Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3629

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby luke » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:47 am

Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Because they are primarily visual mediums.

What are subtitles for?
To turn sound into a visual medium. :mrgreen:
3 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
tungemål
Blue Belt
Posts: 947
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:56 pm
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N)
English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Polish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17672
x 2181

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby tungemål » Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:56 am

I always feel dejected when I watch an English language movie and I realize that I need subtitles. Yesterday I watched a Norwegian TV series, and I found that I needed subtitles there as well. Only for a few places where they spoke very fast and not clearly enough, but still. Maybe it's my ears that are getting old.
3 x

User avatar
Factoid
White Belt
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:17 am
Languages: Spanish (N), English (B2)
x 11

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Factoid » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:22 pm

I usually don't need subtitles with english TV series, but not always.

I remember trying to understand the black gangsters slang in "The Wire", and beeing unable to do it...

It's doesn't happen with spanish series, though, even with latinamerican ones, because it's manageable to understand the words by context.
2 x

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3629

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby luke » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:29 pm

tungemål wrote:Yesterday I watched a Norwegian TV series, and I found that I needed subtitles there as well.

I don't think it's age. I think the medium has changed and the current "art" is much less about the dialogue. I mean, if one compares movies and television of today to those of my youth, movies and TV have gone into la toillette with vigor.
3 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
tungemål
Blue Belt
Posts: 947
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:56 pm
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N)
English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Polish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17672
x 2181

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby tungemål » Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:48 pm

I don't agree with that. Lots of good movies and TV series today. But less emphasis is put on clear dialogue.
I think this video that Lichtrausch posted on page 4 explains it:
lichtrausch wrote:
5 x

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3629

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby luke » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:07 pm

tungemål wrote:Lots of good movies and TV series today. But less emphasis is put on clear dialogue.
I think this video that Lichtrausch posted on page 4 explains it:
lichtrausch wrote:

That is a good video and explains the technicals very well.

The part I highlighted is what I meant in that a lot of modern shows aren't as good at telling a story anymore. They show it.
2 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
tastyonions
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1551
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:39 pm
Location: Dallas, TX
Languages: EN (N), FR, ES, DE, IT, PT, NL, EL
x 3796

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby tastyonions » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:20 pm

Factoid wrote:I remember trying to understand the black gangsters slang in "The Wire", and beeing unable to do it...

I love showing English learners this scene to illustrate the contrasts within American English:

0 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4759
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14924

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Iversen » Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:44 pm

luke wrote:What are subtitles for?
To turn sound into a visual medium

To allow me to turn the sound off..
2 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3449
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8602
Contact:

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Cainntear » Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:43 pm

As I recall it, the video was pretty thorough. However, I think it glossed over the difference between a native audience and a non-native audience.

For a learner, language comprehension degrades gradually -- i.e. the more noise you have, the less you understand. However, for the native language comprehension is basically all or nothing -- your brain can reconstruct the original sentence even despite noisy interference, but a little bit more noise and you understand nothing.

I remember sitting in a room that had air conditioning at the back. I was vaguely aware that my brain was putting more effort into listening when the fans were on that when they weren't, but even that was only because I'd heard about this idea before. The speakers would get to the end of the sentence and say the last few words quieter -- to me it was like a light had been switched off. The thing is, I had a Spanish guy beside me in there sometimes and his English wasn't great, so his received signal must have been pretty ropey.
I'm pretty certain that wherever I read about it was saying that foreign students shouldn't be seated away from the teacher, as the further they are, the less they understand, whereas native students can get further and further with no loss of understanding until it suddenly cuts out.

I have a feeling this may have been during my English teaching masters, because although we wouldn't have been preparing to teach natives anyway, that's what the research said. The advice to language teachers was to fill the class from the front, because students at the back of the classroom simply wouldn't understand.

Anyhow... back onto the topic.

I personally find that I have the same all or nothing comprehension in modern TV dialog, and I imagine that means non-natives will have the same degradation of comprehension as in a classroom. English-language media is a global market... I wonder if highlighting the problems might create a market force that makes studios just sort the bloody dialogue out...?
1 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3480
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9317

Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Apr 17, 2023 11:41 pm

Crivvens, I ended up in this discussion again yesterday! I asked someone if he'd watched a certain series - it's actually an old one from the 80s, but he though I was talking about something new - and said: 'What? no! I barely watch the TV now unless I have the subtitles on. I can barely hear what they're saying...' And therefore quite a bit of what has already unravelled in this thread.

But there was more. I mentioned all the stuff about sound technology and microphones, picking up lots of ambient sounds like breathing, gravel underfoot etc and how voices suffer in the mix. He was not having it and made a decent objection. He said that it is only for drama series where he needs the subs, whereas factual programming is fine. I was about to say that it was different because a narrator is deliberately speaking clearly, but he put the TV onto a documentary channel where some people were planning a mountain climb and indeed the speaking to camera as well as the off-the-cuff conversations and banter was pretty much all comprehensible. Even when the exaggerated music started was they were ascending the talking was normal and comprehensible. They are also using modern sound equipment and sound mixing and we are watching it on the same audio/visual equipment as the dramas.

So now I'm really convinced it's an actor style + sound mixing style unique to modern TV drama (which now thinks it is feature films).
6 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: cpnlsn88, Google [Bot] and 2 guests