Do you consume material in your TL that you'd consider beneath you in your native language?

[Khayyam]

Last night, I binge-watched a rather silly talk show in German that I wouldn't touch with a pole if it was in English. It makes me ask myself: is it really just that I l love German so much that anything gains significant merit in my eyes just by being German, or could it also be that I have a dirty, latent desire to watch Dr. Phil, and my contempt for the Phil-gobbling peasantry is really disguised contempt for myself? Could the German be a smokescreen?

The question in the title assumes, of course, that you're sufficiently advanced in your TL that you can consume most anything in it .

[AroAro]

Yes, definitely. When I actively learned Romanian, I used to watch a scripted-reality show “În căutarea adevărului”. I wouldn’t bother watching it in my native tongue but watching it in Romanian was really helpful for developing my listening skills because the dialogues are very close to everyday speech. They don’t hire professional actors so the way people on-screen speak is really the way “common” people speak on a daily basis, with lots of interactions in informal situations. Also, a part of me is drawn toward “guilty pleasure” movies/TV shows/books, so watching it in a foreign language is “justified” to some extent as it is beneficial for learning the target language. I’m feeling like watching an episode of “În căutarea adevărului” or “Insula iubirii” now!

[smallwhite]

When all I could read was teen romance. I read one about a young female teacher and her male student. Then one about a young male teacher and his female student. Not “beneath” me but my age is probably the sum of all theirs?

[Odair]

I would not say beneath me. The language-learning process that happens in the background somehow makes them genuinely interesting and attractive.

[Elsa Maria]

Yes and no. I don’t watch things that grate on me. For example, I can’t stand reality TV or game shows. No amount of language benefit tempts me to watch them.

But maybe you are instead just indulging in what I would call a guilty pleasure? You are watching something that you are indeed enjoying on some level. But if it was in your native language, you would feel like you were wasting time.

I definitely indulge in MY guilty pleasures, and language learning removes the guilty aspect I watch cartoons and read (and reread) children’s books without a shred of grown-up guilt.

When I return to Spanish, I will watch telenovas, and I look forward to that. I have no interest in English soap operas, but I loved them in my teens.

[jackb]

I probably watch/read stuff others would call beneath them, but I watch what I like and/or can tolerate.

I do find that I am much more tolerant of shows in my target language than in my native language, at least initially. As my comprehension increases, my tolerance decreases. Eventually, I'll be consuming the same level of content regardless of language.

It hasn't presented a problem in finding content, but it has put a dent in the what I can watch on Netflix.

[badger]

two words: Harry Potter

or 'Arry Potteur as my TL would no doubt have it.

[Le Baron]

Often. And I've found that even if it is 'beneath my tastes', it is at times still above my ability.

In a course I attended I recall an old tutor telling the class that his mother, as a part of the working class in the 1920s, was not very highly educated and had trouble reading. Yet her facility with the language, even if talking about something trivial, far outstripped even the best students. So that to assume 'the peasantry' will be good and easy source material is to mistake entirely what native fluency means.

[Sae]

I dunno about beneath me, but certainly not my usual tastes, so for me it's music. Luckily for TV, I've found content I like for my target languages.

But I've ended up listening to music in Vietnamese that I wouldn't normally listen to, I've only found a handful of stuff in genre I listen to and in fairness, the lyrics in pop music are often quite clear because they're designed to be catchy. Although I find music I like in Mongolian quite easily, especially with how rock & metal from Mongolia is getting more attention thanks to The Hu. But admittedly, there's a few Mongolian pop songs that ended up as guilty pleasures.

Like this one, whilst this is not the sort of thing I'm into, but it just seems like a bit of fun and it kinda catchy. I know it's for a movie, maybe I should watch the movie.

[dlt529]

I'm more willing to stick with "bad" media because it's in the target language, but proficiency definitely plays a role. I finished one of the worst romance books in Portuguese because it was in Portuguese, but I've left many Spanish detective stories unread. For Portuguese, there's a novelty in being able to read that makes it worth while (and, honestly, badly written books are sometimes easier to read). In Spanish, the novelty is gone--I read and use Spanish almost as easily as I do English, so if something is badly written, I'll look for something better.