Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

General discussion about learning languages
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Axon
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby Axon » Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:39 pm

I'd watch the show and make my own transcripts for it. After a few hours of doing that I'd get bored and never make another transcript but still watch the show. Seriously, you'd be surprised what sheer exposure can do for varieties of languages you speak well.

I have a hard time imagining that there are zero other YouTube vloggers or shows or songs or radio programs in that dialect, but if that's truly the case I'd just resign myself to watching the show several times over. Maybe I'd shadow some key scenes if I really wanted to burn that dialect in.

Before returning to China I watched some truly mind-numbing daytime TV in Sichuanese. That dialect is widely spoken so I wasn't limited to that show, but it had subtitles which are always a plus. I made transcripts for a very short time and ended up watching a few hours at most. What really got me to high Sichuanese comprehension was immersion - living with a large family that spoke Sichuanese to each other all the time and only rarely switched to strongly accented Mandarin with me. Three weeks of this and I started understanding pretty well.
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby NIKOLIĆ » Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:29 am

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FyrsteSumarenINoreg
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby FyrsteSumarenINoreg » Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:38 am

I would love a show in Livornese or a show in Vossemål. :D
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby drp9341 » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:11 pm

FyrsteSumarenINoreg wrote:I would love a show in Livornese or a show in Vossemål. :D



Livorno as in the city on the beach in Tuscany? I went there ever summer as a kid haha. They speak with a very very similar accent to my dads / grandparents accent. It's just Toscano, specifically Lucchese, but they aspirate the "c" less in Lucca, (they still aspirate, but not as crazily in Firenze)
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Tristano
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby Tristano » Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:10 am

drp9341 wrote:Thanks for all the replies, guys.

I've already watched the first two seasons, (24 episodes) and yesterday I started watching the new season. It's amazing how much more I can understand. In the beginning I couldn't understand everything. Last year I made an effort to read a bit, (wikipedia, exactly :D ) and it helped a lot. The thing that helped the most is learning one word, "e" means "di" (of) I swear, learning this one word made such a huge difference it's unreal.

The second thing was getting used to the intonation, or as you say in Italy, "La Cadenza." I already speak 4 romance languages, Italian (obviously,) and Spanish help A LOT.

My grandparents spoke to me in Toscano growing up, and I can understand even very very thick Toscano as easily, (or sometimes even easier) than I can understand standard Italian.

I would rate my comprehension as follows:
40% of the utterances = I understand every word without needing to repeat it.
40% of the utterances = I understand 90% of the words if I repeat it 2x.
20% of the utterances = I can only understand a couple of words, this is usually because they use a couple of words that I don't understand, and I've been too lazy to find a dictionary.


Overall, my comprehension is pretty good.

STORY: Over the summer, me and a few friends visited one of our friends relatives in Puglia. My one friend's father is from Naples, and he can understand, (but not speak) Napoletano "perfectly" (so he says, he's never proven it beyond translating a few expressions.)

My friend with family from Puglia, can speak Pugliese fluently. I asked him how well he spoke it, and he said he speaks it how I speak Italian. I've heard him have long conversations in Pugliese, and he's definitely fluent.

I honestly could not understand much Pugliese though. They didn't speak around me, obviously, but I did my best to eavesdrop from a distance and couldn't understand much. END OF STORY


Also, I feel my ear has gotten much sharper from living in Poland these last 9 months. I can decipher speech much much better. It's quite weird. In one of the episodes a lot of Bulgarian was spoken. My Polish is upper intermediate, but not great, and I could understand about 25% of what they were saying if I repeated it and looked at the subtitles so that I knew what I was trying to listen for. I don't think I would have been able to do this a year ago. It's strange how your brain can actually get better at foreign languages. It's pretty cool.

I'm not going to focus hardcore on Neapolitan now. I am taking Italian lessons on iTalki twice a week with a real grammar nazi, (he's a great teacher though.) and he corrects my prepositions. That's really the only issue I have in Italian, and it's small. My main goal is Polish. 90% of my "language learning time" is spent with Polish. 10% is spent refreshing old languages. I have just become side-tracked because I like this show a lot, and needed to binge watch it.

Maybe one day, I'll try to get to like B2 in Neapolitan. There's teachers on iTalki.

Thank you guys, I've read all your posts.



Hi, I'm Italian but never watched Gomorra. When Napoliteans speak their language I probably understand the 2%. Is the language spoken in the show Napolitean language or Napolitean dialect? There is a difference. The first is a sister language of Italian, the second is strong accent with some words from Napolitean language.
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dedalus66
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby dedalus66 » Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:00 pm

Out of all the regional Italian languages, Neapolitan would be one with the most resources/content. Try learning the Calabrian dialect of Sicilian or Piedmontese for a dearth of resources.
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Apr 19, 2018 5:52 pm

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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby Uncle Roger » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:27 pm

First and foremost, it's amazing that somebody can be so interested in an Italian dialect. I'm from Milan (don't speak the dialect though, as neither of my parents are from there) but over the years I have grown very fond of Neapolitan, so I "feel you".

Wikipedia should be a good source. I'm not sure how formalised Neapolitan really is, many dialects were mostly developed as spoken languages (apart from Toscano) but Naples has a rich tradition of theatre which I presume required written text.

Neapolitan Wikipedia should be a good source. The Fanpage.it Youtube channel is Napoli-based I think, some of their video reports are to die for (check the one about Neapolitans being upset because footballer Higuain transferred to Juventus).
Music is also a big thing in Naples, plenty of songs with even some more modern artists (Pino Daniele above all)
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canzone_napoletana
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby drp9341 » Fri May 04, 2018 12:53 pm

Tristano wrote:Hi, I'm Italian but never watched Gomorra. When Napoliteans speak their language I probably understand the 2%. Is the language spoken in the show Napolitean language or Napolitean dialect? There is a difference. The first is a sister language of Italian, the second is strong accent with some words from Napolitean language.


Sometimes they said things that I understand 100% but that could just be because Neapolitan and Italian are related languages.
However, I have heard Italian spoken by Neapolitan people and it's just Italian with an accent. I grew up in NYC and one of my friends grandmothers, (from Naples,) didn't speak any English, and her Italian was very bad as well. I would talk to her A LOT. She loved that a young person could speak Italian. I understood her fine after the first few minutes. Her accent was just strong, but it's the same language.

When I was in university I went back to NYC in the summers. One summer I was working in a warehouse and the owner was an old SUPER Neapolitan guy. His English was hilarious, but he loved me because, (once again,) "The Young generation doesn't speak Italian! They answer in English! You speak Italian the right way!" He would invite me into his office for espresso with him and we would talk about stupid stuff like coffee or other things old Italians like to talk about. I had no problem understanding him, even though he would randomly say, in Italian, "I don't know how to say this the right way, (something in Neapolitan.)"

I didn't have ANY contact with Sicilian growing up. I just heard it from some old ladies who like to water their front gardens in the spring. But I couldn't understand any of it anyway.


Right now I need to focus on Polish, but I hope to one day have time to learn Neapolitan!
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Re: Only 36 hours of TV - learn a language from it.

Postby reineke » Mon May 07, 2018 2:11 am

"Vero è però che bisogna concedere non esser lieve cosa l intelligenza di tal lingua e ciò avviene non pe vocaboli che la i quali similissimi sono per la maggior parte a quei del culto linguaggio dell Italia ma deesi tal difficoltà attribuire a modi di dir figurato all uso frequente delle metafore e innanzi ad ogn altro al modo istesso di concepire le idee Il popol nostro respira sempre un aer pieno di vita ed è sotto un Cielo che quasi in estasi il tragge colla più bella serenità la sorridente calma del Mare la leggiadria de Monti…"

Collezione di tutti i poemi in lingua napoletana
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