Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

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Gaoling97
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Gaoling97 » Wed Apr 26, 2023 12:04 am

einzelne wrote:I don't want to be a killjoy but when it comes to movies, vocabulary size is of secondary importance. The major impediment is the difficulty of decoding real speech. You can have a vast and impressive passive vocabulary but still suck at movies.


Agreed. Doubly so with audio mixing these days, where I can sometimes miss a lot of things even in my native language.
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zjfict
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby zjfict » Thu Apr 27, 2023 1:23 am

What language? What movies?

This is tricky. I am only intermediate (at best) in my TL, but I've discovered that I can watch one episode of a series and understand 85-90%. Feeling cocky, I go into the very next episode and the comprehension rate drops to under 50%. For example in a crime show, like CSI, all kinds of subcultures and bizarre things are investigated that may not always know very well in English let alone my TL. It is taking a long time but I am progressing.
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snowflake
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby snowflake » Thu Apr 27, 2023 4:52 pm

Mainland Chinese dramas are dubbed and I would assume their movies are as well. A friend from Beijing cautioned that even if I understood dramas that would not necessarily transfer over to comprehending actual spoken Mandarin. I’ve run into that phenomenon. The dubbed audio is clearer and more paced than regular spoken speech. I think there also are accent concerns as mainland dramas seem to replace stronger accents with a different voice over artist having a more standard accent... look at the 2014 mainland drama "Loving, Never Forgetting" with Taiwanese actor Jerry Yan who may be better known to people in this forum for his role in the 2001 Taiwanese production of Meteor Garden.
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zjfict
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby zjfict » Thu Apr 27, 2023 10:42 pm

Also, voice dubbing actors sitting in front of microphones are going to sound different than the original performances. I think the best way is to see it as a stepping stone. The dubbing is for native speakers. If you can understand it, that's a good thing!! It is another milestone to welcome.
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snowflake
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby snowflake » Thu Apr 27, 2023 11:10 pm

zjfict wrote:The dubbing is for native speakers.


I suspect the clearer more standard Mandarin and the usually accurate Chinese subtitles may also be an effort to reinforce and teach Mandarin as the national language as well as try to help improve literacy. I've met some people who left mainland China after the cultural revolution who speak in a dialect (thinking of an Anhui dialect right now) and some people from rural Guangdong who resist using Mandarin.

In any case I agree that Chinese dramas are helpful for us working on learning/improving our Mandarin.
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