Chove's Log

[badger]

I've seen a lot of online claims of "I learned X [usually English] just from watching TV" which isn't something I could do so I am always a bit bemused that it's so common. Is it that I'm weird in some way? D:

I can kind of understand it if your country gets a lot of subtitled English-language TV & films (& probably music too) & you pick it up through exposure over the course of many years. sticking an A1 learner in front of a series of Buffy dubbed in their target language & expecting them to follow it in any meaningful way, probably not so much.

somewhere on the forum there's a very funny "decyphering" of the CEFR levels, part of which says something like:

B1: can follow native language TV shows: eg "two people were talking about something - the woman seemed sad."

[chove]

I've seen a lot of online claims of "I learned X [usually English] just from watching TV" which isn't something I could do so I am always a bit bemused that it's so common. Is it that I'm weird in some way? D:

I can kind of understand it if your country gets a lot of subtitled English-language TV & films (& probably music too) & you pick it up through exposure over the course of many years. sticking an A1 learner in front of a series of Buffy dubbed in their target language & expecting them to follow it in any meaningful way, probably not so much.

Yeah, it seems like you'd need *a lot* of input for it to teach you a language. Maybe if you were still a kid, I suppose? But so many people seem to swear by watching TV at levels where I can't imagine them doing more than picking out the odd word.

[overscore]

I've noticed that in YouTube videos about how to "learn X in a week" people start watching TV and films on day one but I'm like... how? If I watched a native-audience video in French I might pick out the odd word here and there but even with subtitles and an intermediate knowledge of Spanish I doubt I could follow the plot. Is it not just boring and a bit of a waste of time? Are they watching with English subtitles on? Because I find it really hard to follow subtitles in one language and audio in another, even if one of them's in my mother-tongue.

It's a bit of a mystery to me. But the "watch TV shows" advice is often aimed at beginners even if the giver-of-advice wouldn't suggest reading below about B1 level. What's the magic thing I don't know? I'd have thought reading would if anything be more useful for the beginner stages, because you can take your time and look up (the many, many) unknown words?

Mind you I've never learned a language in a week, so clearly I'm missing something here.

It's a bit like detective work, pause a segment that's intriguing, listen, rewind, listen, rewind, memorize the sentence, add it to the SRS, listen to it in a loop the next morning. Slowly you will go through the whole movie and build up the memory for longer units until you have the stamina to follow a whole movie.
It's all about memory.. a language is pretty simple, but the surface area is huge, so I like repetition to drill words into memory, and I move slowly to make sure comprehension is high.
With 10-15 minutes of this per day, in one year you will be able to follow for the most part.

Spoken language is much much simpler in terms of variety of vocabulary, but usually insanely tricky in terms of phonology etc. "Bet you" -> betcha, that kind of thing happening faster than the logical mind can process, because it's based on combining memorized bits of articulation. That's why one does not understand anything. in the last example if you know that ""Bet you" -> "betcha" then you can immediately infer and use "would you" -> "wudža" .. "could you" -> "kudža" and so on at the same fast speed.

[badger]

It's a bit like detective work, pause a segment that's intriguing, listen, rewind, listen, rewind, memorize the sentence, add it to the SRS, listen to it in a loop the next morning. Slowly you will go through the whole movie and build up the memory for longer units until you have the stamina to follow a whole movie.
...
With 10-15 minutes of this per day, in one year you will be able to follow for the most part.

just that one movie?

seriously though, is that an efficient way of learning? are you going to be able to recognize all the words even by repeated listening? wouldn't starting with kids' shows with a much more limited vocabulary & less colloquial pronunciation be more effective?

the method you describe sounds very rigorous, but I can't imagine many of the "I learned <language> from TV" people were so diligent. mind you, I suspect if you question them more closely you'd probably find out they learned it for six+ years in school too.

[chove]

I'm sure it can be done it just doesn't seem like something I'd be very efficient with! I think I'd get bored of the material long before I could understand it.

[chove]

Been having some (mental) health problems, haven't really done anything in a week or so. Going to try and get something done tonight I hope. I did read a bit of 'Breaking Out Of Beginner's Spanish' which is about Latin American Spanish mainly but does mention usage in Spain as well, it's quite a fun read and left me slightly more aware of how to use My Nemesis The Subjunctive. Also did a few more pages of the beginner's French reader I bought in paperback, it's so weird how much French I can read already just from cognates in English and Spanish. It's also easier to remember the words during active study when they're like ones I already know. Sort of the same as with German and Dutch but more so.

I'm having an issue with the university system about registering for Intermediate German, but we have an email correspondence going now so hopefully it'll be sorted out. The course doesn't start until October anyway so there's a while left to fix things.

[chove]

Dutch is sort of on-hold, I'm maintaining it with my Anki deck but not more than that. I only know a very small amount I just don't want to lose it. I'd say the main thing I've been doing languagewise is French, in that I have a short Duolingo streak and have been slowly working through Hugo's French In Three Months and the beginners' reader I bought. Like I said it's only really reading knowledge I'm going for (at least for the foreseeable future) and I have a leg-up in that from my Spanish. I haven't got very far, which is partly because while I've been having fun with DuoLingo it's a very slow way to learn the basics of a language. (Whereas I find it quite useful for drilling the Polish cases, so maybe it depends on the language.)

Haven't done much German, not really feeling inspired by the materials I have. Possibly it's time to crack open the magazines I bought in Germany last year and do some intensive reading, but I don't feel ready for that. But then will I ever feel ready?

Been listening to Spanish a bit more, tryng to improve my listening comprehension.

[DaveAgain]

Haven't done much German, not really feeling inspired by the materials I have. Possibly it's time to crack open the magazines I bought in Germany last year and do some intensive reading, but I don't feel ready for that. But then will I ever feel ready?

I'm using the Hamburg Morning Post mopo.de for articles at the momoment. I used a celebrity gossip website bunte.de before that.

[chove]

Learning to swear from this El Ministerio tie-in novel. Not sure if I'm allowed to swear here but if so is "hideputa" archaic or old-fashioned or somesuch? Alonso uses it and he's from like the 16th century, but nobody else does.

[Dagane]

Learning to swear from this El Ministerio tie-in novel. Not sure if I'm allowed to swear here but if so is "hideputa" archaic or old-fashioned or somesuch? Alonso uses it and he's from like the 16th century, but nobody else does.

It is archaic. The modern version is "hijo de puta" (also dialectically shortened as "hijo puta") and it could be light or extremely strong depending on context.