Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

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Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby 94000d » Mon Apr 24, 2023 5:51 pm

I want to understand most movies almost completely. I'm thinking that passive C1 is the level I need to be at in order to get to this point. How many words is this?
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Re: amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Le Baron » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:31 pm

15,000-20,000 words. However you'd have to define 'most'. Most of what? The works of Pier Paolo Pasolini? Disney films? Which language, you only have 'English' listed.
Last edited by Le Baron on Mon Apr 24, 2023 9:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby alaart » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:37 pm

Depends on the movie, especially the topic and how familiar you are with it.

Simple Daily-life love comedy stuff can be watched with B-level and maybe 3000 words of vocabulary, maybe even 2000 or less if you are familiar with every day life conversations. But even here the series differ: One can be quite easy, and another quite hard. In talk shows it depends on the topic too - etc.

Crime movies are more difficult as are documentaries (which have a lot of landscape descriptions - maybe people who read a lot have it easier here).

I usually pause when I don't get things, that happens a lot. I can't just watch things easily, but I can watch. My vocabulary in my languages range maybe between 2000-7000 words. I'd say those are not sufficient for the experience you want.

To get everything from every movie without pausing... that would of course mean a broad vocabulary about every topic, so I'd assume more than 10000 words.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby einzelne » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:40 pm

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.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Irena » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:44 pm

On this topic, it may be worth checking out this thread:

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10030

Vocabulary size matters, but I'm far from convinced that this is the most important factor when it comes to movies.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Khayyam » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:56 pm

How do you think that knowing the number of words required, or whether you need a C1 or whatever, is going to help you? Even if you knew with perfect certainty what the requirements were, that wouldn't change the process, which is simply to consume massive amounts of material, and to keep incrementally dialing up the difficulty.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Crojo » Tue Apr 25, 2023 10:20 am

einzelne wrote:… 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.


This has been my experience. I can watch, understand, and enjoy dubbed movies and shows with no problems. Maybe I miss the odd word or idiom. (I have no idea what my CEFR level would be or what my vocabulary size is.)

Content produced in the target language, though – that's significantly harder. The problem is that I can't make out the words. If I could hear the words, I would likely understand them. I believe the problem is the way that audio is compressed, rather than my listening ability. In one's target language, one will have heard combinations of words so many times that one's mind can fill in the gaps. That's harder in a foreign language. It's so frustrating that it's a chore to keep watching, but that is what it will take to be able to enjoy the medium.

Personally, I'm not too bothered about this goal as the point of consuming media, to me, is to improve my communication skills overall (rather than to get the 'most' out of any particular movie).

In the meantime, I'll stick to dubbed shows and audio books to build my vocabulary. These are still aimed at native speakers, but the speech is clearer. If you remind me in a year or two, I'll let you know whether this has translated into improved comprehension of target-language movies. :D
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby jeffers » Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:01 pm

alaart wrote:Crime movies are more difficult as are documentaries (which have a lot of landscape descriptions - maybe people who read a lot have it easier here).


It's interesting that you've described documentaries as difficult. Back in the HTLAL heyday someone made a list of types of video media from easiest to hardest, and from what I remember they put documentaries as the next easiest thing after children's shows. Personally I find them even easier than children's programmes because the speech is intentionally as clear as possible and usually relatively slow. Even if there is a lot of description, you can see with your own eyes what they are specifically describing. I would agree that chances are a documentary is more likely to have unusual vocabulary, but at the same time it is always accompanied by images that match the description so actually they are a great way to build up subject specific vocabularly.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby tastyonions » Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:48 pm

Documentaries were the first native video I understood in all my languages, I think (never bothered with kids’ shows).

Crime shows are indeed some of the hardest. Lots of muttering and quick exchanges from cops and criminals.
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Re: Amount of passive vocab needed for movies

Postby Khayyam » Tue Apr 25, 2023 9:20 pm

Crojo wrote:
Content produced in the target language, though – that's significantly harder. The problem is that I can't make out the words. If I could hear the words, I would likely understand them. I believe the problem is the way that audio is compressed, rather than my listening ability.


Oh, yes, I've been meaning to address the subject of audio quality. IME, there's no question that it matters. It's happened quite a few times that I've been unable to fully understand a speaker while using my cheap earbuds, but then I've switched to my higher-quality headphones and had no trouble. I never would have cared about audio quality if I hadn't gotten into learning languages.
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