Is watching dvds a good way to learn chinese?

[lpascoe]

I think dvds are a great way to practice. It turned out to be so useful for me that I've banned myself from renting anything in English. I'd stick to listening to Chinese while watching Chinese characters. Like others have already said, some of the Chinese subtitles for English movies and TV shows are really bad.

While I realize they're not for everybody, to start with I went for soap operas because the language used wasn't that difficult and the plots were easy to follow with what Chinese I had plus a little guess work. I just wanted to watch for listening practice more than anything else and they were about all I could cope with after work. Then I realized I was starting to recognize characters by looking at the subtitles. Now I read the subtitles when actors mumble, or speak too quickly to figure out what was said.

This works out quite well. If I don't understand something and don't recognize the characters in the subtitles, I'll replay it and listen until I'm able to type pinyin into my electronic dictionary and select the right characters (by checking the subtitles) to work out what was said. If this doesn't work, I'll write down the characters (and if there is time, a note about the context) and ask my teacher about both meaning and correct pronunciation the next time I see her.

Mind you, most of the stuff that I haven't been able to find in my dictionary has been pretty foul language. When I was watching Outsiders 1 and 2, my Chinese teacher at the time (very sweet natured woman) was almost scared to come to class.

Also, a friend of mine says her son picked up tonnes of characters before he started school from looking at the subtitles while watching cartoons on TV. I guess it's nice to know something good can come of little kids watching too much TV.

[Long Zhiren]

I like watching documentaries like the IMAX type films with the Mandarin audio track going and all subtitles turned-off. Unfortunately, you don't get James Earl Jones speaking in Mandarin in the Serengeti. They get a native Mandarin speaker to narrate for the Mandarin audio part. After watching Alaska, I can sure talk about glaciers and northern lights in Mandarin!

I swtiched over to documentaries because I got sick of watching movies. I can seldom tolerate even one single more movie. Each culture's movies seem to have dominant themes. French movies are mostly messed-up romances. Chinese movies are often tragedies with everyone crying at the end. US movies are just plain stupid. Etc.

Johnmck,

You're a brave soul for venturing into foreign comedy. I believe that is the final test of foreign language proficiency--to master humor in another language/culture.

[johnmck]

For beginners like myself you cannot beat soaps with mandarin subtitles. The actors tend to speak slowly and articulate (the more they over act the more they do this) and although I still do not understand most sentences it is very good listening practise picking out sounds and matching them to the text. Definately a welcome and relatively effortless break to books and tapes.

[Long Zhiren]

Johnmck,

I added a little comment in my msg #23 just for you. I'll delete this little msg #25 of feedback later.

[mandarin123]

Is this a good way to learn?

a word of caution on this: if you depend too much on the subtitles for understanding, your listening comprehension would be affected significantly without the subtitles. This's from my own experience of learning a second language.

certainly i would recommend watching DVDs for beginners or low-intermediate learners with subtitles on. For other higher level Mandarin learners, i would recommend them to watch DVDs as a native, just enjoy yourself with the film.

[Tsunku]

Heh, subtitles.

Ever bought a DVD and realized that the subtitles are taken from an entirely different film? My good friend's girlfriend is Chinese and we often go over to his house to watch DVDs together. It has happened several times that we pop in a DVD only to discover that the subtitles have nothing to do with what is actually going on.

I bought a copy of Batman Begins at a DVD store here. Take it home and realize the audio is in Russian! Ok, I think, I can put on the English subtitles. Except the English subtitles are from the wrong film. While Katie Holmes and Batman are having an intimate moment the subtitles are saying something about a cat, and the f-word is being thrown around an awful lot.

Another interesting thing about subtitles... often, especially on TV series', there are several versions of the Chinese translation. I remember distinctly when I was watching South Park (season 5), there were two Chinese translations. One set of subtitles was a PG13 version, and the other set went all out and translated (fairly accurately, I might add), every nasty reference, curse word, etc.

I've often wondered how one can get a job doing subtitle translations. My rates aren't that bad, and sometimes these translators are so far off the mark it is ridiculous. College students indeed. Sometimes it seems more like trained monkeys ...

[RobAnt]

Sometimes it seems more like trained monkeys ...

Given an infinite number of monkeys (trained or not) and an infinite amount of time, it has been calculated that they could eventually write the works of Shakespeare absolutely verbatim.

(Of course, for you native Chinese speakers, the word "infinite" is very important here).

This is a well known "joke", but it has a certain ring of truth.

[in_lab]

That Batman Return DVD wouldn't happen to be pirated, would it? The really terrible Chinese subtitles are on pirated videos. But I wouldn't think any pirate would go to the trouble of adding English subtitles.

[calibre2001]

Is watching dvds a good way to learn chinese? It definitely helps but it's not the best resource for expanding your vocab and knowledge of sentence structures etc. I find reading newspapers and magazines more helpful for that. That said it feels nice to see the fruits of your efforts when you get to see how words/phrases are used in real life situations via DVDs

[scott-chen]

Watching DVDs (I prefer Chinese sound tracks) is definitely an efficient way to learn a second language. From the movie, you may not only practice your listening and speaking, but also cultures and customs.

I am Chinese and learing English right now. I can tell you that I really valued from American Movie, especially in speaking.

I suggest that you may watch the DVD with Chinese sound tracks. And the first time, with Chinese subtitle, and then, no subtitles. The key point is watching it again and again and again. That helps a lot!!!

[calibre2001]

While I agree (cause I've done it myself!), the brain usually has an attention span of 15-20 minutes. Hence a more efficient way to pick up the language from movies is to learn from excerpts of it rather than the whole thing. Besides, why spoil the fun of watching a movie?