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Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

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Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#151

Post by Egregore »

gadders wrote: post #147
jtemplestein wrote: post #34

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…

As an Englishman, I think it's sad that when non-native English speakers learn the language they target an American accent.

It's because of cultural influences such as Hollywood.

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#152

Post by dagw »

switch007 wrote: post #137
leke wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"serving in a bread shop" = baker? Or at least "a woman serving in a bakery" :P

If the bread is made off site and all they do is sell the bread, can you still call it a bakery?

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#153

Post by gadders »

Egregore wrote: post #151
gadders wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Englishman, I think it's sad that when non-native English speakers learn the language they target an American accent.

It's because of cultural influences such as Hollywood.

Oh, I understand why it is, but it doesn't stop me complaining :-)

I'm starting to feel some sympathy with the Academie Francaise [1]. At least the US English British English traffic in terms of idioms isn't all one way [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19929249

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#154

Post by gadders »

gingerjoos wrote: post #148
gadders wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Englishman, I think it's sad that when non-native English speakers learn the language they target an American accent.

It's a sign of our times. Indian English follows more or less the British pattern (colour instead of color etc.). However, recent times have seen a marked shift towards American spellings and pronunciation. I would imagine this is the case in other former British colonies as well.

As long as they keep reading P.G. Wodehouse...

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#155

Post by gadders »

Dewie wrote: post #83
jcampbell1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in language learning, and I whenever I meet someone that has successfully deaccented, they always tell the same story of how they did it. Listening to the same thing over and over. Watching a bunch of Friends won't work. You have to watch the same episode over and over. Find a piece of content and keep watching it until you have memorized what they say, and only then you will start hearing the sounds rather th…

I don't know if it's so hard for most people to de-accent, if they want to. All you have to do is to be able to make all the sounds that are in regular English - for me I was missing -th (ð) sound - and make an effort to pronounce everything correctly. I've always had a knack for imitating people, and it's never been hard for me to imitate any accent or dialect (of my own language or English) as long I've had enough…

I had a Danish friend at University and she asked me how good her English was. I told her it was perfect, but she would never be taken for someone British as there was no sense of "place" or "class" with her accent.

You can normally make assumptions about someone's place or class within a few words or phrases in the UK

EG "fillum" for "film" for people from the North East, "supper" instead of "dinner" for middle/upper class people.

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#156

Post by louisdorard »

duwip wrote: post #29
louisdorard wrote: post #23

Does fleex determine how tricky sentences are automatically?

This is indeed part of our secret sauce ;-)

Would love to hear more about the technological innovations at Fleex — depending on how much you're willing to share!

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#158

Post by vickytnz »

ronaldx wrote: post #139
onemorepassword wrote: post #112

Learn English like a Dutchman and end up with a really confused British/American hybrid accent... ;-) Seriously, subtitles are the main reason most Dutch people speak English, traditional education has very little to do with.

Thus, what tv would you recommend to learn Dutch? ;)

I had a discussion with someone about learning Dutch, as I know many foreigners there who learn to understand it but never speak it as they get spoken back to in English. One suggestion put up was that the Dutch never get people speaking their language badly the way that English speakers do, and so revert to English rather than hear their native language mangled!

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#159

Post by robocat »

jacalata wrote: post #86
Dewie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's so hard for most people to de-accent, if they want to. All you have to do is to be able to make all the sounds that are in regular English - for me I was missing -th (ð) sound - and make an effort to pronounce everything correctly. I've always had a knack for imitating people, and it's never been hard for me to imitate any accent or dialect (of my own language or English) as long I've had enough…

Yes, it is so hard. I am learning Hindi and I can't even hear the difference between several of the consonants, making it very difficult to measure how well I'm pronouncing them. My Chicago friends can't hear the difference when I say Kyle and Karl, so can't teach themselves to imitate it. And even if they could, changing pronunciation habits takes a lot of attention to the way you speak, which takes effort, which is…

Different English accents have a massive variety of vowel and consonant sounds, and usually one can find a "difficult" vowel sound in some English accent. As a counter-example, in my experience Spanish accents have very little vowel sound variation.

Perhaps learning how to mimic accents of people from different regions (Irish, Jordie, Scottish, Alabama, BBC etc etc) of your own mother tongue gives you opportunity to learn how to hear and say different vowels and consonants from another language. Or practice the accent off non-native speakers e.g. a French accent for a Parisian speaking English.

Re: Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows

#160

Post by [deleted] »

polymatter wrote: post #96
zht wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but in this case it's about the written language and less about verbal dialects. Chinese and Cantonese are representable by the same written language.

Sorry, no. > "Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary with Mandarin Chinese, the two languages are not mutually intelligible because of pronunciation, grammatical, and also lexical differences" from ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese ). Fluent and literate Cantonese are not automatically fluent and literate in Mandarin. In the same way fluent and native English speakers are not automatically fluent and litera…

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