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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

#41
post #30

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 am curious what you were watching when you learnt Chinese... :)

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

#43
post #28

Please don't use flags for disambiguating languages. ( 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 wron…

This. A lot of European countries are either multilingual or have large minorities that speak another country's language natively.

Even better - Europe is effectively comprised of multiple (rather smooth) dialect continua, with national states pretending to have distinct languages, while the actual language situation is much more blurry.

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

#45
post #30

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 am curious what you were watching when you learnt Chinese... :)

xiyangyang, spongebob, aiqing gongyu... Anything I could find on PPTV or PPS.

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

#46

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…

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.

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

#47

Great idea! Does it work with DVDs or is it limited to the (usually illegal) video files available online?

We've thought about DVDs, but this isn't implemented yet. We're pondering it as DVD doesn't necessarily seem like a platform with much future...

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

#50

Hey! It is great to see good use of our API. (The WordReference translation API, you see the WR translations when you click on a word.) This is the type of application that we created it for. Congratulations!

Glad to hear that, and thanks for letting us use your awesome work in such a convenient way! WordReference rocks ;-)
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