As a beginner in German, the difference between what is being said in the dub and what is written in the subtitles is one of the most frustrating aspects of using movies, tv shows... etc for learning. It is helpful for people who have higher level in the language as they get rich context for the same concept, but for beginners it's a nightmare.
Yeah I’ve had the same problem as well. Netflix seems to be particularly egregious about this. It’s forced me to watch exclusively my target language content which is harder because I have no background context.
I think Disney plus is quite good for closed captions, at least in my experience with spanish. Especially the marvel stuff. I don't know what it's like with other languages tho
You need to look for stuff with CC (Closed Caption), i.e. subtitles for people who can't hear well. Those are 99% accurate. All other subtitles are meant to be watched with the original language version.
@@bibliocharylodis That is exactly what I am doing, but sometimes you can't find them available for stuff you are really interested in and enjoying so you have to force yourself to watch just for the sake of learning.
I had my husband watch part of this video - I think he’s a great example of someone who has learned in this manner without even trying or having any interest in learning languages, because he’s a cinephile and has watched classic French and Spanish films so often and over-and-over again that he understands quite a bit of those languages. When I asked if we had this movie, he said yes. But then he had a stroke of genius - he knows I love the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and saw that it has a French language track and French subtitles and suggested this one might be a good movie for me to watch and enjoy repeatedly. Thank you, and thank you for getting my family excited about my homemade language learning!
Did you know that the movie Rio was dubbed in both neutral Latin American Spanish and Mexican Spanish? The same cast did both dubs and it's really interesting seeing the differences in accent and word choice in both. Could make for a good video/experiment.
I just joined your channel after a friend linked me because I told him I'm learning French in large part by watching the excellent French dub of Jurassic Park, my favorite movie. My strategy with language learning is to just do what toddlers do (watch the same thing a million times) and it really works so much better than classes! I found your videos on this topic really encouraging.
Actually, a very good movie to try this with too (especially at a beginner/intermediate level) is "inside out". Good animation, easy to follow and has a lot to do with emotions etc. Maybe not as worthy as spiderverse for a 50 watch "binge" but could watch it 5-6 times easily.
Six weeks into learning Spanish and reading a book. That sounds like me with German. I was so confused in the beginner German class at the Goethe Institut in Berlin (it's taught almost all in German with very minimal English) that I went to the book store and bought the Hobbit in German and just started reading that. I skipped most of the classes after the first (or maybe 2nd) week. I just spent all day reading this book and looking up words in my paper dictionary with paper flash cards (which soon turned into a paper notebook due to the cost of so many flash cards). I do not think this was ideal by any means but it worked for me eventually. Ideally you go to class, understand the teacher/material, and then do immersion outside of class so you benefit from both. I was just too clueless in the class to get anything out of it except a low self esteem. My dad is still mad at me due to the wasted money for the class since he paid for it but I had no way to anticipate how dumb I would feel in the classroom beforehand. You would think he would be happy I learned German. Nope. Totally irrelevant. I'm good in language classes now though thank God.
This is why I've always been frustrated about full immersion language classes. I agree you should get your students speaking and listening as soon as possible but people learn a lot faster if you explain things in ways they understand. I once took a Hebrew class that was immersion based because I knew Hebrew grammar really well but had neglected any speaking or listening practice, and found myself explaining concepts to classmates that they either couldn't grasp at all or had made incorrect assumptions about. Now, with enough time they would've figured it out (probably, as long as they kept up with the language) but I cleared it up for them in minutes, and then when they understood what was happening they could recreate it no problem! And their confidence in the language went up! Starting in someone's native language and getting more immersive over time feels best to me. But that is a personal preference, of course lol
In another video I heard having one book as a Rosetta Stone (not to be confused by the software, but as the actual principle of the Rosetta Stone itself. So to decipher the language), and so essentially, The Hobbit was yours. =D
UPDATE: I believe that NETFLIX is now the place to find "Into the Spider-verse" and that will definitely have Spanish if you know how to access all the languages (either create a profile that "speaks" that language, or use the Chrome extension Language Reactor). Netflix is much more "language open" than Disney Plus. ua-cam.com/video/eliB_y0fmSk/v-deo.html
@@sharonoddlyenough and @hillmanntoby - I love that two of the earliest commenters on the video were people who already had the chance to watch it 2 days ago. 😆
Had a similar experience in two regards. I have taken up Catalan as a side language and I realised how how much I could understand after studying Japanese for two years. I do think language learning is a skill in the sense once you have done a lot of it your brain is simply more flexible and much better at parsing meaning. Also have had a similar experience with repetition where listening to the audio of the same show 50x, not even by conscious choice just because it was already on Lingq, and you start picking up on things at an almost supernatural level.
I found this video when it released almost a year ago. I watched the first episode of the good place about 5 times and saw massive improvement. Then i found dreaming Spanish and switched to that and it's been a great year. Now I can watch and understand pretty much any dubbed content. Still working on native tv shows. Cheers!
I'm trying the 50x thing for Spanish too. I chose a Mexican movie with English subs: The Noble Family / Nosotros Los Nobles. Dark comedy with plenty of dialogue and high chance of cultural references I can discover as I learn more. On watch #6 and still picking up new things. Not at the stage where I can talk along to the movie yet.
Done with 50x. Very helpful alongside other language learning. I will continue to shadow (talk along with scenes) from this film, but I'm now looking for another movie to bulk load.
Doing the same thing with a Mexican movie too. Wondering if you’ve noticed good progress like maybe more specifically in comprehension vs speaking or vice versa. Would love to know more
i love that i saw these videos, because it's something that I'd thought about before, but seeing someone else actually do it without losing their mind is encouraging enough to make me try. My hot tip is that Disney Plus has lots of musicals dubbed in different languages with the songs dubbed too. Great way to learn!
I got inspired by your video and am currently listening to Harry Potter in Russian. I have so far listened to the first book 7 times and the 2nd book 5 times. It is a great feeling to listen to actual audiobooks and I have as of yet not gotten tired of relistening to them, but well see if I actually end up listening to them 50 times each.
I’ve been learning German for about 6 months and just moved to Germany. I really wanna get better quickly so I’m going to try your method. I picked my absolute favorite German movie, Bonnie & Bonnie, so that hopefully I won’t get sick of it
20:09 thank you for answering my question! 😄 I’ve been meaning to get back to this video for some time now and happy to finally get an answer to several questions you answered or mentioned
Film recommendation for everyone: Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes) One of the greatest Spanish language films ever, it’s a black comedy containing 6 short stories of revenge. The stories get longer as they go along - so you can watch the first film over and over easily and get it because it’s 5 minutes, the next one is 10 minutes, then 15, then finally you get the wedding which I think is about 35 minutes. I just came up with this idea, but the film literally divides itself into digestible parts, so I will test it myself!
When I saw the original video I had just watched Spider-Man: Homecoming with the Spanish audio and was inspired to do this with that film. I’ve watched it 14 times so far. Very interesting experience. And by the way, I don’t think you’re crazy for your bold, sweeping comments about all Spider-Man movies (though I do think you’re gonna take some heat), but I have actually grown to really like this one. I think it’s a good solid superhero movie with all the right elements. Anyway… Yeah the subtitle thing is really interesting. I don’t use them much - mostly just as a reference point if I’m having trouble understanding a particular sentence or phrase. Side note: The voice acting in the Spanish version is excellent, and most of the voices resemble those of the originals. So much so that I only started noticing after a few times through that the original actors’ voices can be heard during grunts and such. In fact, Peter says one phrase in Spanish, and it’s very clearly the voice of Tom Holland (in the Spanish version, I mean!). This observation (among others; among many, many others) is listed in a document I created to keep track of little things that pop out at me. Well, this was a long walk around the lake to say, “any advice as I continue this experiment?” But like the man said, “sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way, in order to come back a short distance correctly.” Great video, Lamont.
Yeah there was lots cut out in which I mention the "Home" ones (Homecoming, No Way Home all that). I've only seen Homecoming, and it was in Spanish, in December, so I didn't really understand it. I'm sure they're decent movies. But you understand... in the edit, it's briefer and more entertaining to just make sweeping statements. Also the Tobey Macguire and Andrew Garfield ones deserve every bit of flack they cop haha.
This sounds like SUCH a cool idea! I’d love to try this with a new language. My issue is I’m currently learning American Sign Language (ASL) and I’m a native English speaker. When I use SignUp ASL captions alongside Disney+/Netflix movies, the translation is always a few seconds delayed even when the time stamps are right. I think that’s just the nature of ASL compared to English since they’re both different languages with different ways of structuring grammar. I feel like I would get something out of using the ASL video overlayed on a movie with English subtitles BUT it definitely wouldn’t make a linguistic impression because it’s visual. Watching ASL movies like CODA and A Quiet Place is more helpful into diving deeper into Deaf Culture but I really wish I could rewatch my favorite Disney+ movies over and over while simultaneously learning more ASL. But rewatching movies with prominent ASL shown is probably my equivalent of doing this challenge!
If you have a VPN (and if you don't I recommend you get one), you can connect to other countries that may also have ASL stuff. I would say Australia but I have a feeling ours is in Australian Sign Language... I'm not sure, maybe you can check. ABC iView is the website I'm talking about, and it has some episodes of Bluey etc in sign language (Turtle Boy comes to mind as an episode that they do it for).
I'm on day ten of doing this challenge with chapter one of the first Harry Potter book (read by Carlos Ponce for Latin American Spanish). It's roughly 30 minutes long. I do one listen a day while following along with the physical novel, followed by once or twice more without the text. The language did seem to slow down for me at around the 10th time through. Yesterday I hit my 22nd time through, and I still picked up on a word or two that I should have recognized from flashcards. I will continue for 50 times through (because why not), but I suspect there will be diminishing returns past 10. I don't feel like I'm getting more out of it than I would by moving to the next chapter at this point. I do have a higher level of Spanish though. I've memorized the most frequent 5000 words pretty well, took two years of Spanish in college (many years ago), and made a few attempts to learn since that always fizzled after a few months. I even tried a prior run of the HP books and reached book four, but I was listening to a chapter twice and then moving on. I can read and get the gist of things, but my listening comprehension was still crap. I got frustrated and quit. I do feel like ten might be the sweet spot for me at my current level, and if that doesn't change then I may continue with this method (ten listens a chapter) and see what happens.
@@user-zk6fc3dw9e Oh, I gave up on this method around chapter 3, then stopped trying to learn for months again. I just could not listen to the same chapter over and over and over again.
@@SatipatthanaSakuraDragona Good to know. I'll skip this method. I had concerns that if I watched/listened to a movie I really liked that many times that it would ruin the movie for me. Glad I didn't waste my time.
I love this. Thanks for the additional breakdown. As you said, it’s super tough in America 🇺🇸 to find multi lingual dubs in streaming! 😩. Almost everything on Netflix, Apple TV + or Disney has a Spanish or even Mandarin dub, so you learners are very lucky! I’m learning Russian 🇷🇺 and it’s almost non existent haha! But I will continue to scour the internets 🙌🏾. Спасибо большое за видео! PS. I agree, ARCANE would also be a wonderful rewatch experience. So much detail and amazing execution
Thanks for all the effort you put into compiling this information. This was a phenomenal video, and Super engaging. I’ve never watched your videos before this, but you’ve got a new subscriber.
Hey Lamont, question from me: What do you think is the minimal level required for someone to do this experiment? Should you already understand a high percentage of the lines, or can a beginner do it and it will work just as well?
I am a beginner in German I do this all the time, the more you did understand before starting this method the more your learning process will be smooth and quicker. Otherwise, as a beginner you have to spend a lot of time trying to understand what is being said. I don't know if this method will be effective as a standalone without any side language studying, but in my case I do follow a textbook for A1 and as an additional language practicing I do read graded readers and watch stuff with subtitles.
If you pick a movie or show that you're already familiar with, you really don't need a lot of background in the target language to start with. I started with watching Frozen which was already on an almost continual loop in English in our house anyway at that time, thanks to my daughters. Started with watching it in Swedish with English subtitles, then switched to Swedish subtitles pretty quickly, and then dropped subtitles completely. I found I 'heard' more words without the subtitles.
He talks about this in the first video. You need to become familiar with the film in your native language first and then you can start this process. That’s how you skip over not knowing the language prior to starting this challenge. But also learning the new words that you don’t understand on the side or via a transcript will help out greatly.
I'm curious how this repeated listening compares to just regular listening. I know that after you've listened to the language enough it seems like it slows down for you. This might be a way to get that effect more quickly. For Japanese I studied it for about 3 - 4 years then moved to Tokyo and after living there a year I noticed the language really seemed to slow down for me. I know it's very subjective but it really suddenly seemed to slow down for me at about the 1 year mark. I studied Spanish a little in college (a couple classes, and read a couple fantasy books I'd already read in English) then about 10 years later I decided to give learning Spanish my all. I don't know how long I stuck at it (I eventually dropped it for Japanese) but I did do a lot of listening particularly on bike rides. At that time I had a hobby of doing 3 to 6 hour bike rides and I had this portable satellite radio with Spanish CNN and I just listened to tons of Spanish CNN (in addition to reading stuff on my computer and some books). Didn't do much since then but when I listen to Spanish speakers now, in general, it doesn't seem so fast at all to me considering it's a foreign language and I don't speak it well (I can speak it some though). I had bought a Korean movie to do this challenge with (Old Boy) but I think I might just do it for Spanish and copy you exactly. With all the Spanish speaking customers at work I'm really starting to wonder if not knowing Spanish could become a problem. It's hard to imagine monolingual English speaking Americans actually learning Spanish for their job (except for the random language enthusiast) but I have a LOT of Spanish speaking customers and there's a lot of full bilingual employees at my job too.
8: 45 "English, polish and icelandic" Sounds like they took the Wizards of the coast tried and true method of choosing challenge rating for D&D encounters, just put some sticky notes on a wall, get real drunk and start throwing darts at said wall. The first one that gets hit by a dart is chosen 🤣
It’s so sad that we even have to ask about different language support. I pay for Disney plus and Disney proudly states they make shows and films in many parts of the world but for some reason 95 percent of everything is only in English. And Disney plus is region locked in a way that my VPN doesn’t work. Like why can’t I have access to the other 20 languages? It doesn’t make sense. All MCU films have Japanese dubs for example. I don’t have access to it. It’s so silly
IKR! I would even pay an extra 2 USD for the priveledge. Not more than that, but yeah. Region locking was annoying and frustrating enough for hardware, but it's just nonsensical now.
I agree!! This is so frustrating!! Disney+ has no way of knowing that, just because I live in North America somewhere doesn't mean I didn't move here last year from somewhere else and that English isn't my first language, and they're blocking me from accessing shows and movies that I can actually understand.
Yes, it is silly and annoying. Maybe they are doing this because of censorship in different parts of the world. Disney is losing a lot of money and maybe they will realise that they are missing out from additional revenue.
11:21 One of the most comical reasons for using a VPN was when I was playing a Swedish Scifi MMO called Entropia Universe. Because the publishers don't want to have to deal with getting a gambling license,(they might have to if they want to sell within Sweden). I have to use a VPN to buy lootboxes in the game. It's quite hilarious that everyone else can buy them, just not Swedes 😁
Maybe I'm being dumb but you said you watched the film to begin with in english (with desired language subtitles) and then in desired language (with english subs) but then later said you didn't use English subs. Could you clarify how many times you'd recommend watching the movie either in your own native language or with your native subs so you know roughly what's being said? Or is the idea to not know what is being said and for the inference to grow through the exposure? I would absolutely love to start this challenge, as I am a beginner in Italian and love to watch and rewatch quotable movies to absorb their dialogue. This seems like a highly motivating method of language comprehension. Glad I discovered your channel just now, many thanks!
You can condense hours of video in minutes using programs like video-condenser by ercanserteli. As long as the video has a subtitle track it can use the timecodes on it to condense the video down to a mp3 containing just the spoken sections. It doesn't matter if the subtitle track is in your target language or not, since it just uses it for the timecodes.
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks: 1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours. 2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix. 3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them. All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
I watched it with subs as an intermediate learner for two watches (after having it watched like 5 times before) and while it allowed me to correct/hear parts I wasn't hearing before, it was funny how many lines were just different.
after that video i watched ‘The Incredibles’ in spanish and i’ve got to say, it’s an amazingly powerful hack! i don’t know if it’s because it’s animated but there’s something so much more interesting in the nature of the expressions which makes me pay MORE attention than regular movies.
I’m thinking about trying something like this with Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water for German. Avatar has been one of my all time favorite movies since in came out in 2009 and Disney+ has the first one in tons of languages so while I haven’t checked The Way of Water yet, I would guess it does too.
@@LadyLLanguageLearning I finished it. I also ended up watching a few other movies 50 times. By the end I had most of Tangles memorized. I wouldn't say that I learned every last word with it, but because I already had the movie pretty much memorized in english, that helped. Where to find out if it's not just about watching the movie 50 times, it's about paying attention to the subtitles and practice in Spanish as well, but it definitely did help
I started watching Arcane in Brazilian Portuguese because I need to learn it for a job. The good thing is that I am a Spanish native speaker, so I can already understand 90% of the language. What I really need is to learn more of the vocabulary, pay attention the the pronunciation and sentence order. The sentence order is the biggest thing, it is very similar to Spanish but the few things that aren't are extremely difficult to get used to and overcome. I'm glad I discovered your videos that really show that it is a good strategy.
I did the audio book thing with Dutch. I had the audio of Minoes and listened over and over to work and back for a month before i got the text book in dutch. And i was amazed how my mind was picking out words that i had no idea what they meant. And rhen later as i translated the book myself, i could understand the audio in sections i had not translated yet.
I’m doing this challenge with Coraline, and I highly highly recommend it. The movie has a lot of moments where characters gesture and use body language along with their dialogue, which helps comprehension a lot.
tip for people wanting specific dubs on some of these streaming platforms, Sometimes they have more languages than they show but you need to change your netflix or disney+ language to the language you want dubs/subs in then they will show. After changing my netflix to chinese so many more cartoons ended up actually having chinese dubs idk why it didn’t show me all initially
Yep! I have a video about doing that. To my knowledge it doesn't work for Disney Plus (at least on my account it seems to show all the languages it's ever going to have), but yeah it definitely works for Netflix.
Inspired me to try this with Spanish dubbed Simpsons. A little too advanced for me right now so I made a LingQ of the audio from my fav episode to get started
@DaysandWords So I'm gonna do this in Spanish with the first two episodes of Batman Beyond. A show I'm familiar with and love to watch, plus each episode is only 22-25 minutes. So I'm gonna put them together as one rather than having to edit things down of a 2.5/3 hour film into only the dialogue parts. My question is; do you think I can get comprehension from watching it 50 times without any subtitles in either language? Do I need to make my own subtitle track for consistency in translation, or can I just watch without subtitles altogether and not have to bother with that? I'm a beginner in my Spanish journey and know about 200-300 words and have a some exposure to grammar by taking listening to about 50 Language Transfer lessons. But it's been months since I've done any studying and I'm starting over again.
I want to try something like this for Cantonese but I struggle to find subtitles for spoken Cantonese, do you think it’ll be effective without subtitles at all?
Hey Lamont I just wanted to tell you if you haven’t seen it before that Lingvist has Swedish now! Along with Norwegian, polish, Japanese, Korean, Dutch and a couple others. Maybe you could do a video reviewing the program again briefly. When I originally saw your review, I thought that if only they had Japanese, I’d have it done in no time. And a few years later and they have it. I’m already fluent to the point that I didn’t need English at all when I went to Japan for the first time and I was getting drilled with obscure vocabulary or different conjugations that I’m not used to. I think you’d really appreciate how far they’ve come just like you said they would in your initial video.
Wow, no I didn't know that. I knew Swedish would be on their list because they're an Estonian company... (also among other languages, Swedish has "lingvist" meaning linguist.) Awesome, going to have a look now!
A lot of the original Pixar movies on Disney plus are pretty much only dubbed in Spanish and Icelandic. So there seems to be some kind of Icelandic mafia in charge somewhere
After seeing your original video I tried to watch Inside Out dubbed in Spanish since I've seen that film many times, and I ran into the exact same problem you're describing - the Spanish subtitles are completely different from the Spanish audio, and it's very frustrating. In general I can transcribe a word I may not know but sometimes it doesn't work.
Do you find it hard to pay attention after watching something so many times? I feel like I might start to zone out or think I knew what was coming rather than really listening.
Yeah that's a fair question. I found myself doing that a bit at around watches 8 to 12, so I started trying to remember what the next line was a lot, and almost say it along with them. Obviously I couldn't at all on viewing number 11 and 12, but by viewing 30 I would often be able to do it, and that was entertaining enough. But drifting off can be OK too... Your subconscious is still listening to some degree, the same as when you know the sequence of something like the train stations in order even when you don't catch that train. (In Australia at least, there are announcements all the time saying what stops the train is stopping at, so if you stand on the platform every day you hear it maybe 3 times a day for years... And I know the stops in order for train lines that I've literally never caught.)
"Even before I went through the entire Refold Spanish 1000 Deck-in a single day-I could already..." -- I snorted out loud :-) Of course you did, Lamont! That is SUCH a Lamont thing to do!
They don't do subtitles like that because they would actually be really hard to read. Subtitles follow all sorts of "rules" that normal speech absolutely doesn't follow, e.g. only 30 characters per second, each subtitle must be on the screen for at least 2 seconds, etc etc.
7:35 copyright law is such BS. i don't know why people are trying to defend it, if the law makes such basic things like making a subtitle track illegal, then it's probably not the law we wanted, and we should change it, people shouldn't just accept the status quo, if they see that a completely okay thing is somehow considered a suable offense.
It's not just a subtitle track my friend. They were asking me to make a watchable version of the film available. If they want to pirate something then that's their business but it's not up to me to make it available to them.
I’m glad someone finally acknowledged that the the dub and subtitles don’t match. I thought maybe that was just a problem I was having. I searched through the house multiple times over the last week, but I finally found my copy of the spider verse movie. And it has French dub and subtitles! And Spanish too. But I’m currently learning French, and in the US, so many more movie have both in Spanish while rarely it seems do they have both in French. One day I’ll revisit Spanish.
Having a look at your channel, it seems like you'll be interested in the video that I have coming out in like 1 hour! (It's about books.) But yeah, sometimes subs and the actual dialogue are so different that it seems like they're intentionally making them as different as possible.
What level of attention did you give the movie as you watched it? Did you give it your full attention for every single viewing, or did you ever multitask while having it on?
@welovfree - Well, actually I disagree. But to answer Madison's question (plllleaaase let that be your name! I'm sorry if I'm confusing you with someone else!), because I was doing this for the sake of the video, I felt it was cheating to use the mp3 or something while I drove or anything like that... but I actually think that would work very very well and I want to do it again but this time use something a bit shorter and listen to it 100 times (plus most of those times would be passive). So I was watching it, but the abridged version. However, @welovfree - it really depends what we're talking about when it comes to multitasking. Language acquisition is a largely unconscious process; meaning that it happens without us meaning it to (NOT, as some people have been very vocal about, that it happens while we're in a coma...) I have done very very little conscious study of Swedish, yet I speak it quite well and I put that down to the ~1500 hours that I've spent listening to it while I drive, exercise, wash the dishes etc. Check out this video: ua-cam.com/video/2gcxPRFjXfE/v-deo.html
@@daysandwords I was talking in the context of the video, I mean multitasking while watching the movie will not yield good results in the range of that x50 times you mentioned, otherwise watching a 1 hour video passively would require a long period of time to reap most of the vocabulary in there. Attentive listening 50 times isn't comparable to passively listing for the same period of time especially if the video is long and the learner is still a beginner.
@@daysandwords Yes, my name is Madison! Thanks for the response. And @welovfree I agree that the more active attention you give something, the more efficiently you will learn. But I also think that there are plenty of activities where you can multitask but still pay pretty good attention to the audio, like folding laundry. Obviously it's even better if you're watching the movie for the added visual context and giving it 100% of your mental attention rather than 90% or whatever, but I figured that if I did something like this, by the 30th viewing or so I would be less engaged by the video itself and I would rather listen to the audio while doing something.
@@SomedayKorean Currently watching the first Harry potter movie for the 23rd time, sometimes I focus fully on the movie and sometimes I have it on my second monitor while playing a game (Minecraft). Still giving the movie attention, just not 100% attention.
Hey Lamont, I’m curious to know if you are still doing apps for your Spanish learning? I know you were keen on speakly a while back… are you still using it (or another app) or do you think apps are totally pointless and this method is the way to go??? Thanks!
I think some apps (like Speakly) are great, and I did use it a little bit when I first started learning back in November/December. With anglosemblant languages (French, Spanish, German, Dutch etc.) then I think you CAN jump into some experiment like this, or shows that you know or whatever your poison is... but obviously a lot of people wouldn't really want to do this. This just reduced any decision fatigue for me (and I get a LOT of decision fatigue).
I find it helpful to focus on the mouth and facial movements when human actors articulate the Spanish--is that even possible with animations? I get the sense that my brain is subconsciously picking up on how the words are formed and pronounced--watching the mouth, tongue, teeth movements---perhaps how a pre-verbal toddler might focus on the mother's facial expressions. What's your take on how helpful seeing the articulation of words helps eventual pronunciation/speaking?
Obviously you wouldn't be able to do that if this is ALL you ever did, but it's not all I ever did/will do. Anki also can't teach you a language. But it's good for some things. Everything in it's place, and a place for everything.
@@daysandwords Sorry, I'm not following this. My comment/question wasn't related to Anki. I just wanted to know whether something significant is lost when the facial articulation of words by human actors isn't available. Say, rather than animation, if you were to choose a film with actors speaking Spanish in the original version of the film, what might that film be?
No, I KNOW that your question had nothing to do with Anki, but it's an example: No ONE activity in language learning is the ONLY thing you should do. Not even watching a movie 50 times. Not even wathcing a 12 season TV series 100 times. Nothing covers EVERYTHING. Watching animated movies does not cover facial expressions. But other things might.
Some folks use Anki for "sentence mining" of content, sometimes embed the audio, and they drill the content over and over. It's common in Japanese learning communities. Not my thing but that's what they meant.
A faster way to make a condensed movie is by writing a m3u playlist for VLC. If you have the subtitle track you can programatically write a playlist file to only play the sections that include dialogue. I even did this in a spreadsheet, but would be easy enough to make a general program to do this too.
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks: 1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours. 2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix. 3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them. All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
Are American Spanish and European Spanish really so different they need separate dubs? I don't think I've seen separate dubs for British/Australian/American English (could be wrong...)
Well they almost always have separate dubs. That doesn't mean that they NEED them but they exist. Paw Patrol is actually dubbed into British English as well as American English so that's one thing I guess.
the challenge with your videos is that you have several videos titled "learn Spanish in a day" "in a month", etc. not sure if you have learned and forgotten Spanish to learn again, or you already knew it or you have never learned it.
I’ve thought about doing this with Scarface, but I’m being told it may not be the best way to learn the language since the Spanish dub my be an inauthentic translation
won’t watching the same content over and over again limit my input ? should one get massive amounts of input ? I’m already very good at watching tv shows and movies in english with subtitles and was thinking of trying this method to close my listening gap
Tjena Lamont! I’m not a patreon or anything, but it would be cool if you could do an experiment with “mnemonics” for language learning, if it’s a good way to learn?
I can't get my Prime Video to have any other language than English in the USA. It is frustrating to me since my favorite show from Netflix was BBC Merlin, and I was watching it in Spanish. Now it is on Amazon Prime, and not in Spanish. We were talking about getting a region free blu-ray player so we can order them off of other countries sites. I really want my Chinese, French, and Spanish shows! It is so weird that in the USA we have this issue. In my town, where we use German everyday, we can get nothing in German. My friend couldn't get an English translation for the instructions at his new factory job here in town (he is from Florida), and so last week a coworker had to teach him the machine. Our local concerts are in German. Everything is in German... except we can't get DVDs or Blu-ray in German! I spent two hours in our ER last night with a child speaking German with the nurses and doctor as they checked my kid's broken ribs... 🙃 😂😢 Edit to add: I am on my third viewing of Nimona in Mandarin. I recommend the movie!
Yeah the USA seems to be far worse for language availability than Australia. I'd SAY that it's because the licence for those dubs is more expensive than in Australia where the audience is smaller. It's so frustrating.
@@daysandwords More expensive, but more people who would actually watch it. I am lucky that my area had a Japanese channel when I was in high school, so I learned Japanese before moving there at 19. Still, I miss being able to have one pay for service that has what I like on it.
I wanted to do what you did with the movie Rio but the only language option on Hulu was English, WTF!!! Rio had a high budget and was a huge hit, I *know* it's been dubbed in at least Portuguese so what gives? Anyways I've been watching the G5 MLP movie in Spanish on Netflix instead. Netflix has the most language options out of every streaming service and I really appreciate it for that
Da Vinci Resolve. Many people have "pointed out" (as if I didn't already know) that there are easier ways to do it... Personally, I think it's worth the time to do it manually for other benefits that come from that.
I have attempted to use dubbed TV shows or movies to study my target language, but I don't think it's right for me. I get way too distracted from the dubbed voice lines and mismatching mouth movements that I neglect to read the subtitles or focus on the audio. I wish I could watch these fun and zany movies in my target language, but I can't get over the dubbing.
I was interested in trying this experiment with Swedish, but finding a good movie with a Swedish audio track proved difficult. First off, most of what's available is on Disney+ and most of those it sounded like dubbing a Swedish audio track for the sake of having a Swedish audio track. Reciting lines in a new language without attempting to add interest or personality. Listening to those sounds more like listening to a lecture than enjoying a story. Secondly, dialog (and especially songs) are rarely direct translations to their English equivalent. The older Disney Swedish dubs also seem to have vastly outdated grammar and culturalisms that are no longer relevant in modern Swedish. That being said, I was really impressed with the Swedish voice cast for Big Hero Six. If animation was synced to the Swedish dialog, you might not know it was originally recorded in English. It's set in a modern/slightly futuristic setting so the language changes translate well. If I were to try this process to ground myself in Swedish, I would go with Big Hero Six
Personally I think there's a decent amount available in Swedish and the dubs are decent. Spider-verse is OK (not great but OK). Rango is pretty good (was on Netflix last I checked). Despicable Me, Kung Fu Panda, Ron's Gone Wrong... They're all OK.
I'm curious which movies you've watched in Swedish on Disney+? Most of the ones we've watched haven't been that bad for audio tracks, although like anything dubbed, most of the time the audio doesn't match the subtitles exactly. Some are better than others. I agree that Big Hero Six is one of the better ones, however. I tend to use them more as passive immersion, where they're on in the background while I'm doing other homework; it keeps the kids happy because I'm letting them watch cartoons outside of their normal tv-viewing times so I get the peace and quiet to focus on other things (aside from random requests from the kids for "what did they say?"). Maybe because I'm not watching them with the intention of "learning" from them, inconsistencies don't bother me as much?
I spent 5 watches watching it from shady sources but now it's on Netflix (UK). I'm excited to watch it with subtitles for the first time! I've watched it 6 times so far.
Ironically I think that the Spiderverse films are the only 2 films that ARENT good in comparison to the other films Other than your way too hot take, this was very informative video and I will use these techniques! Thanks a bunch for the experiment and sharing it!
Hmm, the thing is - my take isn't at all hot. It may be a bit unusual to say that they all suck, but Into SV and Across SV are well acknowledged as some of the best animated films of all time, or at the very least, from the Western commerical world (so not including Studio Ghibli etc.), and quite a few people have expressed that they dislike super hero films and Marvel pop-corn stuff except for Into and Across. Thanks for giving your opinion on the video!
@@daysandwords Thanks for video recommendation, also Superhero films are defo a big hit or miss for me. Sometimes I have really high standards and sometimes I get emotionally attached to them. And yes I am using your technique for French! It's definitely intense to watch the same thing over and over again but I will push through!!!
I believe that the reason Spanish subtitles are different the dub is because the subtitles are for Spanish speakers watching the English version - the words are matched to the English voices; therefore the Spanish subtitles are not 'indigenous' to the Spanish audio.
No it's even more complicated than that. Subtitles have rules to follow and so do dubs, but the rules are completely different. Very often, the Spanish (or any language) subtitles do not match what they say in English either.
I think a more advanced version of this would simply be content that's not something dubbed, but the language in a drama or something where the dialogue mimics more casual interaction. I'm advanced in Spanish but even with 2-3K hours of contact with the language, casual speech is still too difficult.
There's lots of ways to stay motivated to improve at a language but it can be hard to find one that works for you. The method I've been using for Korean is just making it a habit. I at least kind of like doing SRS vocabulary recognition flash cards and I like reading books on LingQ. So I just do that everyday. I don't have to think about what I'm going to do, whatever free time, I'll do that. It has drawbacks. There's no speaking/grammar/listening built into that routine. I'm trying to work it in by taking iTalki lessons. I am not currently using goals to motivate me because I can't think of any goals that seem worth it to me. I can totally see how making that video about watching Spider Man 50x times would be motivating because it was a great video idea. Years ago I signed up for classes in Japanese and Korean and I made getting an A my goal while I took those classes and this helped me a lot. I also used the Japanese Language Proficiency Test as a goal to keep me studying grammar especially because I hate grammar but also Japanese in general because aside from watching anime with English subtitles there wasn't an activity I naturally enjoyed. Using language proficiency tests as a goal works for some people but I think we all know it doesn't work for everyone. So many people show up the day of the test saying they barely studied except for cramming a week or less before the test. I've tried making just finishing some big pre-made Anki decks a goal for my Korean but in itself it's not too motivating. The decks are bigger than 1000 though. Maybe if I split them up into levels it would help - doing a 5k (or more) deck takes years and is actually kind of demotivating when you look at how slowly you're progressing through it. (Rant about the TOPIK or language proficiency test for Korean) I'd really like to sign up for the Korean language proficiency test to make that a goal but I haven't for two reasons - just like Japanese I would need to travel to a different city to take the test (I used it as an excuse to take a vacation for Japanese) but also the Korean test format is just AWFUL. There's two levels. 1 is for beginners, 2 is for EVERYONE else. The books written to help you study for test 2 are designed for people trying to ace the test. When I took JLPT N3 (roughly B1 level) Japanese the test was super hard and studying for it was super hard and if the books I used were not designed only for B1 I would not have understood them. I go looking for books/material for the TOPIK and I have NO idea what to get - likely there's nothing good until I am at least upper intermediate but how can I get to upper intermediate without studying? So I'm back to reading novels on LingQ in Korean instead.
I have to say, you'd freeze to death in that jacket here, even on the warmest winter day...but it also baffles me that you're having to wear it inside. I know, different climate, different norms, so I say rock that coat whenever you feel the urge. 😂
Where are we talking about? The coat certainly wouldn't be enough on its own in really cold places but with some woolen thermals and another good layer (like a woolen sweater) between me and the jacket, I genuinely think it would stand up to kind of -5 ish, depending what one was doing or course. I realise that's not that cold for a lot of places but yeah in Australia there aren't many places that you need it. Although next week I'm going out to Bathurst which sometimes reaches -10. My office gets PARTICULARLY cold and particularly hot. It's like a car in that it magnifies whatever is going on outside. I think it was about 8⁰ C in there. The coat is genuinely too much in anything warmer than that.
@@daysandwords Well, average winter temperatures hover in the -20s, with prolonged stretches in the -30s. I had a friend come and visit from Melbourne during what just happened to be the coldest winter on record at the time. Temperatures didn't get above -25 the whole time she was here. She DID come visit again...during the summer LoL My office is in my basement, so it's uniformally cold year round.
Ha, Melbournians are soft though, and I'm not just saying that. They THINK that they can deal with the cold because it's colder than Sydney, and they suffer from constant Sydney-inferiority complex. But Melbourne weather only lasts 4 hours and then changes (not a joke, it's famous for having all 4 seasons in 1 day). Lots of places in Australia are much colder than Melbourne, obviously (the Snowy Mountains, for example, is our main skiing area). -25 is very cold haha. I would genuinely love to go there just to justify my coat along with several other layers. I actually really enjoy getting "rugged up" as we say, but I understand that it would get old fast. 38+ degree days in summer get old very fast too. I'm hoping to go to Sweden next year and although it makes much more sense to go in June or July in order to have lots of daylight to do the things I need to do, I really want to go in January just to experience the cold.
@@daysandwords "Melbournians are soft"....I have a feeling she may consider those fighting words. I would hate +38 in the summer. It gets into the low +30s here during the summer, and with only 6 to 7 hours of "cooler" night temperatures it tends to just stay at those temperatures. Fun fact, we actually don't get true darkness (astronomical twilight) from end of May through middle of July, which makes putting the kids to bed in the summer pure torture! "But Mmmmooooommmmmm.....the sun isn't even asleep yet!!" Personally, I'll take cooler temperatures over hotter temperatures. You can always add another layer or light a fire to warm up, but you can only take so much off before you get arrested. That being said, -30 is too bloody cold, and I'd happily move somewhere that had a more temperate winter. We're actually planning a trip to Sweden and surrounding countries next summer. If you go in January, you'll still be warmer there than here, and you'll have more opportunity of seeing the Northern Lights. Also, my friend came here end of December/beginning of January, "just to experience the cold". That statement bit her hard! LoL
No, it's an Australian Region B one. I said "my copy" but I actually meant THE COPY that you can get here in Australia. 99% of my blurays and DVDs are normal Australian Region B or Region 4 (DVD) editions, but the languages are very often bizarre.
It might if the show had lots of repeated phrases etc. The show, with say, 15 seasons, would be the better option after a while, but this is a good option if you want to watch something that you can understand but isn't for learners or little kids.
@@daysandwords I was thinking about watching one piece it has plenty of episodes and a reoccurring theme of luffy wanting to be pirate king. Figured there was a ton of UA-cam content about it too that I could watch either in Spanish or from Spanish creators that would help too
Hey I am working on a script to cut down a movie to only dialog automatically, inspired by you. It's going to be open source and free. I am just having a little hard time with specifically some ffmpeg commands. My script works now, but it works now with does cuts with some corruptions to the video file, the audio track is fine. I tried to write to you on discord, I hope I have some time to work a bit more on it soon
Keep working on your script, absolutely. BUT... I know you can do it with tools, but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks: 1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours. 2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix. 3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them. All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
@@daysandwordsthankfully, the way I wrote the script to use the subtitles is fairly robust. It does cut down spiderverse to about 56 minutes or so. I have made a few passes over how the logic works. But thank you for making me aware of the situation where some subtitles have information like "music plays", I'll add the function to be able to pick which subtitle to use. i found your reason number 3 most compelling! But not everyone is willing or able to do that. And I think your reason number 2 is diametrically opposed to reason number 3, but different people are different so, there is that. Once the script is working, a gui frontend is just a smop (small matter of programming). Currently the only thing that is needed for me to finish a beta version of the script is for me to talk with someone who knows a bit how ffmpeg works. Sadly haven't been able to solicit someone in the irc channel (of course not holding that against the ffmpeg community), and ChatGPT just gives me wrong answers. I can manage to get ffmpeg or another tool to the job, but there are some issues.
There are definitely easier tools out there to condense audio, but they depend on having subtitle tracks. If you get a copy of the show or movie with a subtitle track, it's just a few minutes to condense and export the audio. Just Google "condense audio -compress" (need the -compress to ignore the results that talk about file compression).
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks: 1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours. 2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix. 3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them. All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
I might have missed it, but did you mention whether you watched it straight through (whether long form or cut down), or would you break it down into chunks of say 10 minutes a pop and digest that content (perhaps repeatedly) before moving on to say the next 10 minutes? Or if not chunked, would you recommend chunking? Cheers mate.
Well Pete Smissen is the guy who decided to put them in those 3 classes, basically. So Pete is to the "3 class system" of Aussie accents as Einstein is to the distinction between general and special relativity: ua-cam.com/video/ZnioDeQNlxQ/v-deo.html
So I've ordered the Japanese version of into the spider-verse if I know pretty much zero Japanese will this help with my listening if I watched it about 50 times?
Most likely not. The languages are too different to garner any meaningful amount of information without a single clue about the language. It wouldn’t be useless, but it would be really inefficient. Spanish is just very similar to English, plus he already had knowledge of Spanish so it was possible to learn through context.
I'm still finding it hard to understand how you can pick up much from watching a film in a different language, even after 50 times. I get that you could have vague ideas about what is going on in the dialogue from the context, but those are just guesses; what they're saying might be completely different to what you think. It only makes sense to me if you already have a firm grasp of the dialogue in your native language.
I absolutely did have a firm grasp of what was said in my native language, plus it's only Spanish (in my opinion the easiest language for an English speaker), plus I'd been learning Spanish for a few months when I started. I said all this across both videos.
@@daysandwords For somebody who isn't particularly familiar with the dialogue of any film, do you think it would be worth anything to watch one with audio in their native language but with subtitles in the new language (then maybe vice versa), or should somebody just aim to make themselves familiar with a film in their native language and then switch to the other language?
Well in order to do this you kind of know the movie enough to know that you really like it anyway. It depends what language, and what language/s you already know. If we're talking Mandarin when you only know English, then this won't be particularly effective... BUT if you know the English script already, then it may actually be effective.
Rango is a masterpiece but it's an acquired taste and depends somewhat on your movie education thus far. Kung Fu Panda... the 2nd one is maybe not quite as good but emotionally hard hitting and GORGEOUS to look at. The Big Short is almost wall to wall dialogue which is cool.
As a beginner in German, the difference between what is being said in the dub and what is written in the subtitles is one of the most frustrating aspects of using movies, tv shows... etc for learning. It is helpful for people who have higher level in the language as they get rich context for the same concept, but for beginners it's a nightmare.
Yeah I’ve had the same problem as well. Netflix seems to be particularly egregious about this. It’s forced me to watch exclusively my target language content which is harder because I have no background context.
I think Disney plus is quite good for closed captions, at least in my experience with spanish. Especially the marvel stuff. I don't know what it's like with other languages tho
You need to look for stuff with CC (Closed Caption), i.e. subtitles for people who can't hear well. Those are 99% accurate. All other subtitles are meant to be watched with the original language version.
@@bibliocharylodis That is exactly what I am doing, but sometimes you can't find them available for stuff you are really interested in and enjoying so you have to force yourself to watch just for the sake of learning.
I thought Netflix was pretty good for German original stuff. Disney is absolutely horrible but they do have a lot of stuff dubbed and subtitled
I had my husband watch part of this video - I think he’s a great example of someone who has learned in this manner without even trying or having any interest in learning languages, because he’s a cinephile and has watched classic French and Spanish films so often and over-and-over again that he understands quite a bit of those languages. When I asked if we had this movie, he said yes. But then he had a stroke of genius - he knows I love the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and saw that it has a French language track and French subtitles and suggested this one might be a good movie for me to watch and enjoy repeatedly. Thank you, and thank you for getting my family excited about my homemade language learning!
Did you know that the movie Rio was dubbed in both neutral Latin American Spanish and Mexican Spanish? The same cast did both dubs and it's really interesting seeing the differences in accent and word choice in both. Could make for a good video/experiment.
And yet Hulu only has it available in English for me.... I really wanted to watch it in Spanish
I just joined your channel after a friend linked me because I told him I'm learning French in large part by watching the excellent French dub of Jurassic Park, my favorite movie. My strategy with language learning is to just do what toddlers do (watch the same thing a million times) and it really works so much better than classes! I found your videos on this topic really encouraging.
Thanks for joining! The support is appreciated!
Actually, a very good movie to try this with too (especially at a beginner/intermediate level) is "inside out". Good animation, easy to follow and has a lot to do with emotions etc. Maybe not as worthy as spiderverse for a 50 watch "binge" but could watch it 5-6 times easily.
thanks for the suggestion, gonna note that down 👍
Gonna watch it soon
Six weeks into learning Spanish and reading a book. That sounds like me with German. I was so confused in the beginner German class at the Goethe Institut in Berlin (it's taught almost all in German with very minimal English) that I went to the book store and bought the Hobbit in German and just started reading that. I skipped most of the classes after the first (or maybe 2nd) week. I just spent all day reading this book and looking up words in my paper dictionary with paper flash cards (which soon turned into a paper notebook due to the cost of so many flash cards). I do not think this was ideal by any means but it worked for me eventually. Ideally you go to class, understand the teacher/material, and then do immersion outside of class so you benefit from both. I was just too clueless in the class to get anything out of it except a low self esteem. My dad is still mad at me due to the wasted money for the class since he paid for it but I had no way to anticipate how dumb I would feel in the classroom beforehand. You would think he would be happy I learned German. Nope. Totally irrelevant. I'm good in language classes now though thank God.
This is why I've always been frustrated about full immersion language classes. I agree you should get your students speaking and listening as soon as possible but people learn a lot faster if you explain things in ways they understand. I once took a Hebrew class that was immersion based because I knew Hebrew grammar really well but had neglected any speaking or listening practice, and found myself explaining concepts to classmates that they either couldn't grasp at all or had made incorrect assumptions about. Now, with enough time they would've figured it out (probably, as long as they kept up with the language) but I cleared it up for them in minutes, and then when they understood what was happening they could recreate it no problem! And their confidence in the language went up! Starting in someone's native language and getting more immersive over time feels best to me. But that is a personal preference, of course lol
In another video I heard having one book as a Rosetta Stone (not to be confused by the software, but as the actual principle of the Rosetta Stone itself. So to decipher the language), and so essentially, The Hobbit was yours. =D
UPDATE:
I believe that NETFLIX is now the place to find "Into the Spider-verse" and that will definitely have Spanish if you know how to access all the languages (either create a profile that "speaks" that language, or use the Chrome extension Language Reactor). Netflix is much more "language open" than Disney Plus.
ua-cam.com/video/eliB_y0fmSk/v-deo.html
No you.
Lol
@@sharonoddlyenough and @hillmanntoby - I love that two of the earliest commenters on the video were people who already had the chance to watch it 2 days ago. 😆
I'm doing this but with thai
Had a similar experience in two regards. I have taken up Catalan as a side language and I realised how how much I could understand after studying Japanese for two years. I do think language learning is a skill in the sense once you have done a lot of it your brain is simply more flexible and much better at parsing meaning.
Also have had a similar experience with repetition where listening to the audio of the same show 50x, not even by conscious choice just because it was already on Lingq, and you start picking up on things at an almost supernatural level.
I found this video when it released almost a year ago. I watched the first episode of the good place about 5 times and saw massive improvement. Then i found dreaming Spanish and switched to that and it's been a great year. Now I can watch and understand pretty much any dubbed content. Still working on native tv shows. Cheers!
I'm trying the 50x thing for Spanish too. I chose a Mexican movie with English subs: The Noble Family / Nosotros Los Nobles. Dark comedy with plenty of dialogue and high chance of cultural references I can discover as I learn more. On watch #6 and still picking up new things. Not at the stage where I can talk along to the movie yet.
Done with 50x. Very helpful alongside other language learning. I will continue to shadow (talk along with scenes) from this film, but I'm now looking for another movie to bulk load.
Doing the same thing with a Mexican movie too. Wondering if you’ve noticed good progress like maybe more specifically in comprehension vs speaking or vice versa. Would love to know more
Thanks for the update! Im also starting today with an anime episode, demon slayer. Did you get bored? How was it? @@eturnerx
@@eturnerx Any new updates?
i love that i saw these videos, because it's something that I'd thought about before, but seeing someone else actually do it without losing their mind is encouraging enough to make me try. My hot tip is that Disney Plus has lots of musicals dubbed in different languages with the songs dubbed too. Great way to learn!
I got inspired by your video and am currently listening to Harry Potter in Russian. I have so far listened to the first book 7 times and the 2nd book 5 times. It is a great feeling to listen to actual audiobooks and I have as of yet not gotten tired of relistening to them, but well see if I actually end up listening to them 50 times each.
So how is it going now? I have watched the Irony of Fate / ирония судьбы about ten times so far.
I’ve been learning German for about 6 months and just moved to Germany. I really wanna get better quickly so I’m going to try your method. I picked my absolute favorite German movie, Bonnie & Bonnie, so that hopefully I won’t get sick of it
20:09 thank you for answering my question! 😄 I’ve been meaning to get back to this video for some time now and happy to finally get an answer to several questions you answered or mentioned
Film recommendation for everyone:
Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes)
One of the greatest Spanish language films ever, it’s a black comedy containing 6 short stories of revenge. The stories get longer as they go along - so you can watch the first film over and over easily and get it because it’s 5 minutes, the next one is 10 minutes, then 15, then finally you get the wedding which I think is about 35 minutes.
I just came up with this idea, but the film literally divides itself into digestible parts, so I will test it myself!
When I saw the original video I had just watched Spider-Man: Homecoming with the Spanish audio and was inspired to do this with that film. I’ve watched it 14 times so far. Very interesting experience. And by the way, I don’t think you’re crazy for your bold, sweeping comments about all Spider-Man movies (though I do think you’re gonna take some heat), but I have actually grown to really like this one. I think it’s a good solid superhero movie with all the right elements.
Anyway…
Yeah the subtitle thing is really interesting. I don’t use them much - mostly just as a reference point if I’m having trouble understanding a particular sentence or phrase.
Side note: The voice acting in the Spanish version is excellent, and most of the voices resemble those of the originals. So much so that I only started noticing after a few times through that the original actors’ voices can be heard during grunts and such. In fact, Peter says one phrase in Spanish, and it’s very clearly the voice of Tom Holland (in the Spanish version, I mean!). This observation (among others; among many, many others) is listed in a document I created to keep track of little things that pop out at me.
Well, this was a long walk around the lake to say, “any advice as I continue this experiment?”
But like the man said, “sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way, in order to come back a short distance correctly.”
Great video, Lamont.
Yeah there was lots cut out in which I mention the "Home" ones (Homecoming, No Way Home all that). I've only seen Homecoming, and it was in Spanish, in December, so I didn't really understand it. I'm sure they're decent movies. But you understand... in the edit, it's briefer and more entertaining to just make sweeping statements. Also the Tobey Macguire and Andrew Garfield ones deserve every bit of flack they cop haha.
This sounds like SUCH a cool idea! I’d love to try this with a new language.
My issue is I’m currently learning American Sign Language (ASL) and I’m a native English speaker. When I use SignUp ASL captions alongside Disney+/Netflix movies, the translation is always a few seconds delayed even when the time stamps are right. I think that’s just the nature of ASL compared to English since they’re both different languages with different ways of structuring grammar.
I feel like I would get something out of using the ASL video overlayed on a movie with English subtitles BUT it definitely wouldn’t make a linguistic impression because it’s visual.
Watching ASL movies like CODA and A Quiet Place is more helpful into diving deeper into Deaf Culture but I really wish I could rewatch my favorite Disney+ movies over and over while simultaneously learning more ASL. But rewatching movies with prominent ASL shown is probably my equivalent of doing this challenge!
If you have a VPN (and if you don't I recommend you get one), you can connect to other countries that may also have ASL stuff. I would say Australia but I have a feeling ours is in Australian Sign Language... I'm not sure, maybe you can check. ABC iView is the website I'm talking about, and it has some episodes of Bluey etc in sign language (Turtle Boy comes to mind as an episode that they do it for).
@@daysandwords thanks; I’ll check it out. Yes, I love that Bluey episode:)
I'm on day ten of doing this challenge with chapter one of the first Harry Potter book (read by Carlos Ponce for Latin American Spanish). It's roughly 30 minutes long. I do one listen a day while following along with the physical novel, followed by once or twice more without the text. The language did seem to slow down for me at around the 10th time through. Yesterday I hit my 22nd time through, and I still picked up on a word or two that I should have recognized from flashcards. I will continue for 50 times through (because why not), but I suspect there will be diminishing returns past 10. I don't feel like I'm getting more out of it than I would by moving to the next chapter at this point. I do have a higher level of Spanish though. I've memorized the most frequent 5000 words pretty well, took two years of Spanish in college (many years ago), and made a few attempts to learn since that always fizzled after a few months. I even tried a prior run of the HP books and reached book four, but I was listening to a chapter twice and then moving on. I can read and get the gist of things, but my listening comprehension was still crap. I got frustrated and quit. I do feel like ten might be the sweet spot for me at my current level, and if that doesn't change then I may continue with this method (ten listens a chapter) and see what happens.
How did your plan work? Did it help you to learn and hear Spanish? Do you have any suggestions or things that you would do differently?
@@user-zk6fc3dw9e Oh, I gave up on this method around chapter 3, then stopped trying to learn for months again. I just could not listen to the same chapter over and over and over again.
@@SatipatthanaSakuraDragona Good to know. I'll skip this method. I had concerns that if I watched/listened to a movie I really liked that many times that it would ruin the movie for me. Glad I didn't waste my time.
I love this. Thanks for the additional breakdown. As you said, it’s super tough in America 🇺🇸 to find multi lingual dubs in streaming! 😩. Almost everything on Netflix, Apple TV + or Disney has a Spanish or even Mandarin dub, so you learners are very lucky! I’m learning Russian 🇷🇺 and it’s almost non existent haha! But I will continue to scour the internets 🙌🏾. Спасибо большое за видео!
PS. I agree, ARCANE would also be a wonderful rewatch experience. So much detail and amazing execution
Почему ты решил учить русский?
Thanks for all the effort you put into compiling this information. This was a phenomenal video, and Super engaging. I’ve never watched your videos before this, but you’ve got a new subscriber.
Thank you!
Icelandic media is barely available here in Iceland; glad you managed to find the Icelandic version of Turbo in Australia 😅
You've inspired me to try the same with the Chinese dub 加油！Thanks for the content, you really inspire me to keep going.
Hm I'm thinking of doing this with Arcane for French. Watch each episode until I've basically memorized every line in french
Hey Lamont, question from me: What do you think is the minimal level required for someone to do this experiment? Should you already understand a high percentage of the lines, or can a beginner do it and it will work just as well?
I am a beginner in German I do this all the time, the more you did understand before starting this method the more your learning process will be smooth and quicker. Otherwise, as a beginner you have to spend a lot of time trying to understand what is being said.
I don't know if this method will be effective as a standalone without any side language studying, but in my case I do follow a textbook for A1 and as an additional language practicing I do read graded readers and watch stuff with subtitles.
If you pick a movie or show that you're already familiar with, you really don't need a lot of background in the target language to start with. I started with watching Frozen which was already on an almost continual loop in English in our house anyway at that time, thanks to my daughters. Started with watching it in Swedish with English subtitles, then switched to Swedish subtitles pretty quickly, and then dropped subtitles completely. I found I 'heard' more words without the subtitles.
He talks about this in the first video. You need to become familiar with the film in your native language first and then you can start this process. That’s how you skip over not knowing the language prior to starting this challenge. But also learning the new words that you don’t understand on the side or via a transcript will help out greatly.
I'm curious how this repeated listening compares to just regular listening. I know that after you've listened to the language enough it seems like it slows down for you. This might be a way to get that effect more quickly. For Japanese I studied it for about 3 - 4 years then moved to Tokyo and after living there a year I noticed the language really seemed to slow down for me. I know it's very subjective but it really suddenly seemed to slow down for me at about the 1 year mark. I studied Spanish a little in college (a couple classes, and read a couple fantasy books I'd already read in English) then about 10 years later I decided to give learning Spanish my all. I don't know how long I stuck at it (I eventually dropped it for Japanese) but I did do a lot of listening particularly on bike rides. At that time I had a hobby of doing 3 to 6 hour bike rides and I had this portable satellite radio with Spanish CNN and I just listened to tons of Spanish CNN (in addition to reading stuff on my computer and some books). Didn't do much since then but when I listen to Spanish speakers now, in general, it doesn't seem so fast at all to me considering it's a foreign language and I don't speak it well (I can speak it some though).
I had bought a Korean movie to do this challenge with (Old Boy) but I think I might just do it for Spanish and copy you exactly. With all the Spanish speaking customers at work I'm really starting to wonder if not knowing Spanish could become a problem. It's hard to imagine monolingual English speaking Americans actually learning Spanish for their job (except for the random language enthusiast) but I have a LOT of Spanish speaking customers and there's a lot of full bilingual employees at my job too.
8: 45 "English, polish and icelandic"
Sounds like they took the Wizards of the coast tried and true method of choosing challenge rating for D&D encounters, just put some sticky notes on a wall, get real drunk and start throwing darts at said wall. The first one that gets hit by a dart is chosen 🤣
It’s so sad that we even have to ask about different language support. I pay for Disney plus and Disney proudly states they make shows and films in many parts of the world but for some reason 95 percent of everything is only in English. And Disney plus is region locked in a way that my VPN doesn’t work. Like why can’t I have access to the other 20 languages? It doesn’t make sense.
All MCU films have Japanese dubs for example. I don’t have access to it. It’s so silly
IKR! I would even pay an extra 2 USD for the priveledge. Not more than that, but yeah. Region locking was annoying and frustrating enough for hardware, but it's just nonsensical now.
I agree!! This is so frustrating!! Disney+ has no way of knowing that, just because I live in North America somewhere doesn't mean I didn't move here last year from somewhere else and that English isn't my first language, and they're blocking me from accessing shows and movies that I can actually understand.
Yes, it is silly and annoying.
Maybe they are doing this because of censorship in different parts of the world.
Disney is losing a lot of money and maybe they will realise that they are missing out from additional revenue.
It's especially frustrating as Disney's dubs are often world class. Their animated films especially.
11:21 One of the most comical reasons for using a VPN was when I was playing a Swedish Scifi MMO called Entropia Universe. Because the publishers don't want to have to deal with getting a gambling license,(they might have to if they want to sell within Sweden). I have to use a VPN to buy lootboxes in the game. It's quite hilarious that everyone else can buy them, just not Swedes 😁
Maybe I'm being dumb but you said you watched the film to begin with in english (with desired language subtitles) and then in desired language (with english subs) but then later said you didn't use English subs. Could you clarify how many times you'd recommend watching the movie either in your own native language or with your native subs so you know roughly what's being said? Or is the idea to not know what is being said and for the inference to grow through the exposure? I would absolutely love to start this challenge, as I am a beginner in Italian and love to watch and rewatch quotable movies to absorb their dialogue. This seems like a highly motivating method of language comprehension. Glad I discovered your channel just now, many thanks!
I only watched it once with English subs, I think.
You can condense hours of video in minutes using programs like video-condenser by ercanserteli. As long as the video has a subtitle track it can use the timecodes on it to condense the video down to a mp3 containing just the spoken sections. It doesn't matter if the subtitle track is in your target language or not, since it just uses it for the timecodes.
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks:
1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours.
2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix.
3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them.
All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
I watched it with subs as an intermediate learner for two watches (after having it watched like 5 times before) and while it allowed me to correct/hear parts I wasn't hearing before, it was funny how many lines were just different.
after that video i watched ‘The Incredibles’ in spanish and i’ve got to say, it’s an amazingly powerful hack!
i don’t know if it’s because it’s animated but there’s something so much more interesting in the nature of the expressions which makes me pay MORE attention than regular movies.
Yeah, there are numerous advantages to animations, I agree.
The Incredibles is particularly dialogue heavy too.
I’m thinking about trying something like this with Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water for German. Avatar has been one of my all time favorite movies since in came out in 2009 and Disney+ has the first one in tons of languages so while I haven’t checked The Way of Water yet, I would guess it does too.
I just took the challenge by watching "Tangled" 50 times in Spanish
How did it go?
@@LadyLLanguageLearning I finished it. I also ended up watching a few other movies 50 times. By the end I had most of Tangles memorized. I wouldn't say that I learned every last word with it, but because I already had the movie pretty much memorized in english, that helped. Where to find out if it's not just about watching the movie 50 times, it's about paying attention to the subtitles and practice in Spanish as well, but it definitely did help
@warriorstudeo188 did you have accurate subtitles? And if not did that trip you up?
I started watching Arcane in Brazilian Portuguese because I need to learn it for a job. The good thing is that I am a Spanish native speaker, so I can already understand 90% of the language. What I really need is to learn more of the vocabulary, pay attention the the pronunciation and sentence order. The sentence order is the biggest thing, it is very similar to Spanish but the few things that aren't are extremely difficult to get used to and overcome. I'm glad I discovered your videos that really show that it is a good strategy.
I did the audio book thing with Dutch. I had the audio of Minoes and listened over and over to work and back for a month before i got the text book in dutch. And i was amazed how my mind was picking out words that i had no idea what they meant. And rhen later as i translated the book myself, i could understand the audio in sections i had not translated yet.
I’m doing this challenge with Coraline, and I highly highly recommend it. The movie has a lot of moments where characters gesture and use body language along with their dialogue, which helps comprehension a lot.
Oh! I'm also reading Coraline in my target language!
Who would think there was actually a service where someone transcripts a whole movie just for you.
No no, there isn't.
I paid an iTalki tutor.
Just discovered the channel, bro. Good stuff. I subscribed.
tip for people wanting specific dubs on some of these streaming platforms, Sometimes they have more languages than they show but you need to change your netflix or disney+ language to the language you want dubs/subs in then they will show. After changing my netflix to chinese so many more cartoons ended up actually having chinese dubs idk why it didn’t show me all initially
Yep! I have a video about doing that.
To my knowledge it doesn't work for Disney Plus (at least on my account it seems to show all the languages it's ever going to have), but yeah it definitely works for Netflix.
Inspired me to try this with Spanish dubbed Simpsons. A little too advanced for me right now so I made a LingQ of the audio from my fav episode to get started
@DaysandWords So I'm gonna do this in Spanish with the first two episodes of Batman Beyond. A show I'm familiar with and love to watch, plus each episode is only 22-25 minutes. So I'm gonna put them together as one rather than having to edit things down of a 2.5/3 hour film into only the dialogue parts. My question is; do you think I can get comprehension from watching it 50 times without any subtitles in either language? Do I need to make my own subtitle track for consistency in translation, or can I just watch without subtitles altogether and not have to bother with that? I'm a beginner in my Spanish journey and know about 200-300 words and have a some exposure to grammar by taking listening to about 50 Language Transfer lessons. But it's been months since I've done any studying and I'm starting over again.
I want to try something like this for Cantonese but I struggle to find subtitles for spoken Cantonese, do you think it’ll be effective without subtitles at all?
Yeah you could definitely do it without subs. In fact I think if you don't have subs then it's definitely better to watch something a lot of times.
Hey Lamont I just wanted to tell you if you haven’t seen it before that Lingvist has Swedish now! Along with Norwegian, polish, Japanese, Korean, Dutch and a couple others. Maybe you could do a video reviewing the program again briefly. When I originally saw your review, I thought that if only they had Japanese, I’d have it done in no time. And a few years later and they have it. I’m already fluent to the point that I didn’t need English at all when I went to Japan for the first time and I was getting drilled with obscure vocabulary or different conjugations that I’m not used to. I think you’d really appreciate how far they’ve come just like you said they would in your initial video.
Wow, no I didn't know that.
I knew Swedish would be on their list because they're an Estonian company... (also among other languages, Swedish has "lingvist" meaning linguist.)
Awesome, going to have a look now!
Should you use a movie you're already familiar with? Would it still work with a movie you've never seen before?
A lot of the original Pixar movies on Disney plus are pretty much only dubbed in Spanish and Icelandic. So there seems to be some kind of Icelandic mafia in charge somewhere
After seeing your original video I tried to watch Inside Out dubbed in Spanish since I've seen that film many times, and I ran into the exact same problem you're describing - the Spanish subtitles are completely different from the Spanish audio, and it's very frustrating. In general I can transcribe a word I may not know but sometimes it doesn't work.
I would record the audio through Audacity and then run that file through freesubtitles.ai.
Wow! Being part of the Tim-Tam Cartel means that I've already seen this video!
12:14 Hey thatsa me! 😂
Do you find it hard to pay attention after watching something so many times? I feel like I might start to zone out or think I knew what was coming rather than really listening.
Yeah that's a fair question. I found myself doing that a bit at around watches 8 to 12, so I started trying to remember what the next line was a lot, and almost say it along with them. Obviously I couldn't at all on viewing number 11 and 12, but by viewing 30 I would often be able to do it, and that was entertaining enough.
But drifting off can be OK too... Your subconscious is still listening to some degree, the same as when you know the sequence of something like the train stations in order even when you don't catch that train. (In Australia at least, there are announcements all the time saying what stops the train is stopping at, so if you stand on the platform every day you hear it maybe 3 times a day for years... And I know the stops in order for train lines that I've literally never caught.)
yes but is there going to be an upload of this video in spanish? i plan to watch it fifty times
"Even before I went through the entire Refold Spanish 1000 Deck-in a single day-I could already..." -- I snorted out loud :-) Of course you did, Lamont! That is SUCH a Lamont thing to do!
Yeah haha I made a video. It's one of my best videos:
ua-cam.com/video/6vkEHdPAcgA/v-deo.html
Regarding subtitles... I don't get why people just don't write subtitles by directly copying from the audio. It's not that hard.
They don't do subtitles like that because they would actually be really hard to read. Subtitles follow all sorts of "rules" that normal speech absolutely doesn't follow, e.g. only 30 characters per second, each subtitle must be on the screen for at least 2 seconds, etc etc.
7:35 copyright law is such BS. i don't know why people are trying to defend it, if the law makes such basic things like making a subtitle track illegal, then it's probably not the law we wanted, and we should change it, people shouldn't just accept the status quo, if they see that a completely okay thing is somehow considered a suable offense.
It's not just a subtitle track my friend. They were asking me to make a watchable version of the film available. If they want to pirate something then that's their business but it's not up to me to make it available to them.
I’m glad someone finally acknowledged that the the dub and subtitles don’t match. I thought maybe that was just a problem I was having. I searched through the house multiple times over the last week, but I finally found my copy of the spider verse movie. And it has French dub and subtitles! And Spanish too. But I’m currently learning French, and in the US, so many more movie have both in Spanish while rarely it seems do they have both in French. One day I’ll revisit Spanish.
Having a look at your channel, it seems like you'll be interested in the video that I have coming out in like 1 hour! (It's about books.)
But yeah, sometimes subs and the actual dialogue are so different that it seems like they're intentionally making them as different as possible.
What level of attention did you give the movie as you watched it? Did you give it your full attention for every single viewing, or did you ever multitask while having it on?
I think multitasking while trying to learn a language will not yield good results.
@welovfree - Well, actually I disagree.
But to answer Madison's question (plllleaaase let that be your name! I'm sorry if I'm confusing you with someone else!), because I was doing this for the sake of the video, I felt it was cheating to use the mp3 or something while I drove or anything like that... but I actually think that would work very very well and I want to do it again but this time use something a bit shorter and listen to it 100 times (plus most of those times would be passive).
So I was watching it, but the abridged version.
However, @welovfree - it really depends what we're talking about when it comes to multitasking. Language acquisition is a largely unconscious process; meaning that it happens without us meaning it to (NOT, as some people have been very vocal about, that it happens while we're in a coma...)
I have done very very little conscious study of Swedish, yet I speak it quite well and I put that down to the ~1500 hours that I've spent listening to it while I drive, exercise, wash the dishes etc. Check out this video:
ua-cam.com/video/2gcxPRFjXfE/v-deo.html
@@daysandwords I was talking in the context of the video, I mean multitasking while watching the movie will not yield good results in the range of that x50 times you mentioned, otherwise watching a 1 hour video passively would require a long period of time to reap most of the vocabulary in there.
Attentive listening 50 times isn't comparable to passively listing for the same period of time especially if the video is long and the learner is still a beginner.
@@daysandwords Yes, my name is Madison! Thanks for the response.
And @welovfree I agree that the more active attention you give something, the more efficiently you will learn. But I also think that there are plenty of activities where you can multitask but still pay pretty good attention to the audio, like folding laundry. Obviously it's even better if you're watching the movie for the added visual context and giving it 100% of your mental attention rather than 90% or whatever, but I figured that if I did something like this, by the 30th viewing or so I would be less engaged by the video itself and I would rather listen to the audio while doing something.
@@SomedayKorean Currently watching the first Harry potter movie for the 23rd time, sometimes I focus fully on the movie and sometimes I have it on my second monitor while playing a game (Minecraft). Still giving the movie attention, just not 100% attention.
Hey Lamont, I’m curious to know if you are still doing apps for your Spanish learning? I know you were keen on speakly a while back… are you still using it (or another app) or do you think apps are totally pointless and this method is the way to go??? Thanks!
I think some apps (like Speakly) are great, and I did use it a little bit when I first started learning back in November/December.
With anglosemblant languages (French, Spanish, German, Dutch etc.) then I think you CAN jump into some experiment like this, or shows that you know or whatever your poison is... but obviously a lot of people wouldn't really want to do this. This just reduced any decision fatigue for me (and I get a LOT of decision fatigue).
Thanks for the reply Lamont! I gotta organise my shit and join the Tim tam cartel (written while smashing some for breakfast lol)
I find it helpful to focus on the mouth and facial movements when human actors articulate the Spanish--is that even possible with animations? I get the sense that my brain is subconsciously picking up on how the words are formed and pronounced--watching the mouth, tongue, teeth movements---perhaps how a pre-verbal toddler might focus on the mother's facial expressions. What's your take on how helpful seeing the articulation of words helps eventual pronunciation/speaking?
Obviously you wouldn't be able to do that if this is ALL you ever did, but it's not all I ever did/will do.
Anki also can't teach you a language. But it's good for some things. Everything in it's place, and a place for everything.
@@daysandwords Sorry, I'm not following this. My comment/question wasn't related to Anki. I just wanted to know whether something significant is lost when the facial articulation of words by human actors isn't available. Say, rather than animation, if you were to choose a film with actors speaking Spanish in the original version of the film, what might that film be?
No, I KNOW that your question had nothing to do with Anki, but it's an example:
No ONE activity in language learning is the ONLY thing you should do. Not even watching a movie 50 times. Not even wathcing a 12 season TV series 100 times. Nothing covers EVERYTHING.
Watching animated movies does not cover facial expressions. But other things might.
In my early days, I listened to the audio from The Giver in Russian everytime I worked out at the gym. It was amazing.
Some folks use Anki for "sentence mining" of content, sometimes embed the audio, and they drill the content over and over. It's common in Japanese learning communities. Not my thing but that's what they meant.
Honestly I doubt it IS what they meant; because from other things they said, they were pretty obviously a new language learner.
A faster way to make a condensed movie is by writing a m3u playlist for VLC. If you have the subtitle track you can programatically write a playlist file to only play the sections that include dialogue. I even did this in a spreadsheet, but would be easy enough to make a general program to do this too.
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks:
1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours.
2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix.
3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them.
All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
Are American Spanish and European Spanish really so different they need separate dubs? I don't think I've seen separate dubs for British/Australian/American English (could be wrong...)
Well they almost always have separate dubs. That doesn't mean that they NEED them but they exist.
Paw Patrol is actually dubbed into British English as well as American English so that's one thing I guess.
the challenge with your videos is that you have several videos titled "learn Spanish in a day" "in a month", etc. not sure if you have learned and forgotten Spanish to learn again, or you already knew it or you have never learned it.
Ok I see he is talking shite and lots of it
I’ve thought about doing this with Scarface, but I’m being told it may not be the best way to learn the language since the Spanish dub my be an inauthentic translation
won’t watching the same content over and over again limit my input ? should one get massive amounts of input ?
I’m already very good at watching tv shows and movies in english with subtitles and was thinking of trying this method to close my listening gap
Tjena Lamont!
I’m not a patreon or anything, but it would be cool if you could do an experiment with “mnemonics” for language learning, if it’s a good way to learn?
I don't use them much but maybe check out Nelson Dellis.
I can't get my Prime Video to have any other language than English in the USA. It is frustrating to me since my favorite show from Netflix was BBC Merlin, and I was watching it in Spanish. Now it is on Amazon Prime, and not in Spanish. We were talking about getting a region free blu-ray player so we can order them off of other countries sites. I really want my Chinese, French, and Spanish shows! It is so weird that in the USA we have this issue. In my town, where we use German everyday, we can get nothing in German. My friend couldn't get an English translation for the instructions at his new factory job here in town (he is from Florida), and so last week a coworker had to teach him the machine. Our local concerts are in German. Everything is in German... except we can't get DVDs or Blu-ray in German! I spent two hours in our ER last night with a child speaking German with the nurses and doctor as they checked my kid's broken ribs... 🙃 😂😢
Edit to add: I am on my third viewing of Nimona in Mandarin. I recommend the movie!
Yeah the USA seems to be far worse for language availability than Australia. I'd SAY that it's because the licence for those dubs is more expensive than in Australia where the audience is smaller. It's so frustrating.
@@daysandwords More expensive, but more people who would actually watch it. I am lucky that my area had a Japanese channel when I was in high school, so I learned Japanese before moving there at 19. Still, I miss being able to have one pay for service that has what I like on it.
I wanted to do what you did with the movie Rio but the only language option on Hulu was English, WTF!!! Rio had a high budget and was a huge hit, I *know* it's been dubbed in at least Portuguese so what gives?
Anyways I've been watching the G5 MLP movie in Spanish on Netflix instead. Netflix has the most language options out of every streaming service and I really appreciate it for that
What software did you use? Or does anyone know what software he used? Idk if he didn’t just say the name or if I missed it.
Da Vinci Resolve.
Many people have "pointed out" (as if I didn't already know) that there are easier ways to do it... Personally, I think it's worth the time to do it manually for other benefits that come from that.
What video editing software did you use?
DaVinci Resolve:
ua-cam.com/video/DRXeM07TVww/v-deo.html
Cheers (gestures in your general direction with a TimTam)
I have attempted to use dubbed TV shows or movies to study my target language, but I don't think it's right for me. I get way too distracted from the dubbed voice lines and mismatching mouth movements that I neglect to read the subtitles or focus on the audio. I wish I could watch these fun and zany movies in my target language, but I can't get over the dubbing.
Anyways, if you guys have some native Russian TV show or movie suggestions, let me know 😂
How are you keeping up your Swedish whilst spending so much time on Spanish?
It's complicated... I'd say "expect a video" about it but it mightn't be for a while.
@@daysandwords I look forward to it, however long I have to wait! Keep up the good work! 😊
I was interested in trying this experiment with Swedish, but finding a good movie with a Swedish audio track proved difficult. First off, most of what's available is on Disney+ and most of those it sounded like dubbing a Swedish audio track for the sake of having a Swedish audio track. Reciting lines in a new language without attempting to add interest or personality. Listening to those sounds more like listening to a lecture than enjoying a story. Secondly, dialog (and especially songs) are rarely direct translations to their English equivalent. The older Disney Swedish dubs also seem to have vastly outdated grammar and culturalisms that are no longer relevant in modern Swedish.
That being said, I was really impressed with the Swedish voice cast for Big Hero Six. If animation was synced to the Swedish dialog, you might not know it was originally recorded in English. It's set in a modern/slightly futuristic setting so the language changes translate well. If I were to try this process to ground myself in Swedish, I would go with Big Hero Six
Personally I think there's a decent amount available in Swedish and the dubs are decent. Spider-verse is OK (not great but OK).
Rango is pretty good (was on Netflix last I checked). Despicable Me, Kung Fu Panda, Ron's Gone Wrong...
They're all OK.
I'm curious which movies you've watched in Swedish on Disney+? Most of the ones we've watched haven't been that bad for audio tracks, although like anything dubbed, most of the time the audio doesn't match the subtitles exactly. Some are better than others. I agree that Big Hero Six is one of the better ones, however. I tend to use them more as passive immersion, where they're on in the background while I'm doing other homework; it keeps the kids happy because I'm letting them watch cartoons outside of their normal tv-viewing times so I get the peace and quiet to focus on other things (aside from random requests from the kids for "what did they say?"). Maybe because I'm not watching them with the intention of "learning" from them, inconsistencies don't bother me as much?
I spent 5 watches watching it from shady sources but now it's on Netflix (UK). I'm excited to watch it with subtitles for the first time! I've watched it 6 times so far.
It is amazing just how frustrating the film industry has made it to watch a specific movie in a language it has a first party translation for.
I know.
Youve inspired me to do this for japanese. Im now heading into intermediate level but the problem is what show should i watch....maybe deadpool? 😂
Ironically I think that the Spiderverse films are the only 2 films that ARENT good in comparison to the other films
Other than your way too hot take, this was very informative video and I will use these techniques! Thanks a bunch for the experiment and sharing it!
Hmm, the thing is - my take isn't at all hot.
It may be a bit unusual to say that they all suck, but Into SV and Across SV are well acknowledged as some of the best animated films of all time, or at the very least, from the Western commerical world (so not including Studio Ghibli etc.), and quite a few people have expressed that they dislike super hero films and Marvel pop-corn stuff except for Into and Across.
Thanks for giving your opinion on the video!
This guy actually likes the Spider-man universe (I don't), but still:
ua-cam.com/video/UWhj8fXGwbM/v-deo.html
@@daysandwords Thanks for video recommendation, also Superhero films are defo a big hit or miss for me. Sometimes I have really high standards and sometimes I get emotionally attached to them.
And yes I am using your technique for French! It's definitely intense to watch the same thing over and over again but I will push through!!!
I believe that the reason Spanish subtitles are different the dub is because the subtitles are for Spanish speakers watching the English version - the words are matched to the English voices; therefore the Spanish subtitles are not 'indigenous' to the Spanish audio.
No it's even more complicated than that. Subtitles have rules to follow and so do dubs, but the rules are completely different. Very often, the Spanish (or any language) subtitles do not match what they say in English either.
I think a more advanced version of this would simply be content that's not something dubbed, but the language in a drama or something where the dialogue mimics more casual interaction. I'm advanced in Spanish but even with 2-3K hours of contact with the language, casual speech is still too difficult.
There's lots of ways to stay motivated to improve at a language but it can be hard to find one that works for you. The method I've been using for Korean is just making it a habit. I at least kind of like doing SRS vocabulary recognition flash cards and I like reading books on LingQ. So I just do that everyday. I don't have to think about what I'm going to do, whatever free time, I'll do that. It has drawbacks. There's no speaking/grammar/listening built into that routine. I'm trying to work it in by taking iTalki lessons. I am not currently using goals to motivate me because I can't think of any goals that seem worth it to me. I can totally see how making that video about watching Spider Man 50x times would be motivating because it was a great video idea. Years ago I signed up for classes in Japanese and Korean and I made getting an A my goal while I took those classes and this helped me a lot. I also used the Japanese Language Proficiency Test as a goal to keep me studying grammar especially because I hate grammar but also Japanese in general because aside from watching anime with English subtitles there wasn't an activity I naturally enjoyed. Using language proficiency tests as a goal works for some people but I think we all know it doesn't work for everyone. So many people show up the day of the test saying they barely studied except for cramming a week or less before the test. I've tried making just finishing some big pre-made Anki decks a goal for my Korean but in itself it's not too motivating. The decks are bigger than 1000 though. Maybe if I split them up into levels it would help - doing a 5k (or more) deck takes years and is actually kind of demotivating when you look at how slowly you're progressing through it.
(Rant about the TOPIK or language proficiency test for Korean)
I'd really like to sign up for the Korean language proficiency test to make that a goal but I haven't for two reasons - just like Japanese I would need to travel to a different city to take the test (I used it as an excuse to take a vacation for Japanese) but also the Korean test format is just AWFUL. There's two levels. 1 is for beginners, 2 is for EVERYONE else. The books written to help you study for test 2 are designed for people trying to ace the test. When I took JLPT N3 (roughly B1 level) Japanese the test was super hard and studying for it was super hard and if the books I used were not designed only for B1 I would not have understood them. I go looking for books/material for the TOPIK and I have NO idea what to get - likely there's nothing good until I am at least upper intermediate but how can I get to upper intermediate without studying? So I'm back to reading novels on LingQ in Korean instead.
Do I watch it first in English
Yeah, I said that I had seen it a few times already.
I have to say, you'd freeze to death in that jacket here, even on the warmest winter day...but it also baffles me that you're having to wear it inside. I know, different climate, different norms, so I say rock that coat whenever you feel the urge. 😂
Where are we talking about? The coat certainly wouldn't be enough on its own in really cold places but with some woolen thermals and another good layer (like a woolen sweater) between me and the jacket, I genuinely think it would stand up to kind of -5 ish, depending what one was doing or course. I realise that's not that cold for a lot of places but yeah in Australia there aren't many places that you need it. Although next week I'm going out to Bathurst which sometimes reaches -10.
My office gets PARTICULARLY cold and particularly hot. It's like a car in that it magnifies whatever is going on outside. I think it was about 8⁰ C in there. The coat is genuinely too much in anything warmer than that.
@@daysandwords Well, average winter temperatures hover in the -20s, with prolonged stretches in the -30s. I had a friend come and visit from Melbourne during what just happened to be the coldest winter on record at the time. Temperatures didn't get above -25 the whole time she was here. She DID come visit again...during the summer LoL
My office is in my basement, so it's uniformally cold year round.
Ha, Melbournians are soft though, and I'm not just saying that.
They THINK that they can deal with the cold because it's colder than Sydney, and they suffer from constant Sydney-inferiority complex. But Melbourne weather only lasts 4 hours and then changes (not a joke, it's famous for having all 4 seasons in 1 day). Lots of places in Australia are much colder than Melbourne, obviously (the Snowy Mountains, for example, is our main skiing area).
-25 is very cold haha. I would genuinely love to go there just to justify my coat along with several other layers. I actually really enjoy getting "rugged up" as we say, but I understand that it would get old fast. 38+ degree days in summer get old very fast too.
I'm hoping to go to Sweden next year and although it makes much more sense to go in June or July in order to have lots of daylight to do the things I need to do, I really want to go in January just to experience the cold.
@@daysandwords "Melbournians are soft"....I have a feeling she may consider those fighting words.
I would hate +38 in the summer. It gets into the low +30s here during the summer, and with only 6 to 7 hours of "cooler" night temperatures it tends to just stay at those temperatures. Fun fact, we actually don't get true darkness (astronomical twilight) from end of May through middle of July, which makes putting the kids to bed in the summer pure torture! "But Mmmmooooommmmmm.....the sun isn't even asleep yet!!"
Personally, I'll take cooler temperatures over hotter temperatures. You can always add another layer or light a fire to warm up, but you can only take so much off before you get arrested. That being said, -30 is too bloody cold, and I'd happily move somewhere that had a more temperate winter.
We're actually planning a trip to Sweden and surrounding countries next summer. If you go in January, you'll still be warmer there than here, and you'll have more opportunity of seeing the Northern Lights.
Also, my friend came here end of December/beginning of January, "just to experience the cold". That statement bit her hard! LoL
My comment was a 2:49 self high five
How I feel about your videos 17:10. 😂
Haha I don't know whether this comment is serious or not.
Woah, you probably got an Icelandic version of turbo, a lot of polish people here in iceland
No, it's an Australian Region B one. I said "my copy" but I actually meant THE COPY that you can get here in Australia. 99% of my blurays and DVDs are normal Australian Region B or Region 4 (DVD) editions, but the languages are very often bizarre.
So this wouldn’t work if you just watched a show instead of a movie because you’re not hearing the same thing over and over ?
It might if the show had lots of repeated phrases etc. The show, with say, 15 seasons, would be the better option after a while, but this is a good option if you want to watch something that you can understand but isn't for learners or little kids.
@@daysandwords I was thinking about watching one piece it has plenty of episodes and a reoccurring theme of luffy wanting to be pirate king. Figured there was a ton of UA-cam content about it too that I could watch either in Spanish or from Spanish creators that would help too
Hey I am working on a script to cut down a movie to only dialog automatically, inspired by you. It's going to be open source and free. I am just having a little hard time with specifically some ffmpeg commands. My script works now, but it works now with does cuts with some corruptions to the video file, the audio track is fine. I tried to write to you on discord, I hope I have some time to work a bit more on it soon
Keep working on your script, absolutely.
BUT...
I know you can do it with tools, but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks:
1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours.
2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix.
3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them.
All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
@@daysandwordsthankfully, the way I wrote the script to use the subtitles is fairly robust. It does cut down spiderverse to about 56 minutes or so. I have made a few passes over how the logic works. But thank you for making me aware of the situation where some subtitles have information like "music plays", I'll add the function to be able to pick which subtitle to use.
i found your reason number 3 most compelling! But not everyone is willing or able to do that.
And I think your reason number 2 is diametrically opposed to reason number 3, but different people are different so, there is that.
Once the script is working, a gui frontend is just a smop (small matter of programming). Currently the only thing that is needed for me to finish a beta version of the script is for me to talk with someone who knows a bit how ffmpeg works. Sadly haven't been able to solicit someone in the irc channel (of course not holding that against the ffmpeg community), and ChatGPT just gives me wrong answers. I can manage to get ffmpeg or another tool to the job, but there are some issues.
hehe, i love cool spiderman, first andrew garfield version, and now miles morale :D
There are definitely easier tools out there to condense audio, but they depend on having subtitle tracks. If you get a copy of the show or movie with a subtitle track, it's just a few minutes to condense and export the audio. Just Google "condense audio -compress" (need the -compress to ignore the results that talk about file compression).
Yeah I know you can do it with tools, which is why I said "I did it manually", but in the members' video that explains how to, I also explain why it's better to do it manually for something like this. There are several ways to do it automatically but there are a few drawbacks:
1. There will be flaws. Things left in that should be cut out, things cut out that should have been left in, and precious split seconds around every line that don't need to be there. When I trialled it on Spider-verse, it cut it down to 67 minutes as opposed to my 49. A lot of that was because of subtitles like "Music plays" or "Awkward laughing". I'm watching it 50 times to that 18 minutes difference turns into 15 hours.
2. People who want to do it manually probably aren't going to be very techy anyway, so asking them to use scripts on top of VLC and subtitle files etc etc is like asking them to jack in to the Matrix.
3. When you commit to doing the work manually, you'll also commit to the goal (let's say it's to listen to the resulting mp3 100 times or something). Doing it automatically can contribute to resource fatigue, the feeling that when you've got SO many options to practice your TL, you don't really do any of them.
All this sounds like I'm against doing it with a tool... I'm not. I just think that there is a great deal of value in doing it manually.
I might have missed it, but did you mention whether you watched it straight through (whether long form or cut down), or would you break it down into chunks of say 10 minutes a pop and digest that content (perhaps repeatedly) before moving on to say the next 10 minutes? Or if not chunked, would you recommend chunking? Cheers mate.
Normally straight, but sometimes I would take a break if I needed to look after my kid or something.
would you say your australian english is broad general or cultivated
Haha, Pete's video I assume?
Without having watched his video, I'd imagine it's somewhere between general and cultivated. It's definitely not broad.
@@daysandwords don't know who pete is but cool 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Well Pete Smissen is the guy who decided to put them in those 3 classes, basically. So Pete is to the "3 class system" of Aussie accents as Einstein is to the distinction between general and special relativity:
ua-cam.com/video/ZnioDeQNlxQ/v-deo.html
@@daysandwords oh that's cool. I saw the terminology elsewhere reading about sociolinguistics
I’m going to try watching Coraline 50 times in French. I really need to improve my listening comprehension
Honestly I barely got through that movie once. So creepy!
How is it going?
I can’t find the Spider-Man movie in Spanish 😭
in puerto Rico we say habichulas for beans
So I've ordered the Japanese version of into the spider-verse if I know pretty much zero Japanese will this help with my listening if I watched it about 50 times?
Most likely not. The languages are too different to garner any meaningful amount of information without a single clue about the language. It wouldn’t be useless, but it would be really inefficient. Spanish is just very similar to English, plus he already had knowledge of Spanish so it was possible to learn through context.
Learn about 200 of the most common words first. Then it will definitely make a difference.
I get frustrated when my son insists on subtitles because i feel like it is focusing on translation vs thinking
I'm still finding it hard to understand how you can pick up much from watching a film in a different language, even after 50 times. I get that you could have vague ideas about what is going on in the dialogue from the context, but those are just guesses; what they're saying might be completely different to what you think. It only makes sense to me if you already have a firm grasp of the dialogue in your native language.
I absolutely did have a firm grasp of what was said in my native language, plus it's only Spanish (in my opinion the easiest language for an English speaker), plus I'd been learning Spanish for a few months when I started. I said all this across both videos.
@@daysandwords For somebody who isn't particularly familiar with the dialogue of any film, do you think it would be worth anything to watch one with audio in their native language but with subtitles in the new language (then maybe vice versa), or should somebody just aim to make themselves familiar with a film in their native language and then switch to the other language?
Well in order to do this you kind of know the movie enough to know that you really like it anyway.
It depends what language, and what language/s you already know. If we're talking Mandarin when you only know English, then this won't be particularly effective... BUT if you know the English script already, then it may actually be effective.
Lol I’ve been trying to learn Spanish all my life and I still suck lol any tips
My whole channel is just that.
Just Finished watching "Empires new groove" 50 times in Spanish
That was pretty fast too! Once a day!
@@daysandwords it was more like 5 or 6 times a day, though some of the days I only got one movie in
@@daysandwords looking for more movie recommendations
Rango is a masterpiece but it's an acquired taste and depends somewhat on your movie education thus far.
Kung Fu Panda... the 2nd one is maybe not quite as good but emotionally hard hitting and GORGEOUS to look at. The Big Short is almost wall to wall dialogue which is cool.
Hey, I've just finished my first viewing in Italian! Was the movie a good choice? How did it go?