with his co-presenters, something that certain well-known podcasts are guilty of. Lessons are also relatively short (7-8 minutes long) so there’s no risk of being overwhelmed by new words or grammar.

My only complaint would be the lack of updates. Learners might find it hard to learn the language when there’s only one new episode per month. There are also no lessons available for intermediate or advanced learners so this podcast might not be very useful for those who already have a basic command of the language. Nevertheless, this is probably the only podcast course around for learning Romanian so it is a valuable resource in itself. If you’re thinking of learning Romanian for travel or simply to indulge your curiosity, then I can recommend visiting the Romanian-Podcast.Net website to see what Florin has in store for you.