Learning English while watching TV

[dieastra]

I guess this is a question mostly for the non native speakers in here but everyone is welcome to join in of course. Basically, I learnt all my English starting about 15 years ago by watching TV and reading fanfictions in original language. In Germany everything on TV is dubbed so there isn't that much exposure to the language like in other

Comments

[sapphire2309]

Not quite the same thing, because I'm a fairly native (Indian) English speaker, but I fondly remember when I thought "may as well" was "mayor's will". Incredibly confounding, by the way. ("We mayor's will carry on"????? xD)

My English is fairly British otherwise. None of the slang you've described above, though, we just imported desi slang into English.

[dieastra]

Oh yeah, I can see that being confusing, especially if it seems to make (wrong) sense! I had that as a kid as well with some song lyrics. You hear what you understand with your little brain.

I was always fascinated with reports of Hollywood actors having to learn a certain accent for a role and getting a teacher for it even. My ears are not that fine tuned that I can tell them all apart (aside from General Hammond's Texas drawl maybe).

In German TV or movies, it's not like that. Everyone speaks the same, which is really a shame, especially when they dub a movie that is rich on different accents. Which is why more and more people prefer to watch DVDs or original language in the cinema.

German movies with local dialects like Bavarian, Saxonian or Cologne are very rare.

[mckuroske]

Songs mostly - no authentic films/movies at my time and at my place. Books later on, movies and radio shows now. But yes, lots of favourite phrases remembered and reproduced "as it is".

[dieastra]

I grew up in East Germany, where access to English songs also was limited. Not played on the radio all the time like it is now. Our English teacher once allowed children to bring music for the lesson and we listened to it and tried to translate it. I did not understand a word ;)

Even now, after I consider myself fluent, I often have to look up the lyrics to understand some songs properly. Not many singers have an excellent diction. The music seems to be more important for many people, but for me a song is about the story. Which is why I still prefer German music with good texts.

[mckuroske]

Vous avez raison - sorry, that's the best phrase which I can think of. :-)
It's really very difficult sometimes to work out the lyrics, but still, this was almost the only thing I and my friends had. Beatles for me mostly.

[dieastra]

I know that the Beatles were and still are HUGE in Russia. I saw a documentary on TV. I think people who haven't lived through these times cannot really understand how much a little music could mean. A glimpse of freedom, of being different than everybody else.

They showed how one guy took apart his grandmother's kitchen table to build himself a guitar. They showed how the songs were illegally copied - on old x-ray plastic sheets which worked like a record. Amazing.

I don't speak any French at all but there is also a phrase that I learnt from not one but two different songs (and I know what it means so probably not a good idea to say this in France LOL): "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi"

[my_virtual]

I mostly tried to learn English from RPG videogames. Didn't even suspected, that a preposition at the end of a sentence isn't proper! Thank you very much! :-)

[my_virtual]

Oh, THAT mistake is a typo! :-)

[dieastra]

LOL Happens to the best of us ;)

It's a rule I try not to pay attention to, as nobody else seems to do either. Maybe in a very formal text, but not in conversation.

[beer_good_foamy]

The preposition thing is one of those rules, up with which a lot of people refuse to put. :)

[beer_good_foamy]

I think it's hard as an ESL with an interest in movies/TV series/music/games/any other anglo-dominated medium to NOT be influenced by it. I like to think I'm fairly fluent in English, and yet I know there are a lot of phrases I use that probably came from Buffy, The Simpsons or Die Hard. And since most Europeans learn British English in school and American English from the media, we all easily fall into some weird mid-Atlantic pidgin where anything goes.

[dieastra]

I've never watched "Buffy" but I can see where "The Simpsons" would be very influencing in pop culture in general. Jack O'Neill was a confirmed Simpsons fan and I wonder how many quotes I probably missed. I recently discussed with a friend whether his "Close enough" came originally from there or was a well-known phrase before and only picked up by Homer also.

And yeah, they tried to teach me British English in school as well and it totally failed. I simply could not pronounce like Professor Higgins, nor understand any of the mumbo-jumbo. I love the sound of it now and have my ears finely tuned into it, but it took me discovering American English to learn that the language can sound much more familiar and better understandable, basically German just with different words.

[thekumquat]

For a decade or so you could tell who in the UK was a Buffy fan, as they picked up the Valley Girl speak and lots of phrases that only came into common usage later. Though some phrases are still only used by JOssWhedon /SF fans - "shiny" meaning good, cool, or "five by five" for "OK, over and out

[muckefuck]

NANS, but I would just have said, "Unverschämt!"

I also picked up "Verflucht nochmal!" but I couldn't say where. "Verflixt und zugenagelt!" is one I found in an outdated dictionary that I love but Germans just seem to find it weird in a very non-humourous way.

[raatkerani]

I can't remember for sure what I have learned from TV shows. The only thing that I can remember learning from songs (heavy metal and rock) as a child was the flexible use of four letter words. I remember checking my father's advanced dictionary because I couldn't understand how a word could be used to express a range of expressions without having meaning related to the emotion.

Basically, learning how to curse. Lol.

[dieastra]

Heh, I have a similar experience. I learnt to curse from a German police TV show. In the Eighties they had a young cop who shook up the establishment by cursing a lot. Apparently he was the first to do so on TV and it led to huge discussions. It's not that I learnt the actual cursing words from him, but hearing him do it so often I lost my general feeling that it was a bad thing (as had my grandmother taught). It became more normal. He sometimes almost sing-sanged the word in a fond way. Nothing to fear about it!