Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

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

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Jan 31, 2019 9:31 pm

rdearman wrote:Scottish accents are hard even for Native English speakers. I know in America they put sub-titles on for Susan Boyle, the Britain's Got Talent star, was given subtitles during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Some irish ones can be tough too.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby golyplot » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:42 am

I hate it when actors mumble. Sometimes I can't understand things in my native language, simply due to the sound level or clarity. Sometimes when I watch something with subtitles, the subtitles reveal dialog that no reasonable person could actually hear. (Of course, the reverse is also often true)

Anyway, I usually focus on dubbed shows because they are easier to understand than native content. There's also a lot more to choose from, since you have the entire American TV industry compared to the 1 or 2 foreign shows Netflix felt like importing this year.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Valddu » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:32 pm

NoManches wrote:Some relevant threads (as you can see, this is/was a topic that I have a lot of interest in :oops: ).

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... Television


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ion#p70766


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ish#p17301

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... +tv#p29341


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... es#p102401

A few years later and I still don't have 100% comprehension when it comes to movies/TV shows. I have pretty good comprehension with TV shows, especially after the first 3-4 episodes. When I understand most movies with good comprehension I'll move on to another language...but until then I'm committed to Spanish.


When talking to somebody, the other person will naturally use the right vocabulary, idioms, and speed so that you can understand. Also, it's a lot easier to comprehend when you know what the topic is about and have control over where the conversation is heading.


I'd recommend podcasts to help with understanding TV shows and movies. Podcasts can be a lot harder, especially since they don't have the visual aspect which makes you think you understand more than you really do.


NoManches, I know you're studying Spanish like I am. When you're watching a show that's difficult to understand do you power through on audio alone or do you switch on subtitles to make sure you're comprehending the show fully? I've been watching Club De Cuervos and kind of bounce back and forth between the two methods depending on who's speaking or how intense the slang is.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Valddu » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:34 pm

Ani wrote:Well, I'll going to go against a little bit of what was said here and say that modern dubbed films or series (at key for the first few episodes). I really they can be the most difficult input you can find.

Older dubs, like Buffy, Charmed, 90's romcoms, seem to have dubbing that's slower and cleaner than the native content. The stuff that Netflix is putting out now? The audio is intentionally muddled, remerged with background noises, and on top of that, the words don't match the actors' faces. (Or specifically, they conflict, which does strange things in the brain)

The OPs question isn't about dubs vs. native content but I just had to get that off my chest ;)

OP, I would recommend 200 hours of a native series and then come back and update us on your progress :)


200 hours? Well, if Netflix is willing to produce and release another 20 seasons of Club De Cuervos in the next week I'll probably have answer for everyone by the end of February. It's that addicting :D
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Valddu » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:37 pm

sillygoose1 wrote:It's simply part of the process and it means your brain hasn't fully connected the sounds or register to their meaning. You can do a lot of things such as read, listen to audiobooks, and master course material, but the only thing that will truly get you to understand movies and shows is to just keep doing it. Movies and shows are the culmination of native speakers' daily register, references, culture, and way of speaking. To be able to do what most of them do requires a bit of time. For example, French has been a part of my life for 7-8 years now and I must have watched over 1000 hours of series/movies, read tens of thousands of pages, and listened to at least 300 hours of audiobooks. I still have problems with some movie trailers or not being able to always pick out a word(although this can be an example of how the movie sound is recorded).


Even in English, my native language, I've noticed that my comprehension for a show is much higher if the subtitles are on--especially if there's a strong accent or unusual slang. It always surprises me when I realize that a problem that I struggle with in my L2 is a problem I actually have my in L1 (to a much smaller degree).
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby NoManches » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:41 pm

Valddu wrote:
NoManches wrote:Some relevant threads (as you can see, this is/was a topic that I have a lot of interest in :oops: ).

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... Television


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ion#p70766


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ish#p17301

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... +tv#p29341


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... es#p102401

A few years later and I still don't have 100% comprehension when it comes to movies/TV shows. I have pretty good comprehension with TV shows, especially after the first 3-4 episodes. When I understand most movies with good comprehension I'll move on to another language...but until then I'm committed to Spanish.


When talking to somebody, the other person will naturally use the right vocabulary, idioms, and speed so that you can understand. Also, it's a lot easier to comprehend when you know what the topic is about and have control over where the conversation is heading.


I'd recommend podcasts to help with understanding TV shows and movies. Podcasts can be a lot harder, especially since they don't have the visual aspect which makes you think you understand more than you really do.


NoManches, I know you're studying Spanish like I am. When you're watching a show that's difficult to understand do you power through on audio alone or do you switch on subtitles to make sure you're comprehending the show fully? I've been watching Club De Cuervos and kind of bounce back and forth between the two methods depending on who's speaking or how intense the slang is.



I guess you can say I have different methods. When I first started to seriously work with TV shows (maybe 4-5 years ago?) I HAD to watch with the Spanish subtitles. I don't think I've ever attempted a Spanish show with English subtitles and I'm glad that I never went down that road.

I then hit a point where I realized that subtitles are just a "crutch"... you can watch in Spanish with Spanish subtitles and think you are improving your listening...but really you are just working on your reading in my opinion (with maybe a little involvement from your listening skills, but really you go with the easier task which usually happens to be reading for most of us).

There was another post where I talked about what I normally do. Here is a link to that thread and I've quoted myself so I don't have to type all over again: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =17&t=5037



NoManches wrote:
I'm late to the discussion but oh well, maybe this will help somebody.

Even tot his day, if I watch a really cool show in Spanish and can't understand it, I get frustrated. I just started La Case de Papel on Netflix, which is a show many people recommend watching in ANY language, because it is such a badass show. Of course, I only want to watch it in Spanish, and not being able to comprehend it at 100% is frustrating.

What I recommend, is having a few different shows that you watch. Find one show that interests you or holds your attention (for me, lot's of action does the trick). Just watch the heck out of this show. Hopefully it's something that allows you to understand the plot without having to understand all of the dialog. You might have to search a bit to find a show with easy to understand dialog.

Then, find a show that you really, really like or want to watch. You can work intensively with this show. For me, I really like the shorter mini series on netflix (where each season has 13 episodes or so). At least with these shorter shows you see the light at the end of the tunnel and can easily re-watch an entire series within a relatively short period of time).

I think TV is best (as in, you'll see the most results) when you are at a solid intermediate level (in my opinion). For working intensively, I like to do the following:

Put the subtitles on in your TL, but no matter what you do, don't look at them! If there is a wall of dialog you don't understand, rewind to the part right when the subtitles pop up but the character has't said anything yet. Hit pause. Read the subtitles, look up words, understand everything. Then, while NOT READING the subtitles, hit play and listen. You should be able to understand at 100% with no problems. If your level is already high enough, doing this for a few episodes (will take a long time), but your comprehension for that show will skyrocket.

A few other things, if you are having trouble reading and understanding the subtitles, then you won't be able to understand the show without them. This means you need to work on your reading comprehension or find an easier show. If you can read and understand the subtitles, but not understand the dialog, then you need more listening practice.


So to summarize, have a show that is interesting to you but you don't care about understanding at 100%. Binge watch this show. Find another show that you care about, something where you want to understand everything. Work intensively with it. Don't get discouraged if you can't understand something....and DEFINITELY do not stop listening for a few days simply because you were overwhelmed. Remember that every single second you listen to something in your TL, it is helping you. It doesn't matter if you are understanding all of it or not. Every single second you spend listening to something in your native language, is a second you missed out on where you could have been improving your TL comprehension.

Just realized that this is off topic of the original thread, but since this is an old thread that nobody has posted on in a while I'll just leave it :D



One thing I just started doing (when I want to work intensively) is put the Netflix subtitles on in Chinese...and NO, I do NOT speak Chinese. But...the Chinese subtitles are close to the Spanish subtitle option so it is easier to change between the two instead of having to flip through a bunch of subtitle options. I mainly do this when I catch myself looking at the Spanish subtitles.


Believe it or not, one of the biggest boosts to my listening comprehension when watching a TV show is watching with headphones. There is just something about watching a show in Spanish on the TV compared to actually hearing somebody talk in real life. Whenever my girlfriend turns the TV on after I've been watching a show in Spanish, the first thing she asks me is why the volume is so loud. I understand Spanish at nearly 100% in face to face conversations but on TV the sound just comes out different and there are so many background noises and music that makes things hard. I power through and watch without headphones 99% of the time though because I feel like this skill needs to be worked on once your listening is already pretty good (at this point you aren't really working on listening comprehension, you are working on your ability to hear things in difficult settings. Think of having a conversation in a bar vs in a quiet office).

I should also add that I consider my Spanish to be pretty decent, somewhere between the B2 and C1 level depending on the topic at hand, the skill we are talking about, and how much coffee I've had. For me, Club de Cuervos is super funny but it is really tough. I can watch other Mexican novelas with extremely high comprehension though. One problem with TV is that because we can see what is going on, we sometimes think our comprehension is higher than what it actually is. One fo the best way to improve your listening skills for TV shows, is to listen to podcasts. Practice with the harder stuff (that has less visual distractions), and hopefully when you go back to the TV show you'll understand it a lot better. But for this to happen we aren't talking about 40 hours of podcasts. We are talking about hundreds and thousands of hours.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby javier_getafe » Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:26 pm

Could I suggest to both of you "La Casa de Papel"?
Amazing spanish serie.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby NoManches » Fri Feb 01, 2019 9:02 pm

javier_getafe wrote:Could I suggest to both of you "La Casa de Papel"?
Amazing spanish serie.


I'm watching and it is a great show! For anybody reading this, on iVoox I discovered the audio version of this show. In other words, you can listen to it without actually having to watch it. I've been meaning to watch a show and then "listen" to it when I'm normally able to listen to a podcast.

javier_getafe do you have any comments about the accents used in the show? Would you consider any of them really strong? I listen to a lot of Castilian Spanish podcasts and some of the characters on this show are really hard for me to understand.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby Cainntear » Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:06 pm

The other thing about TV and movies is that in all literature (TV and cinema is undeniably "literature", even if you don't think it is "high literature") there needs to be "economy" of language -- everything that is said is said for a reason. This means there's a lot less language that is only there to fill time -- video fiction is very "information dense", and so is difficult to understand.

Cinema is worse than TV for this -- in films, repetition is very rare, usually being reserved for an iconic reversal of a bad guys line at the end when the good guy wins. So if the bad guy says "give my regards to Satan" before he kills the hero's wife, the hero might say "give my regards to Satan" before he gets his revenge. If every line except one is deliberately different from every other line, that makes the language very hard to follow.
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Re: Why are movies and TV shows so difficult to understand?

Postby NoManches » Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:27 pm

Sorry to be the one that keeps making different posts in the same thread without consolidating....but the link I previously shared is seriously worth reading: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... es#p102401

I'm watching La Casa de Papel right now on my laptop. I used to watch a lot of TV shows on my laptop but haven't done so in years. My comprehension right now is at an all time high. Is it because all of a sudden all the hard work I've put in over the years has paid off? Absolutely not.

I'm telling you, there is a big difference between having a face to face conversation, and watching something on TV (or listening to a podcast or talk show on the radio). When I watch with my laptop, the sound is being directed right at me (I'm only a few feet away). With TV, you might be sitting much further away, with that sound spreading throughout the room. Look at the responses in the post I just linked and you will see some things that will interest you.


From that post, zenmonkey made a really good observation:

zenmonkey wrote:I’m surprised people haven’t mentioned two major factors involved in transmitted media that affect listening comprehension.

1) All recorded media is frequency clipped. The info provided is sufficient in your L1 but you are always getting less info than live performance. If it’s a digital transmission there is lossy compression going on. This means little chunks of info are missing all over the place. Your brain corrects for that but it’s guessing. Add to that all of the other reproduction elements that have been mentioned.

2) as was quoted briefly in an article - listening is a brain integrated function. It also uses visual clues from the mouth as you see the sound being produced (search for the McGurkin Effect thread). Obviously tv has all sorts of factors that affect this visual input.




It seems like when we watch TV, our comprehension has to be so good that we can fill in all of those "chunks of info" that are missing. When we watch TV in a foreign language, we need the basic listening comprehension skills AND then some...in order to fill in all of those "chunks". I hope this makes sense.

I suppose a follow up question for others might be:

Should we start to watch TV with headphones or from a laptop or with a better speaker system (assuming it helps with our comprehension), and then movie to "real tv". Or, should we start with "real TV" and eventually have really great comprehension without ever dealing with headphones whatnot?
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