So, for the last six months or so I've been cheating on Japanese with French (scandalous!). I watched all six seasons of Lost, several seasons of Battlestar Galactica, and various other shows that added up to around 350 hours of television, plus countless hours of music. No SRSing, no reading, only French audio.

So today I went back and watched the first episode of Lost, which was the first French show I watched. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized that a mere six months ago I couldn't understand a single word anyone said, and now I understand a massive amount of the dialogue (~70%).

I'm not advocating a method or anything with this post, but I was so floored by the progress that I had to mention something here. I'm still 'studying' Japanese of course (TV + music + RTK reps), but this really made me question the necessity of ever using text in the early stages of language learning. Without ever reading a word of French, I went from hearing "blahblahblah MERCI blahblahblah" to "Charlie, my name is Sayid. Watch the fire while I look for the tail section of the airplane" (fictional example) and other complete sentences (in French of course).

Side note of interest:
I think sticking with one show for six seasons was a massive aid in the learning process. With Lost, you have a very specific, constant environment that means you will hear certain words until they are drilled into your skull very quickly (e.g. island, ocean, smoke, fire, jungle, tree, airplane, gun, radio, bunker, others, danger, fate, survive, die, lie, etc). Going back to episode one armed with this massive, but specific vocabulary set was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Thoughts?

The same thing happened to me using "French in Action". Worked great for French. Not nearly as good for Japanese, Mandarin or Thai.

I've often thought that if it were up to me to teach a Japanese class I would start with just listening (maybe speaking) for the first little while. One, to get away from the idea that learning Japanese is mostly about memorizing a huge number of kanji; two, because I think it's MOST important to have a really solid foundation of grammar (+vocabulary) as a starting point for everything else you do; three, because it's better to be an illiterate tourist who can ask where to find a bathroom and which way to Harajuku station than to be able to read signs but not do those things.

I think we've relied on text in the past because you could take a textbook home, you could buy books or get them from the library, and that was easier than acquiring Japanese TV. But with broadband and P2P, I think that's starting to disappear.

Edit:
That said I'm fairly skeptical about being able to pick up a language from zero based on TV. There's rarely enough there to give you a toehold in the language. I'm a lot more optimistic about a class using a textbook like Japanese: The Spoken Language, or the Total Physical Response method in which the language is taught by giving commands and demonstrating how to follow them, moving from "Stand up," "Sit down," "Shut the door," to things like, "Put the meat between the cook and the butcher."

Leosmith,

This is the same method I've used for Japanese as well, and it definitely works. But like you pointed out, the method is certainly slower than for French, which makes sense given the disparity of the languages. Still, every Japanese word I know is from TV, podcasts, and music input; I've purchased Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar, and downloaded KO2001 and Core2k decks, but never used any of it. I just love that rush when I'm watching a show or movie and suddenly realize what a word means, or get a joke, or the experience the oh-so-rare "I understood that entire sentence!" epiphany.

I get the feeling that it's not that the method is 'worse' with some languages, but just that it takes longer (which is fine, because TV/podcasts/music certainly cannot be called 'hard')

*Edit*

Fillanzea,

I absolutely started from zero with French. Never took a class, never owned a textbook, never downloaded an anki deck, never have read a word. But, maybe the similarities between English and French count as a built-in headstart on vocabulary.

mattimus Wrote:I get the feeling that it's not that the method is 'worse' with some languages, but just that it takes longer (which is fine, because TV/podcasts/music certainly cannot be called 'hard')

I don't think you'll get very far by only listening to japanese native materials (podcasts that are made for learners are not in the same category). There were some language schools a while back that tried to convince everyone that this was a good route (ALG springs to mind), but empirical data proved them wrong. 10-15 min a day for a beginner is a good supplement to any language program though.

Very interesting. Did you use subtitles at all when watching Lost and your other shows?

The closer the language is to your native language, the easier it will be. French and English share enough root words (and loan words) that you can make a little immediate progress.

Japanese, on the other hand, only has loan words and they are usually pronounced -very- differently and used differently, too.

If I ever decided to pick up Spanish or German, I'll probably try the TV-only route and see how far I get. Maybe even French, if I try for that. Irish Gaelic or Norwegian, though? Forget it. It's back to the books.

Lost seems like it would make a great first show for other languages, too. I might try to find a bluray copy that has a bunch. Thanks for the idea!

Edit: Nevermind. Everything I found is English and subbed in other languages, unless I go for just 1 language, like French. (Found on Amazon France.) For that kind of money, I want all the languages' audio on the disc.

(I speak French pretty fluently so I can't use that as an example.) But, I probably couldn't say five words in Italian but when I listen to Italian (intended for natives) I can understand quite a bit. But, I have a Korean music CD that I have listened to hundreds of times and I still understand exactly zero words.

No, I never used subtitles. And the podcasts I listened to weren't educational. I just logged into the French iTunes store and downloaded any podcasts that looked remotely interesting (economics, video games, etc.).

I don't know about ALG, all I really wanted to do here was report that I went from 0% to a decent level of comprehension in a short amount of time by watching TV, listening to podcasts, and listening to music. TV certainly did the most good, followed by podcasts, and I think the music was just a pleasant way to maintain immersion. If anything, music reinforced the sound of French words in a fun way, whether or not I knew what they meant (gotta have fun, right?)

As for Lost specifically, I'd totally recommend it, even though I didn't like the finale .

I studied French for umpteen years, but haven't touched it at all since starting Japanese...two years ago. Strangely, the other day I listened to a few songs - one's I could barely understand at first - and they made perfect sense. :O No study, no listening method anyone?

I'm in a similar situation kazelee - I stopped studying french at the end of 5 years of high school, so now it's been 6 months since I've studied the language. Instead I've finished rtk and am now mining JFE for sentences, so french hasn't really got any time left. I can still understand, but I find I am slowly losing ability, especially in production, which is of course to be expected. but Japanese is more important to me.

I do massive amounts of passive japanese- japanese movies and news on tv, my phone has about 10 gig of various genres of japanese music and several japanese dubs (fight club, the matrix, etc). On an average day I would say I easily get 10hrs or more of japanese audio. This had been the case for about a year now.

At the same time, I've been extremely time poor for the last 3 months or so and my active study time since finishing rtk has dropped to almost nil (I'm slowly working through tk while repping new vocab I find in it). This would be lucky to be 30 mins a day on a good day. I'm doing nothing on the weekends

Anyway, I feel like I get a few things from audio:
1) I feel like I have a great ear for japanese. Even though my vocab is tiny I can pick the language out of a crowd if I happen to hear it. I mirror and I feel like my pronunciation and accent is not too shabby.
2) It teaches me new vocab but only with the assistance of a dictionary. I kept listening to fight club and hearing tyler's soap being described as さいこう so I looked it up, now I have that meaning in my head forever.
3) It reinforces simple sentence structures and vocab that I have already learnt.

So yeah, without some sort of active study, i don't think it really does anything for me directly. I have かぜをあつめて on my phone that I have listened to literally hundreds of times and yet not a single word has any meaning to me. Perhaps there is done advantage in using a tv series (rather than movies or songs) so you have a subset of words on repetition for many tens of hours instead of the 2hrs for movies and 4 minutes for songs?

mattimus Wrote:I absolutely started from zero with French. Never took a class, never owned a textbook, never downloaded an anki deck, never have read a word. But, maybe the similarities between English and French count as a built-in headstart on vocabulary.

It really does. I took some French in school, and a decade later, took a business trip to France and found that I could have basic conversations fine. In my mind, learning French doesn't even count as learning another language, there's just no comparison.

Mushi Wrote:In my mind, learning French doesn't even count as learning another language, there's just no comparison.

French is basically English with different words, and a lot of those different words sound the same.

Tzadeck Wrote:

Mushi Wrote:In my mind, learning French doesn't even count as learning another language, there's just no comparison.

French is basically English with different words, and a lot of those different words sound the same.

Definitely true to a point. Like a number of previous commenters, French was something I found a breeze to pick up, and was one of the easiest subjects to coast through in high school with fairly high marks. On the other hand, I failed Japanese in Grade 7 (and I mean failed every single test) because I couldn't link it back to English or romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) in any way.

mattimus Wrote:I watched all six seasons of Lost, several seasons of Battlestar Galactica, and various other shows that added up to around 350 hours of television, plus countless hours of music. No SRSing, no reading, only French audio.

I remember watching some BSG in French once. What I love about French dubs is how completely unlike the originals the voices often are - in this case, Starbuck's voice was much too high, and Apollo's amusingly masculine in comparison to Jamie Bamber's I remember something similar when I watched Veronica Mars (don't judge - I'd just arrived in Paris after twenty-something-hours in transit from Sydney, and TV in my hotel room was the only way to go). Does France lack voice actresses with deep-ish voices, or blokes who are more tenor than bass?

Tzadeck Wrote:French is basically English with different words

Heh heh. Quote of the week

leosmith Wrote:There were some language schools a while back that tried to convince everyone that this was a good route (ALG springs to mind), but empirical data proved them wrong.

That's really interesting. Do you have any links or more information about this?

Taurus Wrote:

leosmith Wrote:There were some language schools a while back that tried to convince everyone that this was a good route (ALG springs to mind), but empirical data proved them wrong.

That's really interesting. Do you have any links or more information about this?

Sorry, I'm on vacation and my googling ability is pretty limited right now. But if you search for ALG, ALG Thai, etc, you'll get their info. The "proving them wrong" was based on every student review I ever heard in person or read online, as well as ALGs own language acquisition statistics.

with or without subs?

leosmith Wrote:But if you search for ALG, ALG Thai, etc, you'll get their info. The "proving them wrong" was based on every student review I ever heard in person or read online, as well as ALGs own language acquisition statistics.

Yeah, it was the empirical stats I was interested in - and I can't seem to turn anything up by googling...

(The reason I ask is because previously I'd only ever heard good things about ALG - and a *very* quick google just now hasn't turned up any bad reviews either.)

liosama Wrote:with or without subs?

If you're talking to me, without.

Taurus Wrote:(The reason I ask is because previously I'd only ever heard good things about ALG - and a *very* quick google just now hasn't turned up any bad reviews either.)

I remember reading bad things about them on the Thai visa forum, the Paknam Thai forum and the How to learn any language forum. Other than their own propaganda, the only good thing I heard about them was some guys on the Chinese forums talking about how great it sounds. I think all of those guys but one quit after they tried it, and recommend against it now.

auxetoiles Wrote:I remember watching some BSG in French once. What I love about French dubs is how completely unlike the originals the voices often are - in this case, Starbuck's voice was much too high, and Apollo's amusingly masculine in comparison to Jamie Bamber's I remember something similar when I watched Veronica Mars (don't judge - I'd just arrived in Paris after twenty-something-hours in transit from Sydney, and TV in my hotel room was the only way to go). Does France lack voice actresses with deep-ish voices, or blokes who are more tenor than bass?

It's funny, I just watched an episode of Lost in English for the first time and actually didn't like the characters' real voices as much; Jack and Locke sound like wusses compared to their deeper French voices (French Locke sounds almost prophetic sometimes). In BSG, I thought the dub of Commander Adama was especially good, but a lot of other characters have something lacking/off (e.g., Gaeta sounds hilariously effeminate). I definitely did notice the generally lower male voices and the higher female voices, but compared to the Japanese dubs I'm used to, with their often comically low male and high female voices, the effect is minimal.

Where can I get dubbed versions of shows? Do you "get" them off the internet or buy them?

mygbmygb Wrote:Where can I get dubbed versions of shows? Do you "get" them off the internet or buy them?

Blu ray discs will often have a ton of languages included on them. I know my "Serenity" blu ray has: French Canadian, French European, Latin Spanish, Castilian Spanish, German, Italian, and *gasp* Japanese.

P.S. - Yes the Japanese dub is good.