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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

#61

Post by bitwize »

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…

"Where did you learn English?"

"College. And the Police Academy movies."

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

#62

Post by Lewton »

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…

Oh if only watching tv was enough to get rid of the accent! As a dane, my accent at its worst sounds like someone making fun of a deaf person

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

#64

Post by jcampbell1 »

m4rkuskk wrote: post #46
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…

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.

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 than the words and meaning.

I am not saying you should do this, but if you want to de-accent, then my sample size of about 7 suggests there is one way to do it.

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

#65

Post by dysoco »

duwip wrote: post #57
dysoco wrote: post #51

So let's say I have some movie without any kind of subtitles and I play it via Fleex... will it fetch automatically the English or Spanish subtitles? Or that only works with DVDs that include subtitles?

Fleex doesn't work with DVDs yet, but your first scenario is fully covered.

That's great!

I'm Argentinian, yet I can't stand films that are in Spanish: I normally watch them in English although sometimes I have some problems understanding some words (Mainly with American films).

So this will add automatically subtitles to it? That's amazing!

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

#66

Post by jcampbell1 »

baby wrote: 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.

For Chinese, checkout http://chinese.yabla.com/ or http://fluentu.com/

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

#67

Post by heatherph »

I really like this idea. Native language media is so useful in learning to speak a foreign language. I'm a little jealous of English learners because there is so much available out there. I have had a much harder time getting my hands on good, native language media in the languages I'm learning. I'd love to see a tool like this expanded to other languages.

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

#69

Post by thaumasiotes »

mullr wrote: post #54

> Fleex shows you mixed subtitles, so you get the hard parts in your language and the easier parts in English. This seems like a Very Hard Problem. How did you approach it? Do you deal with polysemous words gracefully?

I have long wanted simultaneous subtitles, so you get all parts in both languages.

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

#70

Post by jclos »

Lewton wrote: post #62
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…

Oh if only watching tv was enough to get rid of the accent! As a dane, my accent at its worst sounds like someone making fun of a deaf person

Same here as a french guy. Even worse is that I can usually hide it pretty well (or at least diminish it) until I have to pronounce the letter 'R'. Damn R's...
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