Foreign films as a language learning aid

Hey folks, this might sound a little bit convoluted, but bear with me.

I’ve always had a desire to learn a second language, but being an ugly American, I’ve never had the resolve to make it happen. I blame both myself for not pursuing it more aggressively in school as well as school itself for failing to make it attractive, but that’s all beside the point. Anyway, the French edition of Rosetta Stone has been sitting neglected in my applications folder for years now, but I’ve fired it up again this week because my family is planning a trip to Italy and France around Christmas time, and with the concrete goal in mind of not being totally clueless come December, I think I might be able to stick with it this time.

Now, the point of the thread. Given where I live and who I associate with day to day, I’m not likely to have much opportunity to practice anything I pick up in real conversation, but I’ve always heard that while it’s far from a perfect substitute, there is a lot of value in watching as many movies and TV shows as you can without any subtitles once you’ve grown your vocabulary past a certain point. As I’ve said, I just started this week and I’m a long way off from that, but I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start trying to come up with some French films to seek out if or when I get there. My knowledge of French cinema doesn’t extend too far beyond the French New Wave, and while I love Godard and Truffaut, their dialogue is difficult even in English translation. I thought, then, that I might as well ask this gang of multinational cinephiles if they can recommend any French movies or television with reasonably straightforward language that I can file away for some point down the road.

So how about it? Can any of you point me in a good direction for this? And if it so happens I’m not the only one here with this rather specific interest, feel free to request or recommend media in whatever other languages you may be interested in learning.

I’m afraid my knowledge of French film is very limited, but I thought Les Choristes (The Chorus in English) was pretty good. It’s about a teacher who ends up at a strict boarding school, and decides to change the attitude of his students by beginning a choir, despite the strong opposition of the director of the school.

Le Pianiste is another one. It’s about a Jewish pianist during WWII who is imprisoned in a concentration camp. Beyond that, I’m not to sure, as I never had the opportunity to finish it.

La Famille Bélier is about a girl who is the only member of her family that isn’t deaf, having to translate for them from sign language to French wherever they go, and who discovers that she is a talented singer.

There’s a list here of a number of French films (“the best [French] films of all time according to viewers”).

I suggest, unless your French is already pretty good, to watch movies with the English subtitles. This allows you to pick up on what they’re saying better, and to associate English words with the French ones. Otherwise, you’ll pick out the few words that you know, but you won’t learn many new ones. And, if you can, watch dubbed or subtitled movies that you’re already familiar with.

I’m afraid I can’t remember how straightforward the language was in a lot of the above. If you want to see a good movie, you might have to compromise on that… Watching dubbed movies you’ve seen already is your best bet to begin with. I also recommend that you watch a movie more than once. You’ll pick up more and more on subsequent viewings rather than having to start with a fresh story and maybe a different accent with another film.

Feel free to throw a PM my way if you want French help or practice.

Wonderful, thanks a lot. I think I’ll probably take a look at those with the subs sooner rather than later, but the idea is to do it without them when I’ve hit the point where my French is pretty good. I read somewhere that as a rule of thumb, if you know the 2,000 most commonly occurring words in a given language, you can make sense of about 70-80% of a lot of films in that language. This is really a next-step idea I plan to pursue some months from now, I just thought I’d get a jump on making a list now.

One great thing about language learning is that your subconscious works on it while you’re asleep, so if you listen to enough French (if you can, watch French TV and listen to French radio), even if you don’t understand most of what is being said, it will help. Just be sure to supplement your Rosetta Stone learning with that sort of thing, as it is easy enough to understand simple sentences and words, but when you’re actually listening to a steady stream of French, it becomes far more challenging to pick them out. Half the challenge is just being able to recognize a word or phrase you know amidst a bunch of words you don’t understand as well.

To reiterate: don’t wait a few months before listening to people actually speaking French in some sort of media. Even if you don’t understand a word they’re saying, or it’s just in the background, it will help you in the long run. Immersion is the best way to learn a language, so the closer you can get to that, the better.