After watching Star Trek in French, I can now say important phrases like “shields up” “red alert” and “evasive manoeuvres”. I’m ready for those francophone Romulans.
I'm learning Thai and your comment about the news was spot on. In Thailand they have formal speech (which the news uses) and informal which is how you talk with your friends. If you learn from the news your vocabulary is going to be overly formal for most situations.
A Palestinian woman who was tutoring me in Arabic had good American English. I asked how she was so fluent in English. Her reply was that she watched “Fresh Prince of Bel Aire.” Apparently Will Smith is a good ESL teacher.
@@alicearmen5601 native Spanish speaker, who read the books in French for the first time, but have consumed fan content in both English and Spanish related to the franchise it is really interesting the translations made for English and Spanish, in French they changed more stuff while in Spanish they chose to keep a lot things.
I recently finished reading The Little Prince in French and now I'm trying to read other translations in split screen on my phone, while asking ChatGPT about things I don't get or need help with.
My secret weapon for Italian is the soap, Un Posto al sole. After somewhat less than three years, the stages have been, 1. No clue, can’t get a word, but she is evidently mad at him for some reason; 2. Can pick out a few words; 3. Can follow plot with some holes; 4. Understand most of it; 5. Understand virtually everything including analyzing grammar as it goes by. I usually watch each episode twice, once with subtitles in Italian and once without, but the order varies. I also take scenes and copy the subtitles (correcting them when the subtitles are inaccurate) in column. 1, translate in column 2, make any notes (a new word, a grammar point) in column 3, then several days later cover all but the English column and retranslate into Italian. PS. In the early stages I enjoyed Olly’s short story books and the 30 day grammar topic books.
I watched Un Posto al sole for about 5 years! The characters became almost like family to me, and I loved the really out-there plots. When I was watching the soap, subtitles were not available, so I was forced to listen. At first, I didn't understand much, but after a while I could understand nearly everything. I am not learning German and am into Krimis (crime shows).
Exactly how I do to learn Polish and Portuguese: first watch na episode with subtitles in my language, then watch it again with THAT language. It works great! Thanks for your videos, they’re really interesting 😁😁
Do you have anything you could share with me for learning polish!? I can only use Netflix but sometimes the subtitles don't match so it's pretty hard to learn it well
@@PetrocaVT That’s right, subtitles don’t always match. I’ve tried polishpod101 it’s quite cool. Next month I’ll start polish lessons with a tutor. For the rest I use Mondly app and listen to polish radio online while I’m working
Ah okay that's how you should do it! I was watching the Italian show 'Baby' with English subtitles and then just repeating what they said and ignoring the subtitles but will go back for a re-watch.
@@PetrocaVT-- I read an article recently about how the quality of Netflix subtitles can vary widely depending on who did them. So keep trying diferent programs ontil you find one with good subtitles. One good thing about Polish is that the words are spelled exactly the way you say them. I'd maybe watch an episode in English with Polish subtitles and seee if you can connect the Polish words with English you hear. Then watch it again in Polish with Polish subtitles. Once you're familiar with the characters and general plotline, just watch in Polish with Polish subtitles. This help?
If you’re learning French, and you like cooking competition shows I recommend “Qui sera le prochain grand pâtissier”. The episodes are on RU-vid, and they don’t have subtitles so it helped my listening comprehension A LOT! Sometimes they explain what some baking terms mean and I get to simultaneously learn French and learn new things in general! Win win
Disney+ has been my favorite service for learning languages. Disney movies are pretty universal and since the language is meant to be somewhat simpler to understand for all audiences, they make great practice. Also because it's Disney, they tend to pay top dollar for voice actors so most languages are represented pretty well. The Incredibles in Spanish, underrated btw.
@@timothybruggeman9332 it is pretty great specially given there is only 1 Spanish version, Colombian Spanish, with some of the actors reprising their roles, while there is some obvious slang they tried to make it as neutral as possible.
Before I even start watching this I'll just say: Back in 1998 I had 0 english skills and english class as a foreign language was completely gibberish to me. The regular class with meta-language was useless because I did not even understand much of my own native lang grammar, so trying to teach english by comparison was totally futile. But in 1998 we set up cable TV and I started watching american sitcoms with subtitles. Seinfeld, married with children, the nanny, that one with Tony Danza (where, I still remember, I learned the word "why"), 3rd rock from the sun, that 70's show and, most importantly, *friends* . If I speak english now, it's all on those old shows. Of course much more came later, but I went from knowing 0% english to 60-70% in about a year just by catching up with Kramer and Chandler's antics. EDIT: after watching it, yes, I agree with the principle and the importance of repetition. Much of what I learned is due to that. Sony entertainment Tv and Wrner would show new episodes once every week and reruns of older ones ALL DAY LONG. And as a teen I'd watch or at least listen to much of it. And thanks to that, I can still finish most of friends' punchlines before the characters say them and i know most of all the lines even after over 20 years, during which I spent many without ever wathcing a single episode again. The thought process that goes behind it is beautiful. Every little detail is deeply engraved. I only watched the office recently, but I already know the quirks of them characters voices like the palm of my hand, because I'm so well trained in it.
I didn't expect an italian episode 😂 (and didn't expect a mistake in it... You should not use "di" between "hai dimostrato" and "quanto sei egocentrico", maybe this is useful for someone 😅)
Me as a Hungarian watching Olly to pick up more English by educating myself ... and a bit disappointed by the 'Keep English out of the picture' remark. :D:D:D
That's how I feel about Ukranian. Half my family speaks Polish and I studied Russian for years... and years.... Those languages are all related like Spanish, Italiian, and Portuguese.So I can't sit through 'Ukranian 101' for English speakers. I'll slit my wrists, lol. I need Ukranian 101 for Polish speakers.... A bit hard to find in ths US.
French audio books. I find that better for immersion. Somehow Harry Potter is working for me. I love the books and I know them so well that reading or listening in another language is very fun. Plus people who do Harry Potter in audiobooks tend to have a lot of fun with the voices. Thank you for your channel. I love learning languages. It’s fascinating
I'd love to use French HP audiobooks because I bet they're great for that. I'm trying to figure out how to do that w/o putting $ in JKR's transphobic pocket. (If you either agree with her or believe she's not a bigot, save your breath).
@@KaiOpaka You’re the one who brought politics into the thread though. For future reference if you don’t want political engagement, leave it out. I’m over hearing about it.
If you are Anki-heavy and want to find words and phrases to mine, something Im doing is watching a movie with Spanish subs and Spanish audio. If I see a word or phrase I've never encountered, I make an Anki card for it. I do it for 5 mins at a time if there are a lot of unfamiliar words. My main input is passive listening and reading.
Watch the same episode over and over again with anki until you have every word memorized (or just high freq words), make note of number repetitions and time. Move on to the next episode, do the same. Note progress.
@@jichaelmorgan3796I think the guy from BTS, the K-Pop group did that with the show Friends, but I don't know if he made Anki cards for it. He got the whole series and just kept re-watching it.
@@jichaelmorgan3796 Friends has 235 episodes. That's a lot of content. If you read books in Spanish, something that works for me is a book series. I'm doing the Harry Potter series (I'm on Book 4 now). The first book is the hardest due to the large amount of unfamiliar words and phrases and sentence structure. It gets easier as you progress through the series. My reading speed is even increasing. I think the next series I want to do is Game of Thrones.
@@confidencemagnet Yeah I think those are great ideas! As soon as you mentioned Harry Potter I thought of Lord of the Rings, then you mentioned Game of Thrones haha. Being immersed in a whole world like that in another language is really interesting. Makes me wish I hadn't read them already. Maybe there are some good epic Spanish speaking story tellers we aren't so familiar with. I've considered reading Don Quixote in Spanish, which I'm sure is valuable, but something more modern or a series?
News is great! One narrator speaking to the camera, without other characters interfering. You probably know the context already and if you get a little lost, it's easy to pick back onto what they're talking about. I like Visualpolitik for Spanish.
Hey Olly! First off, love your channel-it's been such a great resource for me! I'm an English teacher, so I’m pretty close to perfecting my American accent, but I really want to nail it to the point where no one can tell I’m not a native speaker. I know it’s mostly about making small adjustments at this stage, but do you have any tips for fine-tuning pronunciation? Thanks for all the great content-you’re a legend!
I’m not Olly but perhaps I can help. If your language is already at an incredibly high level, but you’re still struggling to pronounce, you might want to study a little bit of actual linguistics as well as the phonetic alphabet, in order to learn exactly how Americans pronounce words- which might just come down to making some small adjustments in tone and small muscle movements within your mouth and vocal tract.
When I was stationed in Germany I used to like to watch the German-dubbed episodes of The Simpsons, because I'd seen them in English so many times and as a huge dork, committed most of them to memory in English. Made it easier to pick up on the German.
My friend is inviting me to South Korea this winter. He gave me recommendations for K-Dramas to watch while learning the alphabet and grammar. Currently halfway through Crash Landing on You (사랑의 불시착).
I have got so many thoughts to share over this topic! 1) I thank Trinity Blood for introducing me to Buck Tick's "Dress" which I really love. Even though my Japanese got rusty over the years of studying hiatus, I still remember the chorus lyrics and what most words in it mean! I'll start studying Japanese again together with watching anime. 2) Even though I've been studying Korean for some time, I would struggle finding enjoyable content to watch and practise on, apart from BTS shows, because the majority of K-Dramas are in the romance genre and I'm not into this. After a long search I found some non-romance K-Dramas to watch. I will also search for more reality shows in Korean, since I've noticed they entail a lot of visual cues for emphasis that makes practice somewhat easier. I can pinpoint episode 5 of Run Jin as an example of this. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas on this! You gave me inspiration to search for more content to practise and on more languages.
My tip for beginners in a language is to chose a show from a different language and select the soundtrack of your target language. These trachs are recorded in sound studios and the voice-over actors tend to articulate words better than the original actors.
I have a PBS passport account. For $5USD per month, I can watch international tv series on demand. If you’re learning English, BritBox might help but keep in mind there are some words they use in the UK for ordinary items that are slang for things you should never say in mixed company in the States. . . I can’t speak French (my youngest daughter accidentally learned French before English, so it’s not like I didn’t try) but I love the show Astrid. I find it helps to watch shows with subtitles in languages you’ll never speak, just to help your ears get used to other language sounds if you don’t live in an area where several are spoken. Watch out those Mexican novelas-- they tend to include words and phrases you can’t use in polite conversation. My neighbor from Mexico told me I needed to stop watch them, when she asked what I learned, and then nearly died when I started rattling off words I’d picked up. . . This reminds me, I got your short stories in Norwegian right before we got Covid back in June and I’d forgotten I had it until just now. Bought it at the Nordic Museum in Seattle.
Spot on! I remember watching a bunch of Spanish speaking series which really helped me on my journey! I watched “el cartel de los sapos” and “distrito salvaje” to name a few. Both were very useful in helping me to really understand Spanish from Bogotá and Cali Colombia.
When my wife moved to Canada (English is her FOURTH language!), we would watch TV shows and DVDs with the English subtitles on. It really helped her and wasn't too distracting for me. Watched a lot of Golden Girls and Murder She Wrote.
DVDs are better than streaming services when you can manage it. The reason being that you're not stuck with the subtitles they provide and you can more easily take those subtitles and turn them into flashcards for review between sessions and you can identify what vocab is being used the most throughout the series. Especially the nouns and verbs that carry a disproportionate amount of the meaning.
I've seen a few movies in Spanish, I mean, I changed the audio and subtitles to Spanish hehe of course, some Spanish movies also and a couple of Spanish series. YES, I ALWAYS TELL MY STUDENTS OR OTHER PEOPLE LEARNING LANGUAGES TO WATCH WHAT THEY FIND INTERESTING, WHAT THEY LIKE, IT'S MORE FUN AND RELAXED THAT WAY...
VPNs don't always work. I'm learning Korean, of course, and Viki, which is THE Korean drama channel, won't allow me access without a VPN, but then scolds me and won't allow me access for having a VPN.
A lot of European countries have their own version of TaskMaster. I've been watching the Norwegian version. Not only fun but they are saying numbers and different types of measurements all the time. I also get to hear different dialects.
In certain circumstances, watching news programs can be helpful. For example, when I was studying Spanish in Ecuador, I lived with a host family. We would watch the TV newscast and it would be a starting point for conversation about current events. Of course, I benefited more from the conversation with native speakers than from the newscast itself, but the newscast did start the conversation.
I agree with your 4 categories. However, I find exposure to news programming or interviews gives me valuable vocabulary needed to discuss and understand current events in a foreign language.
when looking for good shows, check if the country or region gives out awards for the best tv. In Quebec, Les prix gemeaux honours the best in French Canadian tv, for instance.
The problem with most subtitles on (especially dubbed) Netflix content is that it doesn’t match the audio. So you’re listening to one thing in a foreign language and reading another 😝
Does anyone have any recommendations for a good German show? Or should I watch a show that I’m already familiar with in German. Since I’m blind, when I do watch something in German, I watch it with the German audio description.
i have heard that Germany is particularly good at taking foreign media and dubbing it into German. Good as in the dubs are of high quality. Which means if you can find the German version of famous movies (probably childrens stuff will be easiest) then that is a place to start.
I've got two German shows I absolutely loved: The first is Dark. That's the name, not a description. It's a mind bender about a small German town where reality is broken, and all kinds of crazy things happen. It was a huge hit for his reason. Another one I found on Netflix is called Kleo. It's about a young woman raised in East Germany, and the action takes place around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. She becomes an assassin and it's very over the top. Full of action and lots of plot twists. The second season dropped about a month ago. Loved this show and I gladly watched it a couple of times, just like with Dark. Oh, and the music in both shows is fantastic. Enjoy!
He talked about Extra in Spanish in the video, which was a huge surprise for me, who watched the German version of it! They even used the same setting and the same actor for Sam, the American visitor. So, my suggestion for you is Extra, but the German version of it. I'm not sure if you'll find it with audio descriptions, though.
The most obvious format you forgot Is the studio produced non-personality-based game shows. The classic American example is of a kid watching Wheel of Fortune with their grandmother who is from a foreugn nation who learned how to speak English and the alphabet from watching Pat and Vanna. I heard quite a few contestants got on that have a similar story. In the movie splash, Madison the Mermaid learned English by watching the $25,000 pyramid. That would probably be the best FIRST step but admittedly it's not very deep. One time in German 3 I decided to hopefully get bonus credit I made a thing to pick the one vocabulary word I had to define and defining it with only other German words and phrases. No obvious English cognates or just blurting the English word as the definition. Some of these game shows try to get people to say certain words using other certain words in the same language. In pyramid you can play either as The giver where you see the word and try to convey it to someone else only using the native language or you could play the receiver and try to listen to someone describe a word using only words in that particular language.
I tried it with Indonesian. I found the first Indonesian show I could find on Netflix and started to watch. After watching the episode in Turkish subtitles (my native tongue) then I switxhed to Indonesian subtitles but the thing was....they didn't match with the sound. Like most of the slang or the English words they used were written in standard Indonesian.
I work with a Lithuanian girl. I asked how she learnt English. “Watching Friends.” Oddly she doesn’t have that American twang some Europeans have when speaking English.
Reality shows are awesome for language learning! you just need to be brave enough to witness not so smart humans engaging in unnecessary drama, odd conversations and questionable behaviours lol. The moments when the participants present themselves and get to know each other are so valuable as learning content (dating shows are especially good). You also get exposed to normal everyday speech and a variety of accents (usually the participants come from all over the country).
@@jennyh4025 german has pretty good kids shows and documentaries and comedy is okay, russian I watch a lot of youtube pranks and most tv stuff is dark, swahili I've found almost nothing, spanish tv tends to be soapy and other hispanic tv the humor tends crude and a bit infantile, filipino shows tend toward cheesy soap and the comedy tends to be extremely infantile... not criticisms of the peoples in general, just really hard for my personality to watch intently
@@Doing_Time 😄 for German I would have suggested some children’s tv shows to begin with (the average age for people watching „Die Sendung mit der Maus“ is 40 and I am one of those adults as are my parents) and maybe some more light crime shows (e.g. old „Mord mit Aussicht“), everything by Loriot (one of Germany’s greatest artists) and news for someone who knows more than a little bit of German.
I think technical content is easier than colloquial content if you're learning a European language. They're usually the same easily recognisable French/Latin/Greek words across languages. Even in something like Hungarian, the sentence "A desztilláció vagy lepárlás egyrészt egy régóta használt laboratóriumi technika." is easier to figure out than something like "Mi folyik itt Gyöngyösön?".
I am studying Spanish. I struggle with programs like 'Narcos' because the characters speak so fast, and it slows down my progress. I like to watch the news in Spanish because stories are quicker, but the reporters are still speaking quite quickly. Nevertheless, they speak clearly.
I remember watching a show in its native language for the first time, with subtitles and A2 level))) Dexter and True Blood in 2009! Watching True blood really taught me how to understand different accents, and not just in English.
The best one is something you love... haven't been able to get into anything in years. Depression does that to you. Guess that's why my progress is shit. Gotta, say, you raised a great point with the documentaries, though. Now that you mentioned it, I did watch a lot of documentaries as a child and my use of vocabulary and grammar in my native language was quite advanced for my age. I should really try this one, maybe it'll help.
Such a fun channel and definitely great tips for my linguistic journey. - I watch plenty of K-dramas/Romantic Comedies in Korean; finished an entire series in Swedish (which was VERY helpful for pronunciation) and plan to check out "Extra" per your recommendation. Thank you!
When I have time I watch Disney songs in various languages and match what I hear with what I read. It's easier with the Slavic languages because they tend to be spelled exactly the way you say them. Also, if you have limited skill in several foreign languages you have the option of listening in one and reading subtitles in another.
If you like The Daily Show, Germany's "Heute Show" is hilarious and is available on RU-vid. They cover a lot of US news stories because what's going on with you all in the US is great comedy over here. 😬😅
@@brazendesignses ist leider auch so hier in Amerika. Heutzutage finde ich es schwer, The Daily Show anzuschauen, weil ich muss damit Donald Trump's Stimme hören, welche bringt mich immer zum Kotzen.
@@brazendesignsI’m so glad that our misery and suffering is providing great humor for our European friends! Sigh. But thank you for your suggestion. I will definitely have to check it out!
Good video!! It really focuses on how we failed as a global society by ignoring the fact that Esparanto was invented to avoid the problem of learning multiple languages.
Am I the only word that thinks that shows that are dubbed in the target language are quite a bit easier to understand than original shows in that language?
I found this interesting. Unfortunately, I did this for. Chinese. After two years of watching Chinese shows, I have become very god at reading Chinese and now love to read Chinese books. BUT I cannot speak or even understand spoken Chinese.
Same thing happened to me. 😅 When I went to a language school in china my teacher would say something and I'd have no idea what she'd said, but then she'd write the hanzi on the board and I'd be like "oh I know that word!" 😂
I had a similar experience, but I don't think it's completely useless for improving listening. Those of us who get better at reading while watching are also the people who are doing the hard work of learning characters. We're also seeing them fully pronounced, especially given that Chinese subtitles are almost always identical to what's said on screen (no rephrasing).But it's true that you begin to recognize real life doesn't come with subtitles. 😅 So I've added a lot of podcasts and try to keep the subtitles off when they're soft.
Watching Doctor Who in English with subtitles really excelled my English. Nowadays I prefer watching series in English with subs, mostly the original is better than the synchro. I recently started watching italian series and am searching for good stuff 😊
As a French, I would never think to refer to Vanessa Paradis as "Johnny Depp's first wife"... 😅 so it took me seeing the picture to understand who he was talikng about
In English one says "As a French woman/ as a French man/ as a French person "( not just "As a French") Just a bit of help ( I assume you are learning English)
Your scene from the office made me think: Yes! Watch The Office to learn English. Not Friends. Way more accurate to what I've seen in every day American life. (I'm an American, but I watched Friends to learn what all my Chinese friends to learn English. I didn't relate to basically any of it. The Office on the other hand, even as a teenager I connected to it more.
Either I am stupid or the path to the PDF for the list of shows is a labyrinthine journey that I can't navigate. Either way, I'm not seeing the end of this quest.
yea but most games don't support a lot of languages i can't find any good games in Swahili or Arabic or Hindi .right now i play most of my games in French or Japanese because they only have those or English .but i want to learn some other languages with gaming when it comes to voice acting is even rarer to find it in the languages i want
@@belstar1128 Very true, my brother wanted learn Greek so i looked up some games for him and was disappointed in the selection. If the languages you want are English, French, German, Italian or Spanish its easy to find a good one, anything else not so much, especially if it has a non Romance alphabet.
La Casa de las Flores and Accidente on Netflix are both Mexican. I really enjoyed La Casa de las Flores -- it's a comedy/drama following a family that runs a florist shop. It has a touch of Desperate Housewives to it, as there is some narration by a dead person (if I remember correctly). I recently started watching Accidente and it's not as good -- melodramatic in a less fun way -- but it'll get you more exposure to the Spanish spoken in Mexico 😁 Oh! And Club de Cuervos, which is about a son and a daughter who have to take over management of their father's soccer team. Not all of the actors are Mexican (and, to be honest, I stopped watching it because I couldn't get around a certain plot point), but it's another one to try.
