Postby jackb » Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:16 am
Wow, I didn't think it's been a month but I guess it has. I've been pretty watching a ton of video. I have 50 movies and some change. I've made progress already so I'm pretty happy about it. So far it's just been Heartland and Stranger Things. I hadn't soon 1 episode, but I decided to catch up and I'm glad I did. The whole time capsule effect was pretty cool. I'm the same age as the kids in the show were supposed to be. It really made me want my old bike with a banana seat and walkie talkies. My walkie talkies didn't work that well though.
I've noticed a couple of things while binging. Binging is better than slow and steady. There's some overhead to starting over where you are getting into the groove of things. It could be the show, language, or characters, but it takes anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to really lock in. When you watch an hour a day, as much as 1/2 of it may be overhead time. When you watch 5 hours, the 30 minute over head is still there, but you get much more time to drink in the language. I've experienced this with reading, but it's new when watching.
Dubs mangle the language to fit and sometimes you lose something in translation. This was really apparent in Stranger Things. Some of the 80s slang just didn't sound right when translated. I had to flip to English to really get some of it. This happens much less on Heartland.
I read much better after having listened for a while. Initially, I thought it was because I had been in the groove while listening, so reading was just an extension. I did the reverse and I got nothing. Listening started over from scratch. Not sure what or if anything will change for the rest of the challenge, but I know that I'll be listening differently from the beginning on the next language (if there is one).
I did some shared watching with my wife during a few episodes of Stranger Things season 4. Shared watching is what I call watching the same thing in different languages. It was fun. I think we'll do it again. Disney plus has a feature where you can set up watching a show with someone else, but I've never tried it.
Watching TV with headphones is great no matter what language you are listening in. I used to think it was a crutch, but I'm not so sure now. We're big subtitle users in English and headphones makes them unnecessary. The only problem is that wearing them kind of isolates you if there are other people in the room.
I'm going to push reading until I get to 50 'books'. Not sure how long that will take but it's Summer here and I'll be spending time at the beach. There are few things better than reading outside in the Summer.
I'm 200 pages into Dune and I'm really enjoying it. The only problem is that the books aren't cheap or at the library. The Pierre Bottero books will mix in nicely. They read like a conversation or movie script. After that I'll join the Alliance Française and just borrow books. That'll encourage me to try different things and home my preferences.
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