DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6155 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 1 of 28 14 March 2013 at 12:14pm | IP Logged |
I've often read threads where it's mentioned that people can watch hundreds of hours of subtitled films, but never pick up any of the language. The situation is quite different if the person has studied the language. In this case, watching subtitled films becomes a good learning experience. I'm wondering what would happen in between. If you read a grammar of the language, but did no other active study. Would you pick up much of the language watching subtitled films ?
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4711 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 2 of 28 14 March 2013 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
I can't imagine what person would do this. In all cases where people watch hours of
subtitled films they also have at least school instruction and some experience in
conversation.
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beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4626 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian
| Message 3 of 28 14 March 2013 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
In all cases where people watch hours of
subtitled films they also have at least school instruction and some experience in
conversation. |
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Not necessarily. You could be a fan of Japanese horror movies but not know anything about the Japanese language.
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6155 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 4 of 28 14 March 2013 at 1:26pm | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
I can't imagine what person would do this. In all cases where people watch hours of subtitled films they also have at least school instruction and some experience in conversation. |
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I've a number of friends who watch the series 'The Killing' and have no plans to learn Danish. Most of the films I've watched are subtitled, and with many of them I never knew the language.
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Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5104 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German
| Message 5 of 28 14 March 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged |
DaraghM wrote:
I've often read threads where it's mentioned that people can watch hundreds of hours of subtitled films, but never pick up any of the language. The situation is quite different if the person has studied the language. In this case, watching subtitled films becomes a good learning experience. I'm wondering what would happen in between. If you read a grammar of the language, but did no other active study. Would you pick up much of the language watching subtitled films ?
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Where there's a will; there's a way, I suppose. I knew someone who said she learned English from music videos, if that helps any.
It doesn't seem like that would be a particularly good method though, unless for some reason you had no other choice.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 6 of 28 14 March 2013 at 2:51pm | IP Logged |
It depends on so many factors!
-is the language similar to one you speak?
-are you watching in order to learn the language, or do you actually love the movies? or both?
-which language?
-what sort of movies?
-how much do you rely on the subtitles? can you ignore them when you understand? do you bother to?
-are there L2 subtitles in addition to the L1 ones? will they eventually replace them?
-are you a visual or aural learner?
Personally, I love listening. and I find that if I hear the words rather than just see them written, they have much better chances of entering my active vocabulary.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 7 of 28 14 March 2013 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
You would learn very little, and in most cases, virtually nothing.
I've never heard anyone actually uttering a sentence of a language and saying "I never really studied the language but I've watched so many subtitled movies that I just learned it anyway".
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6913 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 8 of 28 14 March 2013 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
I think Tarvos meant to say something like "In all cases where people watch hours of
subtitled films and actually learn something they also have at least school instruction and some experience in conversation." (my addition in bold)
Of course people watch subtitled movies without knowing a single word of the spoken language (although an email friend from another country once suggested that we had subtitled movies in Sweden because English was "a second official language"...).
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