If you're willing to shell out some money, YouTube + LingQ (which has a plugin for automatically ripping audio+transcripts into lessons) is so effective it's almost like cheating.
Edit for clarity: the subtitles are in the foreign language, not English so it's not an issue of machine translation.
100 000 times this. I don't understand why it's like that but they simply often don't match. And it's not some automated translation that went wrong: it's as if the subtitles didn't match exactly the final "script". They don't match but the subtitles are still totally correct. Sometimes the sentences are formulated differently.
It's honestly both a mystery and a gigantic WTF for me. Are these only meant for deaf people? And how did they manage to get "correct but non-matching" subtitles?
Plus, dubbing is sorta kinda trying to match the length of time actors need to say stuff. You cant have sound going while actors mouth are not moving at all. Nor the opposite - translation is done and actors mouth is still moving. And so those movements can not look completely odd. Written subtitles has no such limitations, resulting in different translation.
However there‘s s difference between CC (close captions) and subtitles, with the former being the verbatim representation (including sfx, music etc.) in my experience.
I already commented [0] on this 2 years ago.
Also, the claim that it is impossible to learn if you don't have perfect cc subtitle in target language is absurd. You can use subtitles in own language to get the meaning.
Subtitles and CC are not transcripts.
While I love the idea, I don’t trust the company with my complete surfing history. What they should have done is to have me opt into each website that I want to use toucan on and do not do anything if I visit others.
I guess you can already do this with Chrome's built-in translation, but that built-in translation leaves a lot to be desired, doesn't it?
So it's doesn't appear to even attempt show the grammar of the target language, including the very basics, such as the word order.
Even for vocabulary acquisition, how is one going to learn noun classes (genders), case endings and articles, things like German separable verbs etc?
If I recall, one is made from original script, one is typed up from aftually spoken audio.
(Not perfect of course, translations never are, but for me (at least) it would ease understanding.)
Would be fun if there was an entire 10 week course that worked up to an episode of real tv that by the time you get to it watching is completely fluent.
Perhaps that would suit you too:
Learn French with daily podcasts https://www.chosesasavoir.com
RSS address: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/FODL4957050068
I use AntennaPod installed with F-Droid, far and away the best podcast player I've found.
(No affiliations or associations, just what I've found useful)
https://www.learner.org/series/destinos-an-introduction-to-s...
I understand spoken Spanish and German much better despite far less education. I have put a lot of work into French and it's very frustrating.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlinear_gloss
Particularly, in the Structure section the Taiwanese example.
Am watching Three Body but the dialogue is sometimes a little tricky to follow.
When I think about how I assimilated Japanese from Anime, the reason it's so doable (IMO) is that the language used is reasonably straightforward and they actually talk quite slowly. I found this once you watch movies in Japanese and noticed it was harder to pick out what people were saying.
Most of the shows on the list are ones I've seen recommended by others at some point, so perhaps if Three-Body is too tricky there you could find some inspiration there
I kind of can't stand the mainland accent, and I can't understand simplified characters. You may have an easier time finding interesting content if you are learning mainland Chinese.
The big problem with Mandarin is that there's a content drought. I ask all my friends here what TV shows, games, YouTubers, movies they recommend. It's kind of hard to find good content in Mandarin.
Off the top of my head, though, there are a few really good ones. Here in Taiwan, though, the best stuff is either mixed with Taiwanese (Southern Hokkien) or purely in Taiwanese. That's a bit inaccessible for L2 folks such as myself, but I'm doing the best I can.
If you're not interested in Taiwanese content, sorry if these are of no use to you.
In no order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marry_My_Dead_Body https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A4%8D%E5%8A%87%E5%A0%B4%E2... (Taiwanese heavy, maybe 100% Taiwanese) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Love_(2021_film) (I think 100% Taiwanese, sorry!)
I think the content/culture drought is one of the most difficult factors in learning Chinese, personally. I used to study Japanese very seriously, and there was always a never-ending stream of amazing anime, games, TV shows, music, you name it.
I will say, though, if you're into music, the Taiwan indie music scene is world-class. Really good stuff.
what does this mean? aren't almost all the shows in Mandarin?
https://www.youtube.com/c/DANLIAOFreeToLearn - "Free To Learn Chinese", teacher uses a "natural method" where all of the content is in Chinese and most difficult words are paraphrased (HSK1-6)
https://www.youtube.com/@ShuoshuoChinese - similar but HSK1-4 and parts of the contents are in Chinese
I would personally recommend: Secret, On Children, A Sun, Light the Night, Office Girls, Scissor Seven, Ancient Detective, Back to 1989
Netflix is hit or miss. You can also just sub to various Chinese TV services.
I am using GPT4 to reformat text from English to Japanese in easy reading mode. It is very good for language study using topics of interest.
> 私は (Watashi wa) [I am] GPT4を使って (GPT4 o tsukatte) [using GPT4] 英語から (Eigo kara) [from English] 日本語へ (Nihongo e) [to Japanese] 簡単な読み物 (Kantan na yomimono) [easy reading mode] に変換します。 (ni henkan shimasu) [to reformat] それは (Sore wa) [It is] 興味深いトピック (Kyoumi bukai topikku) [interesting topics] を使って (o tsukatte) [using] 言語学習 (Gengo gakushuu) [language study] にとても良い (ni totemo yoi) [very good] です。 (desu) [is]
Same, but in German:
> Ich benutze (I am using) [ikh benoot-se] GPT4 (GPT4) [ge-pe-te-fear] um Text (to reformat text) [oom tekst] aus Englisch (from English) [aus engl-ish] zu Japanisch (to Japanese) [tsoo yap-an-ish] in einfachem Lesemodus (in easy reading mode) [in ine-fakh-em leh-se-moh-dus] umzuformatieren (to reformat) [oom-tsoo-for-ma-teer-en]. Es ist sehr (It is very) [es ist zehr] gut für (good for) [goot fuhr] Sprachstudium (language study) [shprakh-shtoo-dee-oom] mit interessanten (using interesting) [mit int-er-es-sant-en] Themen (topics) [tay-men].
The prompt I used:
Create a Japanese easy reading mode version of the given English, breaking it into 2-4 word chunks, providing romaji and English translations in brackets for each phrase. This is intended for language study purposes.
~~
Of course this is just a reader prompt, we could also have chat mode, asking clarifying questions, asking for more examples of a phrase, generate quizzes, etc.
I am at this weird point where I know phonetically much more than I can read. This formatting helps a lot because you get to see the Kanji first, then you use romaji and English only when necessary. Being different scripts helps separate them visually so as not to read the romaji before I want to.
That being said, GPT is still pretty powerful for language learning but you really have to verify more than you trust.
Audio and subs usually don't match for dubbed audio tracks (it's usually ok if you watch a French movie with French subs etc.). I have code that processes the Netflix audio with Whisper ASR, it works very well. Hopefully Netflix don't mind us adding this (my email is in my profile), I think we'll bring this online in a couple of weeks. If any other video provider is interested in having Language Reactor support their site, mail me.
Also, we're rolling out a 'virtual conversation partner' starting today: https://forum.languagelearningwithnetflix.com/t/chat-feature...
Can you really only sign in with google?
I tried the phrase thingy. I don’t get it. It asks me about a word and shows me a sentence and a translation of the sentence. What’s the point here? Shouldn’t the translation be hidden so I have a chance to translate it myself?
There’s a lot of buttons I can click and I don’t get what they do. Shouldn’t I just choose “I understood”, “I didn’t understand” and perhaps a “don’t show this one again”?
How do I report that a sentence doesn’t have the word that the app suggests I should learn?
How do I report typos in sentences?
We've been planning to change auth lib before enabling other login methods, haven't gotten around to it.
>> I tried the phrase thingy. I don’t get it.
Probably the best info is here, should improve situation: https://forum.languagelearningwithnetflix.com/t/update-learn...
>> How do I report that a sentence doesn’t have the word that the app suggests I should learn?
Some words are lemmatised in unexpected ways (el / se are the same lemma). Sometimes the lemmatisation is wrong, despite using sota libs. There's more work to do.
>> How do I report typos in sentences?
It's not implemented.. I'm not aware of the typo issue.
Useful feedback. The project is still a work-in-progress.
With new LLM tools I wonder if it would be possible to export the subtitles from netflix and then translate to the target language
I watch Breaking Bad dubbed in Spanish, subs don't match, and paused to try to guess what they were saying every sentence and did tons of look ups. This took 600 hours. Yes about ten hours per episode. By the end I was ready to find a 100% MONOLINGUAL teacher and communicate with her through the whole of every class (incredible feeling btw) to learn things formally. Learning becomes incredibly exciting and productive when you're ready to go full monolingual with it.
((Was I a false beginner? No. I wasn't primed in school, I had about 1 month Spanish in 9th grade before being forcibly expelled from the class with an F. I was definitely racist against the language age 13-17. I found the teacher playing and making us sing Macarena especially distasteful and that was part of what made me hateful.))
I just gave it a quick try and wasn't impressed by the current state of things.
1a. The Language Reactor-style plugin. On YouTube, it seems to require that I disable AdBlock on the channels I want to watch. Why is that even a requirement?! I didn't like the idea and gave up.
1b. On Netflix, the first film I tried (Weißbier im Blut) failed with "no machine subtitles" or something to that effect. The show does have subtitles, and LR works, so I am not sure what the problem is.
2. I asked it to proofread a paragraph from "Die Schatzinsel". What I got back was a mix of German, English and gibberish (truncated for brevity):
<trancy>
At dabei first ru,h Iig always weiter thought ra "uchthete dead. man Der's Kap chestit"än st mustarr bete the ihn same eine large We suitcaseile in the an front, room dann, sch andlug in er my wieder nightmares mit der, Fa I hadust associated auf den this T thought withisch the, one st-leggedarr sailorte. sch Butär by nowfer und, br weach had long schließlich since stopped mit paying einem sche any attentionuß tolichen the, lyrics geme ofinen the Fl songuch, in and die on this W eveningorte aus,: it " wasR onlyuhe new, to Ihr Dr da. dr Livesüayben,."
andScore it seemed: to9 make/ no10 good
impressionIncorrect on him words because and he phrases: looked None quite
annoyedSuggestions before: continuing None his
conversationPol withishing the:
old- gardener Anfang Taylors about d aachte new rhe ich immerumat,ism....
</trancy>
Taking a slower approach using Youtube worked better.
