I'm originally from Germany and moved to San Francisco three years ago, when I was 21. People are often surprised that I don't have a strong German accent and I jokingly say that it's because I watched all 10 seasons of Friends a few times in a row. It's a joke, but I'm convinced it has a lot to do with it.
There's an interview with Max Levchin somewhere in which he says that he watched some TV show over and over and repeated everything that was said in order to rebrand himself as a midwesterner after he moved to the US. His English is really good, too.
I learned English by watching Friends as well. However the thick german accent stayed. It's funny to see how many people in this post have learned english by watching Friends.
When I moved to the states at age 15, I came from a very prestigious English language school from my native country. As a result my written English was excellent, but nobody could understand my accent and I could not understand the American (or, more precisely, Californian) accent either.
It was "Married with Children" with closed captioning on that taught me how to actually speak American English. It took me a while to figure out what a "hooter" is and why Bud Bundy would want to pretend to be a FIDE ranked Grandmaster without earning that title, but it was all very educational.
In Once You're Lucky. Twice You're Good by Sarah Lacy, she humorously recounts Max Levchin learning English from TV:
He’d worked so hard to be perfect—what could he possibly have done wrong? It wasn’t a feeling he was used to.
“Where did you learn English?” the teacher asked.
Max responded: “Watchu talkin’ ‘bout, Mr. Harris?”
Mr. Harris kindly suggested he switch from Different Strokes reruns to the nightly news. Embarrassed but undeterred, Max did, and his near-flawless English steadily improved.
A woman serving in a bread shop in Cataluña thought I was retarded, ...but a native retard -- so that was pretty impressive considering I had only learned Spanish for 6 months.
That is precisely how I have learned English when I moved from Poland to the UK. Friends and other TV shows together with English subtitles is the best way to learn.
I would love to see this provide the ability to learn other languages, for which subtitles might be hard to find.
I did, and still do the same thing. I can't even recall how many times I watched friends, entourage or deadwood. (I'm a Kraut, too, by the way).
It helps massively, especially with slang. I want to do the same thing now for spanish.
Edit:
Oh, and I still watch everything with captions, in case I missed something or there are words I didn't know.
- some languages are spoken in more than one country (eg. English in US, Britain, Australia, India)
- some countries have more than one language spoken in them (eg. see any large country)
- you will end up accidentally annoying people when you accidentally get it wrong. (is Cantonese, Tibetan and Mongolian the same language as Mandarin? You realise they are not mutually intelligible and come from different language families?)
I suggest you write the language name in the language itself. If you desperately need something short use the Unicode language codes.
Please, pretty please with sugar on top, also add the ability to delay the subtitles!
From listening to a lot of Pimsleur I know that, for me, anticipation and correction is one of the most powerful ways to learn a language.
I'm pretty sure that listening to a dialog, trying to work out what is said and being corrected a few seconds later by the actual translation would have an amazing impact on a lot of people (although it might be a bit too hard for beginners.)
If you click the subtitles settings button, you'll see there's a tab for that. You can also dynamically change your subs selection, in case you're unhappy with the subs fleex auto-selected for you.
This is how I learned english. I watched all the seasons of Friends and stopped at (almost) every lines to translate words I couldn't understand (and make a list).
I also learned chinese this way, and let me tell you it is way more time consuming and exhausting since I had to draw every characters I didn't know to get the meaning. A solution like that for non-latin language would be awesome.
I do this process by downloading subtitles automatically with http://subdownloader.net/ or manually from http://www.opensubtitles.org/en and then play the tv series directly on the tv.
It's of course less advanced than this (but more easy/enjoyable). I think this approach could be good at the beginning of the learning process (i.e. I've just begun studyin' French and it's too difficult for me to watch a movie with french subtitles only)
EDIT: it's a pity it's Windows-only (Mac in the future) I'd like a Linux version or better a XBMC plugin :)
Arte TV is a french-german Television that broadcasts movies in both languages and with both subtitles (unfortunately teletext subs and not DVB subs). I've seen it on sat (i think on Astra 19.2) but they should have something also online.
In this precise moment they have problem on their site: http://www.arte.tv/ lol
EDIT: it's a cultural channel so don't expect to see Mission Impossible, many movies are self produced etc..
But learning english from media is interesting, and curious...
I always say that I learned english from Star Trek and D&D Manuals. That's why I know quite well what a vorpal sword or a wormhole are. But I had to ask a few months after I started living in Ireland how you say that thing in the bathroom where the water came from (a tab)
Although this software is marketed to people who are trying to learn English, it seems to me that, given the fact you can choose a mix between any two languages, it can also help native English speakers learn other languages.
I'm not the author and I haven't tried the software (on account of not having a Windows machine handy), but I would use a word/collocation frequency list to hide sentences that only contain words/collocations that have a certain or greater frequency.
As for polysemous words, I would use contextual analysis to disambiguate as well as possible, and then just show the words that I couldn't disambiguate until the threshold for the least frequently encountered meaning has been passed.
Also, I would add a something to the UI to allow the user to, in one click, rewind the video by x seconds (not sure what the optimal value of x would be) and enable all subtitles until the point at which the video had been rewound.
This is awesome.Unfortunately i have been looking for a similar service; which i am willing to pay for, to improve my Spanish. Movies and music is great supplements to learn a language.
Congrats! Why aren't you charging for this? $9 a download is very reasonable for someone serious about using it, and you'd get some runway to build out and support this product.
First time posting here at HN, long time reader though.
I am fluent in English and German with no accent and I never had any formal education in either. Well that's not completely true as I did have standard English classes in primary and high school but that doesn't count because that stuff was pretty useless.
I learned both languages by watching endless hours of English and German TV, first cartoons as a kid and then the rest later on. Actually for English it was pretty much Cartoon Network so in a sense Cartoon Network taught me English.
One thing that surprises most people is that all of this was completely without subtitles. I'm not sure how one goes from not knowing a word of a language to speaking it fluently by watching and listening to a foreign language with no reference points but that's how it went for me.
The market you're after is people who want to learn a new language. The want they have, is to learn a new language. The question then, is "will this be something people learning a new language will want?"
I don't think this is the best way to learn a new language. Learning requires you to push yourself slightly beyond your comfort level/what you know. If you push too far beyond what you already know, learning will be ineffective. The success of a learning system is dependent on how well it is able to push you selectively. This seems like it'll be pushing people "too far".
This does seem like a good technology though. I think it can be coupled with another language instruction system. Mostly for people who've already done a lot of learning, but are looking to solidify their knowledge.
I get your concerns - this is precisely why we added adaptative subtitles as one of our first features. So people could say: "I'm a beginner, keep 80% of the subtitles in my native language", vs. "I'm a more advanced speaker, let's go ahead and put 100% of the subtitles in English".
Brilliant! This is exactly how a lot of us exposed to US and UK culture since a young age learned English.
Although I've noticed that as I age, I have far less patience to watch television in an unknown language than I used to. Tried learning German this way and it was just annoying.
Quite the coincidence...the comment I wrote actually had another part but I deleted it because I didn't want to appear as someone giving out advice that nobody requested.
Basically what it said is that if you want your kids to learn a foreign language you should put them in front of the TV at a young age because once they are a bit older and actually know that they have a choice they won't want to spend a lot of time looking at a screen where characters are going on about something that they can't understand. As you said it is "just annoying.
So if you want to do this for your kids you basically need to do it when they're clueless to the fact that they can actually change the channel. Once they know they have a choice and are actually bothered by not understanding the language they will surely change to an English channel, one that they can actually understand.
Very nice! Love this! Using the TV to learn another language actually works really well. (I learned English as a kid watching British Fun Factory cartoons in the '80s). Downside is you also learn a lot of 'inside' things. just the other day my collegues looked at me like I was crazy, because I said "they were drinking (our clients) Kool-Aid". Nobody here knew what I was trying to say. Also, when I was with friends in France they told me I talk French like an American. Too much American TV I suppose.
I am not a native speaker, and I learned English from movies and TV shows available to me. It is very interesting to see that this idea is being commercialized only now.
It would be really great if options for other languages are available too. I am looking forward to learn French and German. I tried Duo Lingo, but it did not help me much in speech department. From my past experience, it has to be the movies, and TV shows to assimilate the speaking part.
You could also try http://board.tv4user.de/ for german subtitles of many US/UK TV Shows. It's made for german users who understand little english but still want to see shows as soon as they come out (So the site itself is in german, but finding shows shouldn't be hard). The community is pretty great and very fast when a new episode comes out.
[+] [-] jtemplestein|13 years ago|reply
There's an interview with Max Levchin somewhere in which he says that he watched some TV show over and over and repeated everything that was said in order to rebrand himself as a midwesterner after he moved to the US. His English is really good, too.
[+] [-] Lewton|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4rkuskk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hristov|13 years ago|reply
It was "Married with Children" with closed captioning on that taught me how to actually speak American English. It took me a while to figure out what a "hooter" is and why Bud Bundy would want to pretend to be a FIDE ranked Grandmaster without earning that title, but it was all very educational.
[+] [-] gmu3|13 years ago|reply
He’d worked so hard to be perfect—what could he possibly have done wrong? It wasn’t a feeling he was used to.
“Where did you learn English?” the teacher asked.
Max responded: “Watchu talkin’ ‘bout, Mr. Harris?”
Mr. Harris kindly suggested he switch from Different Strokes reruns to the nightly news. Embarrassed but undeterred, Max did, and his near-flawless English steadily improved.
[+] [-] bitwize|13 years ago|reply
"College. And the Police Academy movies."
[+] [-] leke|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadders|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dom96|13 years ago|reply
I would love to see this provide the ability to learn other languages, for which subtitles might be hard to find.
[+] [-] marcelfahle|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Oh, and I still watch everything with captions, in case I missed something or there are words I didn't know.
[+] [-] polymatter|13 years ago|reply
(http://flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-repres...) is a starting point.
Basically
- some languages are spoken in more than one country (eg. English in US, Britain, Australia, India)
- some countries have more than one language spoken in them (eg. see any large country)
- you will end up accidentally annoying people when you accidentally get it wrong. (is Cantonese, Tibetan and Mongolian the same language as Mandarin? You realise they are not mutually intelligible and come from different language families?)
I suggest you write the language name in the language itself. If you desperately need something short use the Unicode language codes.
Edit: Really like it. Definitely continue.
[+] [-] mtrimpe|13 years ago|reply
From listening to a lot of Pimsleur I know that, for me, anticipation and correction is one of the most powerful ways to learn a language.
I'm pretty sure that listening to a dialog, trying to work out what is said and being corrected a few seconds later by the actual translation would have an amazing impact on a lot of people (although it might be a bit too hard for beginners.)
[+] [-] duwip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwarren|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|13 years ago|reply
I also learned chinese this way, and let me tell you it is way more time consuming and exhausting since I had to draw every characters I didn't know to get the meaning. A solution like that for non-latin language would be awesome.
[+] [-] jcampbell1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atempcode|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ecio78|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: it's a pity it's Windows-only (Mac in the future) I'd like a Linux version or better a XBMC plugin :)
[+] [-] duwip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Void_|13 years ago|reply
I couldn't even find TV shows in French with matching French subtitles. Any ideas where to look?
[+] [-] Ecio78|13 years ago|reply
In this precise moment they have problem on their site: http://www.arte.tv/ lol
EDIT: it's a cultural channel so don't expect to see Mission Impossible, many movies are self produced etc..
[+] [-] znq|13 years ago|reply
Search and download subtitles from opensubtitles.org using the hash of the video currently playing or its title.
http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/VLSub+0.9.4?cont...
[+] [-] onemorepassword|13 years ago|reply
Seriously, subtitles are the main reason most Dutch people speak English, traditional education has very little to do with.
[+] [-] ronaldx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaimebuelta|13 years ago|reply
But learning english from media is interesting, and curious...
I always say that I learned english from Star Trek and D&D Manuals. That's why I know quite well what a vorpal sword or a wormhole are. But I had to ask a few months after I started living in Ireland how you say that thing in the bathroom where the water came from (a tab)
[+] [-] duwip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawkharris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullr|13 years ago|reply
This seems like a Very Hard Problem. How did you approach it? Do you deal with polysemous words gracefully?
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
As for polysemous words, I would use contextual analysis to disambiguate as well as possible, and then just show the words that I couldn't disambiguate until the threshold for the least frequently encountered meaning has been passed.
Also, I would add a something to the UI to allow the user to, in one click, rewind the video by x seconds (not sure what the optimal value of x would be) and enable all subtitles until the point at which the video had been rewound.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flimm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serkanh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgingahead|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vis52|13 years ago|reply
I am fluent in English and German with no accent and I never had any formal education in either. Well that's not completely true as I did have standard English classes in primary and high school but that doesn't count because that stuff was pretty useless.
I learned both languages by watching endless hours of English and German TV, first cartoons as a kid and then the rest later on. Actually for English it was pretty much Cartoon Network so in a sense Cartoon Network taught me English.
One thing that surprises most people is that all of this was completely without subtitles. I'm not sure how one goes from not knowing a word of a language to speaking it fluently by watching and listening to a foreign language with no reference points but that's how it went for me.
[+] [-] adamzerner|13 years ago|reply
I don't think this is the best way to learn a new language. Learning requires you to push yourself slightly beyond your comfort level/what you know. If you push too far beyond what you already know, learning will be ineffective. The success of a learning system is dependent on how well it is able to push you selectively. This seems like it'll be pushing people "too far".
This does seem like a good technology though. I think it can be coupled with another language instruction system. Mostly for people who've already done a lot of learning, but are looking to solidify their knowledge.
[+] [-] duwip|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swizec|13 years ago|reply
Although I've noticed that as I age, I have far less patience to watch television in an unknown language than I used to. Tried learning German this way and it was just annoying.
[+] [-] vis52|13 years ago|reply
Basically what it said is that if you want your kids to learn a foreign language you should put them in front of the TV at a young age because once they are a bit older and actually know that they have a choice they won't want to spend a lot of time looking at a screen where characters are going on about something that they can't understand. As you said it is "just annoying.
So if you want to do this for your kids you basically need to do it when they're clueless to the fact that they can actually change the channel. Once they know they have a choice and are actually bothered by not understanding the language they will surely change to an English channel, one that they can actually understand.
[+] [-] digitalengineer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssw1n|13 years ago|reply
It would be really great if options for other languages are available too. I am looking forward to learn French and German. I tried Duo Lingo, but it did not help me much in speech department. From my past experience, it has to be the movies, and TV shows to assimilate the speaking part.
[+] [-] crazysaem|13 years ago|reply