[HN Gopher] Language learning with Netflix
___________________________________________________________________
Language learning with Netflix
Author : skanderbm
Score : 283 points
Date : 2021-06-07 10:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (languagelearningwithnetflix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (languagelearningwithnetflix.com)
| kubb wrote:
| > Immersion doesn't mean you have to pack your bags and move to
| Europe.
|
| Joke's on you, I've lived in Europe my whole life.
| framecowbird wrote:
| Good news, now you no longer have to!
| bluGill wrote:
| Too bad my target language isn't spoken in Europe (or my home
| country)
| sweetheart wrote:
| I run a language learning app (leerly.io) which focuses on
| teaching language through comprehensible input, which seems to be
| at least somewhat how LLwN is approaching the problem of language
| acquisition. For those interested in how to get the most out of
| language learning tools like LLwN, some tips which are backed up
| by the field of applied linguistics:
|
| - Don't translate! If you do, do so very sparingly. It sounds
| counter-intuitive, but stopping to translate often will just slow
| you down. That's because...
|
| - The most important thing is just experiencing the language. You
| need hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to the language to
| really start to acquire it. Comprehension is inevitable, just
| optimize for time spent listening/reading.
|
| - Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the process
| of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result of having
| learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready to start
| speaking a little because you'll occasionally have thoughts in
| your target language. Until then, speaking practice is virtually
| useless.
|
| Maybe these will help you, as they've definitely helped me learn
| Spanish. Buena suerte :)
|
| Note: These tips are also only for people who want to learn a
| language to fluency. If you just want to learn enough to order at
| a restaurant, that's a different ballgame.
| resonious wrote:
| I'm curious, do you know of any research (or even just
| anecdotes) showing that speaking practice is bad? I've heard
| the claim before but never seen any evidence for it.
|
| In my own experience, it feels like speaking helps improve my
| speaking a lot. Sure it doesn't help me pick up new phrases or
| grammar at all, but the first time I say something always comes
| out horrible, before getting progressively better as I say it
| more. And there's the skill of utilizing a limited vocabulary
| to communicate complex ideas. That's another thing that I feel
| has gotten better as I exercise it through speech.
| sweetheart wrote:
| I'll try to dig up the original study I found months ago,
| talking about correlation between speaking practice and
| language acquisition in Japanese students learning English.
| When controlling for method of study, the researchers noted
| that students who tended to speak more ended up doing _worse_
| on final exams. This could potentially be explained by the
| tendency for early speakers to way over-focus on correctness,
| which slows the whole process.
|
| In the meantime, this book by Krashen may be of interest! He
| touches on some of the same ideas, roughly. Notably, around
| page 100 or so, he starts to define what he would consider
| his ideal learning environment: http://www.sdkrashen.com/cont
| ent/books/sl_acquisition_and_le...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > students who tended to speak more ended up doing _worse_
| on final exams.
|
| It is possible that this simply tells us that the final
| exam was only or primarily a written one. I know it is not
| directly comparable but my children learnt Norwegian
| starting at age 3 1/2 (after they already spoke English)
| without any formal instruction at all, just by speaking
| with other children and the staff at the kindergarten.
| verst wrote:
| > the researchers noted that students who tended to speak
| more ended up doing _worse_ on final exams
|
| Surely those exams focus on literary analysis or advanced
| grammar structures.
|
| Who is the better speaker of a language? The person who can
| carry simple (daily life topics) conversations fluently or
| the person who knows pedantic language constructs but can
| only utter them with significant delays and only speak in
| chunks of a few sentences?
|
| Knowing a language and being able to speak it are different
| things. I agree you have to know it (understand grammar and
| vocabulary) before it makes sense to practice speaking it.
| Until you are forced to quickly think on your feet in
| another language your speaking ability won't progress much.
| Rompect wrote:
| Muchas gracias!
| sweetheart wrote:
| !De nada, tio!
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| Thanks for the tips.
|
| One thing I've noticed helps me learning language has been
| working hard to imagine the physical thing as opposed to the
| english equivalent word. That is imagining a shiny red apple
| when learning "manzana" instead of the word "apple". Always
| wondered if theres anything to back this sort of approach up or
| its just different learning styles.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Oh totally, I've wondered the exact same thing. I started
| messing around with that on leerly, and there are a couple
| articles with a feature called Storybook, where images appear
| as the user is speaking, to help build the association
| between the foreign word/sound with an image, rather than the
| associated word in your target language.
|
| I have no idea if it's effective, I just think it'd be cool
| to see how it helps with learning grammar. I def want to
| experiment more with it, but it takes a fair amount of time
| to add images to all the articles.
| derriz wrote:
| I disagree with nearly all of your advice and tips. And I'd be
| very surprised if they reflected actual scientific findings in
| linguistics.
|
| The least objectionable is the "don't translate" tip but even
| there I think you've gotten it wrong - translating isn't the
| issue - avoiding the trap of getting bogged down in trying to
| translate _precisely_ or being a perfectionist. But you
| definitely have to maintain some understanding of the context
| in order to get any value from subsequent exposure.
|
| I fully disagree that you can acquire language just by osmosis
| - that it's enough to just listen to a language for hundreds of
| hours. Do you really think that if I isolated myself with
| hundreds of hours of say Mandarin audio recordings, TV shows
| and newspapers and novels and spent 40 hours a week listening
| to the recordings or staring at written text, that in a few
| months I would acquire the language? I mean if this actually
| worked, learning second languages wouldn't even be seen as a
| challenge or task.
|
| It takes thousands of hours of active "work" with a second
| language to acquire it (although the data is patchy), not
| hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
|
| And avoiding speaking is terrible advice. It's been shown to
| provide a huge boost to language acquisition. I know people who
| can read and comprehend the spoken form of a second language at
| a reasonably high level (C2) but can barely speak it. Speaking
| will not just "happen" if you don't actively practice it.
|
| If you honestly did manage to acquire fluent Spanish purely by
| just passively "experiencing" the language, then I'm guessing
| your first language is closely related one - one of the romance
| languages.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| > Do you really think that if I isolated myself with hundreds
| of hours of say Mandarin audio recordings, TV shows and
| newspapers and novels and spent 40 hours a week listening to
| the recordings or staring at written text, that in a few
| months I would acquire the language?
|
| Yes, it does work, according to various accounts I've seen,
| although 40 hours for a few months might not quite be enough
| (the usual figure is around 18 months of full-time immersion,
| and more is obviously better), and this is actually quite
| challenging to do for long periods of time (esp. without
| distracting yourself with your native language excessively)
| and that's why it can be a challenge.
|
| >not hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
|
| It's on the hour of thousands, not hundreds. There are
| people, especially in the refold community, who have reached
| fluency in languages very different from their native, with
| mostly input (active output is part of the equation, but it
| can be done later, after your comprehension is very high).
|
| >Speaking will not just "happen" if you don't actively
| practice it.
|
| Yes, you do need to practice speaking to get good at
| speaking. But from aforementioned accounts, this process can
| be quite fast after a high level of comprehension has been
| gained.
|
| I can confirm that for myself, over the past half year or so,
| increasing the amount of input I get every day has greatly
| accelerated my japanese learning process, versus the previous
| year, where I got far fewer hours in (1, maybe 2 hours a day
| at most, versus my current 4+ hours every day), although I'm
| not fluent yet.
|
| In just that time I went from barely being able to read, and
| only being able to understand simple beginner podcasts to
| being able to fully understand easier shows (stuff for adults
| is still mostly out of my reach), and understand most of all
| the podcasts I listen to, (as long as I'm actually focused on
| the audio, if I'm passively listening I don't understand as
| much). My reading hasn't improved as much, as I spend
| probably 80% of the time listening/watching shows versus
| reading, but I can read basic manga easily now, and I'm
| working on reading through some essays now, novels still
| seems massively difficult, but we'll see in another couple
| months.
|
| I've found that many hours of audio input each day have
| greatly improved my ability to keep up with native-speed
| speaking, although for increasing my comprehension, intensive
| study (making sure I understand each line in a show, or
| careful reading) is more effective per unit of time. I have
| no doubt you could acquire the same results as intensive
| study with enough exposure to the language though, as I've
| seen it happen with myself before I tried adding intensive
| study, it would just take more time.
|
| Most people wouldn't call 4 hours a day massive though, so I
| can probably still increase my rate of improvement if I find
| more time to use.
| derriz wrote:
| > Yes, it does work, according to various accounts I've
| seen, although 40 hours for a few months might not quite be
| enough (the usual figure is around 18 months of full-time
| immersion, and more is obviously better)
|
| Could you provide a reference to these studies or accounts?
|
| The original claim was a second language can be acquire by
| hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing". Your claim of
| 18 months full time is more like 6,000 hours if by full-
| time you mean all-day. This is more than an order of
| magnitude more than the original claim and 2 to 5 times
| more than then numbers I've seen in studies on how many
| hours it takes to achieve C1 level in a second language
| using regular teaching/learning techniques. There is
| significant variance depending on the the relationship
| between the learner's first language and the L2.
|
| So even if it worked (and I'm dubious - learning anything
| requires some effort/active practice) spending 7,000 hours
| of passive "experiencing" would be a hugely inefficient way
| to learn a language.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Perhaps we are having some miscommunication here. I don't
| know if the original poster was making a precise
| statement when they said "hundreds and hundreds of hours"
| anyway.
|
| >Could you provide a reference to these studies or
| accounts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxYZvMByRjU&lis
| t=PLT9cfjU1yk...
|
| I haven't watched any of these videos in a while so I
| don't remember which ones are good, and it's a lot to go
| through, sorry about that. But there are some accounts
| here of people who have followed "mostly-input" style
| methods. I don't think any of them are 100% passive input
| though, and I'm not sure anybody argued that is the best
| way to do it.
|
| I also seem to remember a study I found recently on
| whether uncomprehensible input works for language
| acquisition with very interesting results, but I cannot
| find it right now.
|
| >spending 7,000 hours of passive "experiencing" would be
| a hugely inefficient way to learn a language
|
| The efficiency really depends on if it's something you
| want to do or not, but I don't know if anybody is doing a
| full 12 hours a day (maybe some super hardcore people). I
| believe it's closer to 6, maybe 8 hours if you're very
| serious about it and have the time.
|
| >learning anything requires some effort/active practice
|
| Yes, you need to actually try to understand what you're
| listening to at least part of the time, maybe most of the
| time, which means you need to be actually interested in
| the content, otherwise you will get bored quickly. But
| passive listening while you are doing other things
| definitely helps in combination with active study.
|
| I'm not sure if we're using "passive" in the same way
| though. Actively focusing on, and trying to understand
| what you are listening to isn't what I'd call passive.
| zolland wrote:
| > The most important thing is just experiencing the language.
| You need hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to the
| language to really start to acquire it. Comprehension is
| inevitable, just optimize for time spent listening/reading
|
| Listening with or without subtitles? I've been trying to figure
| out if watching content in another language with English
| subtitles actually helps me at all...
| sweetheart wrote:
| Nope, no subtitles in your mother language. Only your target
| language. It's okay if you don't understand a lot, what
| matters is exposing yourself to the sounds and sights of the
| language, and the general message of what is being conveyed
| ("I don't know exactly what they just said, but they seemed
| pissed and they said 'mierda' a lot, so maybe that means
| something bad").
|
| Ideally, you'll want to focus on material where you can
| understand the majority of what is being said, through
| subtitles or just listening. If you find you can't do that,
| try watching something that would be easier to understand.
| solarmist wrote:
| "Avoid speaking" This is 100% a myth. The Defense Language
| Institute comprehensively disproved this in the mid-1970's.
|
| I know this because it's discussed on the first day of classes
| at DLI as for why you need to learn to speak the language not
| just hear and read it. Because my job title was voice intercept
| operator.
|
| Pre-1976 the Defense Language Institute did not score or rate
| students speaking ability because only reading and listening
| were considered mission critical skills.
|
| Post-1976 it was considered a mission critical skill because it
| had such a dramatic effect on students final listening and
| reading abilities during the culminating Defense Language
| Proficiency Test (DLPT). Subsequently an Oral Proficiency
| Interview (OPI) was developed and is considered an integral
| part of the DLPT.
|
| Note: This was all direct, primary research done at the Defense
| Language Institute with thousands of participants annually, so
| it was direct cause and effect experiment.
|
| It's hard to find the specific research results summarizing
| this, but here's one example from that time period.
| https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-10458-001
| dnautics wrote:
| The DLI has a different set of motivations: bring as many
| analysts to a working level of proficiency within a fixed
| time period, and has a lot of other things that confound this
| analysis: it's totally ok for the DLI to wash out some
| percentage of trainees in each flight, they can pre-screen
| candidates into whatever language they think is a best fit
| depending on candidates latent aptitudes, etc.
|
| There is a universe where both pieces of advice can be right;
| surely you can imagine "don't worry about speaking" advice
| might be reasonable for someone who is learning casually, has
| no hard time frame to learn, wants to learn in dribbles and
| maximally passively, for whom a partial fluency might be a
| reasonable endpoint, and the greatest risk is burnout from
| negative reinforcement of failure.
| foldr wrote:
| There's a lot of wishful thinking around language learning.
| The idea that some part of it will "just happen" naturally
| is very appealing. The unfortunate reality is that you meed
| lots of practice at everything: speaking, listening,
| reading and writing. You won't improve significantly at any
| one of those skills without many hundreds of hours of
| practice.
| dnautics wrote:
| I interpreted the GGP to mean something like: think about
| how you learn your first language -- you spend a ton of
| time listening before trying to speak. Don't focus on
| speaking so soon. I don't think that is so much "wishful
| thinking" as an interesting strategy to consider.
|
| I'd do it for spanish, but I can't find star trek with
| (latam) spanish audio.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Massive amounts of listening and reading is practice :)
| foldr wrote:
| Yes. It will make you better at listening and reading,
| but not at speaking.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Yes, like speaking will not make you better at
| comprehension, although comprehension is required to have
| any meaningful conversation. Speaking needs to be
| practiced, but input and understanding comes first.
|
| I'm pretty sure the originally poster did not mean to
| never speak at all. But just not to worry about it for a
| while.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| Those are all different claims than the original post was
| making though.
| solarmist wrote:
| "Don't speak" is a myth and by not speaking you are
| hindering your own learning. Dr. Krashen's advice was taken
| out of context. It was not meant as general advice not to
| speak.
|
| If you personally don't care and don't wish to speak that's
| fine, but don't try to promote that as advice on how to get
| the most out of studying a language.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Not according to the research I've done -\\_(tsu)_/-, or my
| own experiences.
|
| EDIT: As I linked below, here is Krashen on the subject - htt
| p://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/down_with_forced_s...
| anbende wrote:
| Right but as has been pointed out elsewhere, the linked
| article does not say to avoid speaking. Instead it says to
| avoid a strong focus on forced speech in a classroom, which
| likely means the sorts of repetition exercises that many of
| us remember from adolescence. That is very different from
| not trying to use the language productively at all.
| solarmist wrote:
| Right. Making students repeat and memorize sentences that
| are beyond their current ability is detrimental.
|
| Think of it this way. If I gave you a paragraph in
| Turkish (or insert language X) to memorize and recite
| that's very different than giving you some greetings and
| responses to memorize and recite.
|
| For the first there is no mental model for where the
| paragraph fits in or how it's constructed. In the second
| almost everyone has some experience learning greetings in
| a couple of languages just by exposure to pop culture, so
| even if you don't understand the specifics of how those
| phrases work you have some confidence in how to employ
| them and you'll generally feel somewhat confident in
| being able to break them down later if you need to
| because greetings done in short and simple language.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I was surprised to see that suggestion as well: every
| language course I've ever seen focuses on memorizing a
| (relatively) natural dialog and reciting it word for word
| from memory as its primary means of targeting fluency. I
| don't know about the research OP cites, but I've found that,
| for me, memorizing the dialogues as the courses suggest have
| been by far the most helpful way to advance in language
| acquisition. I will admit, though, that of the foreign
| languages I do speak, I speak them better than I understand
| them... so maybe there is something to this.
| jjallen wrote:
| Sure, don't translate, but the input also has to be
| comprehensible. So there is always a challenge of not seeing
| the translation but still understanding. If you never look
| something up, there are some words you will never know. There
| is a balance, and that balance is hard to find.
| sweetheart wrote:
| True, a lot of it depends on personal preference, too. I
| think the idea is to not worry about understanding 100%. Even
| just 70% could be fine! Or just the gist or emotion of the
| text could be enough.
| solarmist wrote:
| This is wildly misleading advice. Using materials with
| comprehension below 80% is a massive waste of time.
|
| Will you learn something? Yes probably, but will it be time
| and effort efficient? Not even slightly!
|
| At 80-95% it can be productive if you're putting forth a
| lot of effort, but comprehensible input assumes
| comprehension above 95% for passive learning of materials.
|
| To demonstrate what different (reading in this case)
| comprehension levels will get you take a look at this[1].
|
| [1] https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2016/08/25/wha
| t-80-...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > - Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the
| process of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result
| of having learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready
| to start speaking a little because you'll occasionally have
| thoughts in your target language. Until then, speaking practice
| is virtually useless.
|
| This has to be the most counterproductive advice I've ever
| heard. You need to start speaking as soon as possible. There's
| no other trick to learning a language than forcing yourself to
| speak.
|
| For some it's easier because they're less socially anxious. For
| others it will be more difficult. I was in the latter camp
| learning Danish. You have to make friends with your fear or you
| will forever be stuck in what many language learners refer to
| as a "quiet period". I was for a decade (!!!) If you don't
| start speaking you will forever have only an intellectual
| understanding of the language.
|
| So speak. Please speak. Early and often. Babies sound things
| out early because they're trying to get a hold of it, the vocal
| contortions required.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Hey, if it works for you, that's great! It's not necessarily
| what the research I've done says, but I'm glad you found a
| strategy that works for you.
|
| EDIT: You may appreciate this - http://www.sdkrashen.com/cont
| ent/articles/down_with_forced_s...
| solarmist wrote:
| The title even disagrees with your statement. And this
| research is entirely focused on student anxiety. "Forced
| output" is what the claim is against.
|
| Even more specifically these studies are focused on
| beginning students (i.e. 1st term students), so it is even
| less applicable once you have some level of experience with
| the language.
|
| There is even a section on "How to promote speaking
| fluency". He is 100% not advocating to avoid speaking, but
| it talking about how speaking is a lagging indicator of
| proficiency.
|
| Speaking requires the integration of language skills, so it
| will always lag behind other language skills. That does not
| mean it should be avoided.
|
| The Defense Language Institute (DLI) even formally
| recognizes in its graduation requirements. The standard is
| 2 Listening/2 Reading/1+ Speaking indicating that speaking
| skills will generally lag behind reading and listening
| skills by 1/2 a level.
| solarmist wrote:
| Now a result I can believe in this vein would be: "that
| attempting to lean heavily on sentence construction and
| grammar exercises to induce speaking could have a negative
| effect on language acquisition" and that's what I believe
| Stephen Krashen is actually advocating against.
|
| But that's a very specific claim as opposed to "avoid
| speaking".
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| You haven't really shown how speaking improves your
| understanding or comprehension of a language.
|
| Of course you need to speak to get good at speaking, I don't
| think that's what the original poster meant. But rather that
| you should focus on comprehension initially,because there's
| not really much point to speaking to someone if you don't
| know what you want to say and cannot understand the response.
| triceratops wrote:
| I started having thoughts in my target language _after_ I
| started speaking. Until then it was just words on paper or on a
| screen.
| curiousgal wrote:
| It might come as a surprise to some but subtitles on Netflix are
| covered by a license agreement. Some are available in countries
| and not in others. So this raises some interesting questions on
| the legality of it all.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| As far as I'm aware it only provides subtitles that are
| available for your market on Netflix. (I.E it uses netflix's
| subtitles... it doesn't provide it's own.)
| kerng wrote:
| I am learning Mandarin and found this super useful when watching
| shows. The ability to slow down and replay sentences quickly, as
| well as show Pinying is great!
|
| Just the other day I watched a Taiwanese movie called "Classmates
| minus", which was quite good.
| banada1 wrote:
| I'm working on a language app and thinking about pivoting to
| focus on Mandarin. I would love your feedback on the lesson
| format:
|
| https://chatlesson.com
| pythonlion wrote:
| suggestion: sometimes it is better to be challenged and not to
| translate everything. I wish there was a way to only translate
| some of the world with some dictionary of words you don't want to
| translate.(you already know them)
| Aditya_Garg wrote:
| I built something based on that principle. It picks a couple
| nouns from the subtitles and translates that. Its blanks
| everything else out. You can still follow the story while
| passively learning the nouns.
|
| https://github.com/sutble/netflixlingo
| maury91 wrote:
| I'm working on a side project that does exactly that: translate
| everything except some words.
|
| When I will have something ready I will add a comment in this
| thread
| yorwba wrote:
| Unless you're about to finish it today, you should probably
| post it as a "Show HN", otherwise almost nobody is going to
| see it.
| Aditya_Garg wrote:
| You can check out my project as well, which does something
| similar.
|
| https://github.com/sutble/netflixlingo
| codethief wrote:
| I really like this idea of leaving gaps every since I came
| across the videos by ItsNachoTime / DeliberateSpanish. Here
| is an example: https://youtu.be/7kbACgcnG8M?t=83
|
| The idea is basically: Once the fill-in-the-blank text
| appears, stop the video, try to recall the previous sentence
| (letting the template help you) and repeat it until you can
| articulate it fluently - that way, you will improve your
| vocab but also train your hears, pronunciation and
| intonation.
| pferdone wrote:
| As an active learner of the Turkish language this tool is really
| held back by using Netflix' own subtitles. First of all if you go
| to their website and u look for Turkish content, it only lists
| shows created for the Turkish market, yet there's so much more
| content available with Turkish dubs and subs like Ninjago,
| Pokemon, Paw Patrol that likely have easier vocabulary, cause
| it's target at kids. And yet again the subs sometimes hardly
| match the dubs, which therefore doesn't help with hearing
| comprehension at all. If anyone can suggest good alternatives to
| practice hearing comprehension at different levels (even payed
| ones) I would really appreciate it.
| [deleted]
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Are you allowed to use a private company's name like this? Not
| trying to be annoying, just curious.
| e_proxus wrote:
| Usually most companies are okay if you have titles or names
| like "X for Netflix". Some even explicitly state that they
| prefer that. It's also a rule on the Apple App Stores that you
| can't have a name like "Netflix X" to avoid confusion.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Use a private company's name like saying "a printer cartridge
| for HP laser" or "Toughshell TM case for iPhone 9"? I'd reckon
| it's quite hard to sell anything specific if the law prevented
| you from mentioning the thing your product fits or works with
|
| Contrast "Language Learning by Netflix"
| eob wrote:
| Paying member here -- I've used it to slowly, sentence by
| sentence, watch a full season of a Taiwanese workplace drama over
| the past few months.
|
| One of the best parts of LLwN as a way to study is the passive
| encouragement: you can click on a word to mark it as "known", and
| then it always shows up green in future subtitles.
|
| Pretty soon, entire multi-line subtitles start showing up all
| green. And for me at least, that provides a huge confidence boost
| that helps me keep going.
|
| Instead of seeing each new subtitle as a challenge ("<Deep
| breath> here we go..."), you think, "It's all green! I already
| know everything here! I just have to read it!" And that's made a
| huge difference in how it feels to study.
|
| I wish Kindle had a similar feature for books.
| madmads wrote:
| If you want a similar experience with text, I can recommend
| Learning with Texts (LWT) if you want a self-hosted experience
| and you are okay putting in some work to setting things up.
| Basically you feed it some text and it lets you click on words
| and define their meaning as well as how well you know the word,
| from 1-5 + "Known" status.
|
| There is also LingQ which is a paid and proprietary service,
| but it has a ton of content as well as no real setup required.
| It has an already populated pop-up dictionary and many texts to
| pick from. LWT was inspired from LingQ if I remember correctly.
|
| I've used both and can recommend both depending on what
| experience you are after, I switched to LWT however to save
| some money and gain some control. I also happen to prefer the
| experience using LWT. If you're interested in LingQ, be warned
| LingQ has a pretty scummy subscription cancellation sequence,
| requiring you to click through 5+ screens of offers and "are
| you sure?" pages, as well as them threatening with deleting
| your account data. My data seems intact after the cancellation
| though.
|
| https://learning-with-texts.sourceforge.io/
|
| https://www.lingq.com/en/
| wibr wrote:
| What's the name of the Taiwanese workplace drama?
|
| For people learning Mandarin I provide some information
| including word lists for a lot of shows on Netflix here:
|
| http://www.jiong3.com/gradedwatching/
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Fantastic! Thank you for sharing. Do you actually practice
| them? Or what's your approach to using them? I add vocabulary
| to Pleco faster than the space repetition shows them so it
| doesn't seem like an effective way to use them.
|
| Also searches don't seem to access stored vocab first so it
| doesn't actually make searching that much faster either.
| wibr wrote:
| It depends. Sometimes I really learn all the words before
| watching, sometimes I just watch something without any
| preparation.
|
| Adding too many words to Pleco SRS over a short time
| doesn't work well, you will get overwhelmed with reviews
| quickly. So if I decide to study the words for a tv show I
| take some time between the episodes to prepare for the next
| ones, depending on how many words I have to learn it could
| be days or weeks.
|
| Which searches are you referring to?
| kerng wrote:
| Oh wow - this is awesome!
| eob wrote:
| This is amazing! Thank you for putting it together.
|
| The show is called Office Girls. Friend in my Mandarin class
| recommended it as being fairly simple once you get past some
| office-related vocabulary. "Rich kid has to pose as poor kid
| and work his way up from the ground floor of dads business"
| story.
| wibr wrote:
| Thanks! I've actually watched that one a while ago but it's
| not available on Netflix in my region so couldn't get the
| subtitles to add it to the list. The version on youtube
| only has hardsubs, unfortunately.
| banada1 wrote:
| I'm working on a language app and thinking about focusing
| on Mandarin. I would love your feedback on the lesson
| format:
|
| https://chatlesson.com
| vincvinc wrote:
| That's interesting. I have been using this plugin for years,
| but only for passive learning - just to watch things on Netflix
| with dual subtitles (and to unlock subs in more languages than
| the Netflix UI would allow). Will take another look at the
| other functionalities.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| What a shame there is only one available Romanian title, since
| that's the language I'm learning.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Excellent, Is there something similar which pops up a dictionary
| on screen when a word from the subtitle is clicked?
|
| A user on my problem validation platform was asking for such a
| solution[1].
|
| [1] https://needgap.com/problems/201-show-meaning-of-words-
| in-a-...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Apparently they are also hosted using fastly which is down.
|
| HN discussion here: https://fastly.com/
| hughcrt wrote:
| I used Fleex (https://fleex.tv) when I was a teenager. It worked
| really well. You can use it with Netflix and local files by
| fetching subtitles from Opensubtitles, which is pretty smart
| zelag wrote:
| Is there a similar application but for movies/tv shows stored
| locally?
| esrh wrote:
| I don't use netflix because of the ethical issues associated
| with drm and nonfree software.
|
| I've been learning japanese for nearly a year using yomichan[0]
| mpv, mpvacious[1], and anki[2].
|
| There is a fair bit of setup involved:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbg6ztWecbU&t=0
|
| [0] https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/
|
| [1] https://github.com/Ajatt-Tools/mpvacious
|
| [2] https://apps.ankiweb.net/
| katspaugh wrote:
| You could try my app: https://video.fluentcards.com
|
| Haven't tested it in a while.
| creamyhorror wrote:
| Oh hey it's that fluentcards video HTML! Bit of a blast from
| the past. Kudos again!
| lnl wrote:
| I use PotPlayer, which can show two subtitles at once; also,
| when you click on a word, it can search it in the search engine
| of your choice (e.g. a dictionary). You can also add multiple
| search engines (as well as "Copy to clipboard" command)
| accessible when you right click a word instead of left
| clicking. You can also assign a shortcut (e.g. Ctrl+C) to copy
| the whole subtitle visible on the screen, to paste in Google
| Translate etc. I use all of those features, and it
| significantly helped in my English learning in my teens (and
| later other languages).
|
| Previously I used KMPlayer by the same developer, which
| supported not just two but three simultaneous subtitles (which
| I sometimes used, as strange as it may sound); but I switched
| to PotPlayer when he sold the program and it started to be
| bundled with ads.
|
| Both programs are only available on Windows, and lack of
| something as featureful and customizable as PotPlayer was one
| of the reasons my brief flirtation with Linux at the start of
| this year wasn't that satisfactory. But if all you want is
| multiple subtitles, I found SMPlayer on Linux that did the job;
| but the features of PotPlayer/KMPlayer is simply unmatched
| (beyond just language learning).
| cehrlich wrote:
| https://animebook.github.io/
|
| never mind the 'anime' in the name, it's just a web video
| player that supports nearly every format and has good subtitle
| integration.
|
| you'll need a hover/popup dictionary (for example, for Japanese
| Yomichan is popular) to go with it
| [deleted]
| somedude895 wrote:
| A VLC plugin or somesuch would be nice
| cehrlich wrote:
| There's MPV plugins, but they require a lot of setup. Some
| good web based alternatives were suggested in other replies
| to the parent.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| That's what I think to myself every time those language
| learning extensions/apps come up. Sadly the VLC code is not
| very well documented and the extension guide on the wiki is
| pretty bare as well. I'm guessing one would have to extend
| the freetype text renderer but that's a tall order.
| banada1 wrote:
| Tools like this are great because they give you access to in-
| context example sentences.
|
| Textbooks often start with grammar and layer sentences on top. I
| prefer taking a real conversation and breaking it down. If I can
| see myself saying that sentence, then its guaranteed to be
| useful.
|
| My project tries to achieve this with a chatbot-style lesson
| format:
|
| chatlesson.com
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| It would be really cool if this worked with Firefox. Anyone know
| of a compatibility layer which would allow this to work?
| kleiba wrote:
| The video shows subtitles in two languages for each spoken
| sentence. Does this use ASR or the official multilingual
| subtitles? I found that even monolingually, subtitles can
| sometimes divert from what is actually spoken on screen. I assume
| that if just the existing subtitles are used, they are not exact
| translations from one another either?
|
| Also, longer dialogs are often split into two screens - this
| should be an additional synchronization challenge between the two
| languages, right?
| shkkmo wrote:
| Afaik it uses the built in subtitles. You can also turn off the
| second language.
| goda90 wrote:
| I met a young woman in Chile who had an amazingly clear accent
| when speaking English. She learned English from watching American
| TV and listening to American music. It was way better than any
| English I heard from teenagers learning it in school.
| handrous wrote:
| Learning English by watching Friends was so common, AFAIK all
| over the world, that it achieved cliche status, 10-20 years
| ago. May not be the case anymore.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I wonder if this is legal, ie transforming creative works to be
| language learning tools, and inserting themselves into Netflix
| like this, and also using the Netflix name in their own name.
|
| Not saying it shouldn't be legal, I'm just wondering whether they
| could get sued by Netflix or the copyright holders and lose.
| martindbp wrote:
| I'm working on something similar, so I may be biased but I'd
| say no. It's something that transforms and integrates with the
| content in your browser to facilitate learning. I think fair
| use applies because 1. it's for educational purposes 2. it does
| not diminish or compete with the value of the original
| copyright owner since the content is not copied to some
| separate site, and subscriptions/ads still apply (unless of
| course they also start a language learning business)
|
| The name "Netflix" though seems troublesome, I agree.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| For-profit education does not get a free pass in fair use.
|
| > transforms and integrates with the content in your browser
|
| "Integrates with" and "browser" are irrelevant technical
| details.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure, but for example Grand
| Theft Auto's publisher shut down efforts in the computer
| vision industry to use their game as a training data
| generation engine for self-driving car research. That's why
| I'm also wondering how the law deals with using things you
| have a license for in different ways, for different purposes
| than originally intended.
| martindbp wrote:
| By that logic any Chrome extension that modifies the
| contents of a copyrighted web page is illegal. Holding up
| an automatic translation device to translate what is being
| said on the TV would be illegal etc. There are nuances of
| course, but I don't think it's a problem here.
|
| > That's why I'm also wondering how the law deals with
| using things you have a license for in different ways, for
| different purposes than originally intended.
|
| I really don't know much about law, just trying to apply my
| common sense here. I think the difference in this case is
| that there is a single customer that _uses_ the extension
| to modify their experience, not a large corporation using a
| product (game engine and content) for unlicensed purposes.
| I could see why Rockstar would potentially want to keep the
| right to license the engine for these simulation purposes
| in the future, in which case they'd have to block this kind
| of use of the game directly.
| yorwba wrote:
| > Grand Theft Auto's publisher shut down efforts in the
| computer vision industry to use their game as a training
| data generation engine for self-driving car research.
|
| Did they? The GTA5 dataset is still up
| https://download.visinf.tu-darmstadt.de/data/from_games/
| and widely used. I've never heard about any legal issues
| with it.
| seumars wrote:
| Add subtitles and translation to ads and you're safe. Now
| that I think about it this may unironically be a decent
| selling point.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Trying to predict what a court would find fair use is
| incredibly difficult in the US, and it's hard to have much
| better accuracy than a coin flip if the answer is less than
| completely obvious. In practice, it seems that fair use is
| pretty much decided on a gut reaction first and then the
| analysis is motivated to arrive at that gut reaction.
|
| A good example of that effect is Thomas's fair use analysis in
| Google v Oracle a few months ago, which can be summed up as
| "Google made buttloads of money from Android, Oracle saw not a
| dime, how can that be fair?" This kind of analysis I think
| tends to be the more the common one in courts. _However_ , only
| one other justice agreed with that analysis; Breyer had 5 other
| justices sign onto his fair use analysis instead, which argues
| (in part) that transformativeness is more important than
| commerciality as a factor.
|
| It remains to be seen how lower courts will apply Google v
| Oracle to fair use cases; if they will see it as something
| limited to software and ignore it for everything else. Indeed,
| I'm not certain that you'd see the same strong majority for a
| similar fair use ruling if it involved more traditional
| copyrighted content such as movies.
|
| That said, I'm not sure that this is even distributing Netflix
| content in a way that violates copyright in the first place,
| which nullifies any need for fair use analysis period.
| ck_one wrote:
| It says: "connection failure" for me. Anybody else having issues
| accessing the site?
| gansai wrote:
| now, you can access i guess, since fastly is back
| greybox wrote:
| Strange, I've been getting these for lots of different sites
| this morning, I wonder if this is a cloudflare issue
| gansai wrote:
| There's a related thread for this also -->
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432408
|
| Fastly is down, impacting lot of sites
| jbotz wrote:
| Getting a 503 now.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Met too
| styrmis wrote:
| The Varnish error is almost identical to that of the Guardian
| (newspaper) website in the UK--wondering if they're both
| using CloudFlare and that it's CloudFlare that is having the
| issue?
|
| Edit: Perhaps related to this ongoing Fastly outage
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432408),
| https://fastly.com returns the same kind of Varnish error and
| Github currently has no assets being served in their web UI.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Getting multiple 503 errors to different sites.
| arkitaip wrote:
| This is a tangent, but has any noticed just how terrible Netflix
| subtitles can be? Occasionally, when watching with family
| members, I will enable Swedish subtitles for English movies and
| sometimes it's as if they have worked on a different material
| than what the actors on screen are saying. It's bizarre to see
| this low quality effort in movie after movie, show after show.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| I was under the impression that most of the English -> English
| subtitles are just machine generated. So often the subtitles
| will be homophonic to what was actually said, a mistake that a
| human would not have made. And then what's worse is you get
| [Speaking German] or whatever, so I have to pause, disable the
| subtitles and rewind, just to be able to see the original
| subtitle that was included for the vitally important to the
| plot translation of the foreign language.
| FlyingSaucer wrote:
| Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the dubbing
| in some cases which makes it difficult for me to watch with
| both.
|
| Also, they sometime use a bit odd translations. I saw a Belgian
| show and they translated smoking a cigarette into smoking a
| fag. Which I guess is technically correct (based on the
| cambridge dictionary), just an odd choice for general EU
| viewership
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the
| dubbing in some cases which makes it difficult for me to
| watch with both.
|
| Yeah I've tried Czech dubbing with Czech subtitles, but have
| a lot of trouble following it for this reason. I'm sure once
| I get better at Czech it'll make more sense, but for the
| moment it seems like I need to stick with Czech audio and
| English subtitles or vice versa. Otherwise it's just too
| confusing.
| smcl wrote:
| If you can access the videos on ceska televize (presumably
| you're based here if you are learning Czech) I've found
| them to be quite useful as they generally provide an option
| to turn on subtitles that match the audio. Like this kids
| show I used to watch with my teacher in our lessons:
| https://decko.ceskatelevize.cz/chaloupka-na-vrsku :D
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Thank you very much! I do watch things on ceska televize,
| but I will definitely check out that kids show!
|
| And no not based there, but I do have a VPN so it's all
| good. Thanks again!
| smcl wrote:
| I also liked "Anca a Pepik" - a show about two mice who
| solve mysteries :-D Hodne stesti!
| dagw wrote:
| _Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the
| dubbing in some cases which makes it difficult for me to
| watch with both._
|
| I suspect in many cases the subbing is done translating off
| the original script, while the dubbing is done using a
| completely different translation designed to flow better when
| spoken.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Dub-oriented translations are also designed to "look
| natural" when coupled with the actor's lip movements.
|
| To make matters worse, sometimes shows are re-dubbed [0],
| but may retain the subtitles that were accurate to the
| previous dub.
|
| [0]: For instance, Neon Genesis Evangelion was released on
| the Italian Netflix with a brand-new dub, which caused
| quite a commotion: https://comicbook.com/anime/news/neon-
| genesis-evangelion-net...
| digbybk wrote:
| This seems to be the case. Watching the Spanish dubbed
| version of Community on Hulu, the dubs have the study group
| taking an English class, while the subs have them in a
| Spanish class as in the original.
|
| Side note: in the dubbed version, it's hilarious when they
| switch to speaking bad English where they would have
| switched to bad Spanish in the original.
| ant6n wrote:
| Basically, only English has a tradition where in closed
| captions, the spoken word matches the text. In many other
| languages, even for original content, even for subtitles that
| are a hearing aid, the text often won't match. For example in
| French.
|
| I guess the desire is to shorten the text to make it easier to
| read in time, but it's kind of ironic that it's called
| ,,subtitles for the ones with bad hearing". Non-matching
| subtitles are not a hearing aid, but a hearing replacement.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I've only ever seen this when something was dubbed, not when
| the original content language matches the subtitle language.
| Do you have any examples?
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I can't believe that - subtitles don't match the spoken word
| outside of English? Isn't that extremely jarring if it's the
| same language?
| mongol wrote:
| I think it is because the speed which subtitles need to be
| shown at if it would be word for word. It would be too fast
| for many viewers. Usually (I am talking from a Swedish
| context), they are a 60-75% summary of what is being said.
| charrondev wrote:
| Super common in French, and was a big hurdle in learning
| the language through movies/ TV.
|
| I don't want to put English subtitles, but sometimes I have
| trouble with accents. My best guess why would be that they
| are translated independently and at different times by
| different people. Some shows almost every single line is
| different.
| ant6n wrote:
| Yes
| laurieg wrote:
| I've definitely noticed some pretty bad mistranslations in
| Netflix subtitles but not worse than general movie subtitles.
| samsari wrote:
| I don't think this is specific to Netflix, Swedish subtitles
| are routinely awful and badly translated across a variety of
| media.
| telesilla wrote:
| They traditionally had trained translators, a friend worked for
| them. He's since been let go, with no warning about quality
| being an issue, leaving me to believe they have replaced him
| with machines or cheaper workers. I also watch with subtitles
| and notice the decline.
| frodetb wrote:
| I've tried watching dubbed+subbed shows, with both set to my
| target language, and the two rarely ever match for any given
| line of dialogue. Netflix has thankfully expanded their
| language capabilities recently to make it easier to watch shows
| in an arbitrary language (used to have to change the entire
| interface into the target language), but I wish there were a CC
| option for all choices of audio.
| shkkmo wrote:
| This is because the subtiters and dubbers usually work
| independently and face different constraints.
|
| The key is to find content that was originally produced in
| the language you want to learn so that the subtitles will
| match.
| borroka wrote:
| For non-major-languages subtitles, they use (mostly) machine
| translation. For major languages, they use people.
| interestica wrote:
| Which is weird because it seems like the perfect use of crowd
| sourced knowledge. You could probably get translations just
| by offering free subscriptions. I think you'd see a bit of
| national pride help fuel it too: I'd love to see regional
| variations/dialects. (For instance, Quebec French). You could
| even have crowd verification like what Google Translate and
| Duolingo do.
| OJFord wrote:
| Wouldn't it be a mess? 'Reddit translates Netflix'? I see
| what your saying about 'crowd verification', but how do you
| filter out 'upvoted for lolz'?
|
| There are things you could do of course, I just don't think
| it's trivial.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| I should try this out. It's gotta be better than the quiz-by-quiz
| no-context vocab lessons that Duolingo does.
| banada1 wrote:
| I'm working on a chatbot-style lesson format that gives more
| context:
|
| https://chatlesson.com
| brainless wrote:
| Getting an "Error 503 Service Unavailable" - is this site down
| because Fastly is down?
| atymic wrote:
| Yep, that'd be it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I used this tool and loved it. It works best when the original
| content is in your content language so the audio matches the
| subtitles.
|
| LLwN provides a nice catalog to find such content which can be
| very useful even if you don't use the browser extension (such as
| watching on platforms that don't have Chrome.)
|
| https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/catalogue.html
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| I tried using this for a few days. I found it incredibly
| frustrating, partially because the subtitles in Finnish were so
| dumbed down from the actual English-language dialogue.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-06-08 23:01 UTC)