Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 4182 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English
| Message 1 of 17 25 June 2013 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
Hi ,
I am new here .
I am a french student learning English . I am desperate to find American series with English subtitles . I don't want to buy DvDs they are too expensive and i need to order them through Amazon.com . I am pretty sure that i can find these materials on the internet even if i pay online but i need your help .
There is something that i have noticed though and would like to know if you guys who are experienced in the language learning process find it a normal step .
I am passionate in personal development and i love to read and listen to a lot of motivational speakers . Most of motivational speakers are great orators and speak very fast . After almost a year of listening efforts , i am finally reaping the fruits of my efforts . I can listen and understand them almost effortlessly for hours . I can also understand 80% of TV news .
But as soon as i watch a TV serie , its not the same , i almost understand nothing and that frustrates me a lot because i thought i was finally seeing the end of the tunnel when in fact i am not in the middle yet .
Do you guys think that it's normal ?
Can you tell me where to find American series in English with English subtitles ?
english
Edited by Jazzy1979 on 25 June 2013 at 10:33pm
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 2 of 17 25 June 2013 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
It is normal, you are just getting out of your comfort zone. :-) It will get much better after a few episodes and you'll be much better at it after as little as one season.
There are dvds in English on the french Amazon too and they have some digital copies store as well. And if you consider dvds in France expensive, you should come here and compare to know what a paradise you live in:-D
It is against the rules to give links to pirated copies on the forum but you can get a lot of advice through pm ;-)
Basically, your trouble is only to find the films to download, not stream. Once you download them, there are many sites with subtitles and some players (such as BS player) search a few of them automatically for you. Or if you buy some dvds, it isn't hard to save the epizodes into your computer and add subtitles from the same sources.
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aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5543 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese
| Message 3 of 17 26 June 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
All American TV shows that you buy should have subtitles (also known as closed captions)
in English, you'll have to go into the settings to enable them, but they should be there.
Amazon.com has their instant video service though I don't know if you need to have a US
billing address to use it. If you are able to buy/rent TV shows from amazon.com with a
French billing address it also looks like you can also download them depending on the
device.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 4 of 17 26 June 2013 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
One thing to keep in mind is that the subtitles for whatever reason often don't match up perfectly with what's being said. I'm not sure why that is, though.
If you haven't looked into torrents, now's probably the time to start. Even if it doesn't come with subtitles, pretty much any major movie or TV series will have subtitles available to download online at places like http://opensubtitles.org/ .
Also, professional speakers will generally speak really clearly (if nobody can understand what you're saying you aren't going to motivate many people ;)), whereas dialogs in TV shows and movies are generally much more natural. Faster, not pronounced as clearly, and you have to battle with background noise and music. As Cavesa said, give it a few episodes or a season and you'll find that it's much easier to understand what people say.
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I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4175 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese
| Message 5 of 17 26 June 2013 at 9:20am | IP Logged |
I think France has some rather draconian laws about torrenting, so it might not be a great idea.
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 17 26 June 2013 at 2:07pm | IP Logged |
Cavesa wrote:
It is against the rules to give links to pirated copies on the forum but you can get a lot of advice through pm ;-) |
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Crush wrote:
If you haven't looked into torrents, now's probably the time to start. |
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Please, everybody, don't try to skate around the rules like this.
1. Our administrator has asked us to please not use HTLAL for copyright infringement.
2. None of us are experts in Swiss copyright law, and we don't know what kind of "takedown" letters or other legal demands he might have to comply with.
The moderators have discussed this issue, and we're in agreement: We do not wish our administrator to have to deal with letters from lawyers. Thank you.
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Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 4182 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English
| Message 7 of 17 26 June 2013 at 4:11pm | IP Logged |
Thank you guys for all the advice .
@crush that's certainly the reason , professional speakers are far from the way casual people talk to each other .
I am not familiar with all the internet vocabulary concerning downloading , i tried torrent this morning , seems interesting .
I already like this forum ,i feel like it shall provide me all i need psychologically to stick to my learning language .
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 8 of 17 26 June 2013 at 5:33pm | IP Logged |
I hope there is an 8th circle of hell being built for those keeping the horrible and totally wrong (for all sides but parasites) version of the copyright alive. I'll of course respect admin's wish but in general, following wrong rules just makes them stronger.
Jazzy, fortunately, you can learn all about this by yourself with just a few experiments and a few hours of searching, no need for the forums in this particular area. You have the internet connection and you can read. That's all you need.
P.S. sorry a bad day. and being annoyed by the most stupid and parasite profitining "law" on the planet doesn't help.
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