I watched a #German movie named Die Welle (The Wave) (with English subtitles) today.
I don't think it helped me in improving my German.
How do you watch a movie in a language you want to learn?
About the movie, it was fine (I hardly get impressed by movies; I have high standards).
On another hand, all the English websites or subreddits only suggest movies on World War II, Hitler, or fascism when I search for German movies.
I like to watch something else too. Any recommendations?
If you want to improve your language, don't focus on the subtitles, focus on the audio, and use the subtitles only when you're not sure of the audio.
Das Leben der Anderen is also really good.
I can also recommend watching "Die Sendung mit der Maus". It's a kids show, but it's really good insofar as how they show how products are made in a way that is even relevant for adults.
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 0
@ravi honestly, movies are only helpful after at least a B1 level in a capacity that actually helps.
Deutsche Welle has movies for learners called Nicolas Weg which might be helpful because they contain simple sentences and words.
@wouter Does that work for beginners? Am I supposed to watch the same movie multiple times? What about watching again with German subtitles?
@ravi I really liked "Tour de Force" (original title: Hin und weg)
https://imdb.com/title/tt3273636/
I'm about to re-watch Good Bye Lenin! Last time I watched it, around 2 decades ago, I couldn't speak a word of German.
In terms of series or miniseries:
Dark, The Valley (Weinberg), Pagan Peak (der Pass).
It's kinda difficult to learn a language by watching stuff, but maybe try Lingopie or Language Reactor if that's your goal.
@carbsrule_en Thanks for the recommendations! I will check out.
By the way, I am not trying to learn German solely by watching movies. I am having proper daily four-hour classes at the Goethe Institute.
Watching a movie was recommended by someone (not my teacher) as a supplement to the classes. They said they were able to learn some Malayalam by watching movies in that language with English subs.
Damn! I need to move to an instance without character limits for toots.
@ravi they showed us Lessons of a Dream at Geothe- Institut, which was nice. Maybe this will help you as per your current progress -
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/m/spr/unt/kum/dfj/dkk.html
No, probably not. I only started to do that once I was able to follow basic conversions in the target language.
If you're too much of a beginner, I don't think using subtitles is the best way of learning a language, also because subtitles are not always 100% accurate
@niyabits That makes sense. Thanks for the recommendations! I will check out.
@wouter I did it upon recommendation by a person who was able to learn some Malayalam by watching movies with subtitles in English (or Hindi?). They weren't learning Malayalam otherwise.
I think Malayalam is a difficult language to learn for Hindi speakers.
My logic behind watching a movie was to supplement my German classes and to get used to the sounds. However, it seems like I would have to wait on that.
It does work; I vastly improved my English using that method (amongst others).
But in my experience, it only works if you understand enough of the language that you can get the basic structure of what is being said. Otherwise you can't focus on the written and spoken languages at the same time.
I agree with @joostvb 's recommendation to watch subtitled children's videos. Those usually have sentence structures that are simpler and therefore easier to understand.
@niyabits I believe you were referring to this one https://learngerman.dw.com/en/nicos-weg/c-36519789
I did indeed got way better in English by watching English-speaking movies with English subtitles.
If your German level isn't up to the task of watching with German subtitles, it is probably indeed better to watch twice (with some time between the two viewings, so as to not get bored).
Or if you prefer, to watch the second time with the subtitles in a separate file, so you can pause and check if you missed something.
As for movie recommendation, I really loved Run, Lola, Run.
It's more of an art movie, but Undin was great too.
I stopped Die Welle after a few minutes, by the way.
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes is famous but I haven't watched it yet.
Same for Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum
And of course, there's Der Untergang.
I forgot to mention that when watching English videos with English subtitles, I delay the subtitles by around 1 second (1250 ms precisely, YMMV).
That way the subtitle appears after the phrase has at least begun to be pronounced, and acts as a clarification/confirmation/correction of what I understood.
But I still get a first understanding from the spoken words.
@lienrag Pertinent question here is: what was your level of English when you watched those English movies?
Already quite good, I must admit.
I wasn't at all able to follow the dialogues without subtitles (I mostly am now, barring special pronunciation) but I could understand most of the subtitles at first glance.
For more complex dialogues, or at occasions where I couldn't find synchronized subtitles, I did use the method of "pause and check the separate subtitles file" and it worked quite well (at the cost of immersion, obviously).
It's clearly harder for a beginner, so I guess that watching once with English subtitles and then another time with German subtitles may be the best method for now.
Checking that you understand the phrases (by reading the German subtitle file) in-between.
It's still good to immerse in the spoken language, I guess, even if you struggle understanding it.
Maybe try music too ? But I can't think of any good German music (apart from Nena's 99 Luftballons)...
@lienrag Ohh yeah, music does help. I learnt some Spanish from songs.
Also, I learnt English mainly by listening to music and watching TV shows. And YouTube videos.
However, in India, I am always surrounded by English and have a lot of immersion/exposure. Watching TV shows/videos/music gave me additional exposure on top of my already existing knowledge.
There's probably also the fact that German (Hochdeutsche, specifically) is a very special language : the verb being at the end of the phrase means that a phrase isn't understandable at all before it is finished.
That's why it's been called an authoritarian language (which isn't necessarily an accident, considering how it was constructed), but it also means that the method of learning it through movies may not work as well for German as it does for more natural languages.
@lienrag Do you mean sentences like
"I muss am Samstag arbeiten"?
Sentences where the important info such as "what the person needs to do" come at the end?
And I don't know what you mean by "how it was constructed".
Yes.
Hochdeutsche isn't a natural language; it was constructed by linguists from the (natural) existing dialects that were present in what had become Germany.
So it was already an authoritarian project.
Note also that when I suggested watching the same movie/series episode twice, I meant once with English subtitles (to understand and enjoy it) and the second time with German subtitles (to improve your language).
That way if you lose a dialog, you don't lose the plot (as you already know it).
That may be particularly interesting to do on a series like Dark, because a second watch will help understanding the intricate plot.
Caveat : I've been disappointed by Dark's ending, but maybe it's because I only watched the episodes once and so the really intricate plot was a bit lost on me; so what I found to be easy cop-outs maybe were not.
Anyway the resolution is quite good, we're not in Game of Thrones territory.
And the actors, filming, etc. is very, very good.
I haven't watched it, but Babylon Berlin is supposed to be very good.
I found Fritz Lang's "M" boring, but that's probably just me.
I remember really enjoying another German movie, but alas I don't remember its name at all...
Depending on your level and probably also on the movie, it's probably possible to watch the videos twice, both time with German subtitles.
Sort of "learning to swim by being thrown in the pool".
That means that you'll really understand the movie/whatever only the second time (because after the first viewing, you can go through the written subtitles to check what you didn't understand).
But some movies/video probably are enjoyable this way.
