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When my wife first moved to the States, she took some free classes that gave her a good foundation, but I credit Friends with teaching her English. Even today, nearly 20 years later, she's still gaining English from Friends. Teaching in China, I had a teenage girl ask for a good SciFi show, and I gave her Stargate SG-1. A few weeks later, she came to me and asked, "What does 'For crying out loud' mean?" It was a proud moment.

I watched The Empire Strikes Back around 100 times during the summer of 1980. (Pre-Internet, only 1 cable TV channel and $2 matinee.) I absolutely believe you watched "Into the Spider-Verse" 50 times.,

What Lamont tells us at about 16:00 is spot-on. Nations that dub FROM English have a lower fluency in English. Can confirm because I lived in Germany for 3 years. Germans are GENERALLY good but not astounding. The Nordic states, though? Amazing. I met some 11 and 12-year-olds in Denmark who were as competent as kids in my own family. When I asked, they said, “I don’t know. We watch a lot of American cartoons and movies.” Then they proceeded to run back to the playground while I gushed to their parents about how impressive their kids are.

I had never thought of creating a new profile in a different language. I'm going to try this now.

I think one advantage of dubs is that the language is likely to be 'standard'. When trying to find a film I could watch repeatedly in Japanese, I chose the anime 'Your Name', but then was told by a Japanese friend to avoid it as half the dialogue is in a very rural colloquial accent. So while its great to have a favourite film or series to rewatch, unless you are fairly advanced in the language I think you have to make sure the characters are speaking the 'standard' language. One other useful hint on Netflix is that for some films/series they have a voice over for the deaf. This is really useful for language learning as you have a good quality narrator essentially telling you what you are watching - I reckon it doubles the 'real' time input of any series.

I watched Nyad in Spanish about 20 times and could watch it 20 times more, I absolutely love that film.

I've seen Die Hard, Lethal Weapon 2, and Starship Troopers all more than 50 times. I can recite music, quotes, facial expressions, etc for those movies.

12:49 after watching my fair share of medical dramas, I know quite a few pieces of medical terminology in my TL that I hardly even know in English!

Pro tip for people who can't find the language in their country on Netflix and don't have a VPN,, if you switch your account language to the language you're learning, then it'll be an available option(you just need to have enough of the basics to still navigate with the account language switched),,, I'm in Canada and did it with Korean,, it works great Edit, he mentioned it a couple minutes later in the video, lol

With netflix of course you can download the movies and listen to the audio of the shows/movies. But it opened up a new world for me when I realized I could record the audio of shows/movies I watch on other streaming services of which I can't download onto my phone.

Also - that hat is so dope. I gotta beef up my fitted cap collection.

Great advice as always! I'll be making those changes to my Netflix account 😊

I've been re-watching Bridgeton in Hungarian while waiting for season 3 to drop! I have made a new profile on my netflix account for Hungarian content only, but I still have to check it's dubbed and not just subtitled.

I too watched a show more than 50 times for the same reasons than you. It was not even a goal or a challenge, I just love it and keep watching/listening to it. Basically every other day I listen to it from A to Z

It's cool to have seen your growth over the years, man.

I am watching original Pokémon and jojo in French right now 😄

I don’t know, I wouldn’t knock people who say they learn English through film and tv but from my experience trying to watch a tv show or movie in another language doesn’t work for me. But it seems to be a popular thing within learning a language on KZfaq that pretty much anyone will recommend it. I usually can recognize words in movies after studying by using simpler methods. And I usually like using tv and films as a way to test my knowledge of what I’ve been studying rather than being a study method I can use. Which is why I don’t anime to learn Japanese but it’s feels like a very popular method to learn Japanese. I can understand it too, If you watch an anime a couple times over, word mine with anki, study the flash cards , but I’m not really into it.

yeah, i'm 20 and a man, and i fucking love Bluey 😂 it's honestly a very wholesome and funny show, and it's available in like a kajillion languages. the episodes are really short and i find them quite a good starting point for beginner stages of learning 😊

I actually have Disney+ just for this reason. Watched movies and shows for about a year now and think I've only watched Hamilton in English. I can't watch something more than a couple times before getting bored, but hopefully I can find something to binge watch 50 times.

08:00 watching with the audio description track on is a tip I picked up from MattvsJapan and it's so underrated. In fact I think it's the best way for someone with a very high level of reading comprehension but a low level of aural comprehension, to get their raw listening ability up. Because you can usually have closed captions *and* audio description. So you won't miss any of the dialogue and the content will still be very enjoyable even at a high level, but you'll still get loads of practise audio because the description track isn't subtitled (since it's for blind people). Not only that but it's possibly the perfect comprehensible input for an adult learner, since it's literally describing the events that you're seeing unfold on the screen in a series/movie whose plot you're (hopefully) interested in. Lil personal thing: my Swedish friend tells me literally the only thing I can say with good pronunciation and accurate pitch accent is "En röd N förvandlas till ett spektrum av färger". And it's because, I quite like Swedish TV, and have watched at least five series on Netflix all with Swedish audio description, which starts each episode with a voice explaining the Netflix logo animation. Have probably heard that single sentence at least a hundred times if not more. Whereas reading anything else in Swedish, even if I'm trying really hard to get my pronunciation right, sounds incredibly British. And it's effortful, whereas when imitating the audio description track, I don't really have to think about it, it just feels like doing an impression of someone for a laugh. Really put into perspective for me how much listening is required for one to develop a good accent.

Dear Lemont, thank you very much for the extremely interesting and enriching content. In one of your interviews you mentioned that you'd likely choose to learn Norwegian instead of Swedish if you were going to start learning it today. Why would you do this? I started learning Swedish out of curiosity and I got very inspired by watching your videos. Maybe you could make a video on Scandinavian languages, about their similarities and respective advantages of learning? That might be pretty interesting for those who are interested in such languages. Thank you very much! tack så mycket!

You know what, you've inspired me. I'm going to try and dust off my French skills - I took AP French in Highschool but I've completely lost my near-fluency in the years since. Any great French content on Netflix that you can reccomend?

My 'into the spiderverse' was 'blue eyed samurai'. (Samurai de ojos azules) I'm not watching it 50 times, but it's been 3 times already and i know im gonna be rewatching it another few times at least. I just enjoy it a lot. (And by the way, I actually watched it with audio descripción too, so there's always a voice descibing everything thats happening. I first thought that might be too annoying but its super useful for learning more words and I like the voice they used)

Funny that you posted this. I just binged Heartstopper on Netflix, and there are SO MANY language dubs of that show. I just finished watching in Japanese. (Sadly, of all the languages they have, they didn't have Russian. But I imagine I can find it...elsewhere, if I wanted to rewatch it, haha.) But it's a super cute show, with lots of dialogue to practice with, but the conversations are rather simple, with quite a few repeated topics or phrases. But I 100% recommend making a profile in your target language. If you can't get a VPN, that's your next best bet, as Netflix literally hides certain dubs/subs from English profiles, despite them being available in your country, it's wild and I hate it. I definitely got more Japanese options once I changed my language. (But if you can get a VPN, absolutely do so!)

So that's why you have the access to Swedish Storytell. I thought it was weird I couldn't pick Swedish in the app. I might just try SharkVPN for that. I also tried Pokémon for Swedish as a total beginner and it was really difficult without subtitles, but hearing over again the intro song eventually led me to learning few phrases and words. I'd still say listening to even 1% comprehensive input is worth, especially if you analyse it too. though, Netflix subtitles do poor job of matching actual speech. You do however bring up a very good point about repeating stuff that's high quality. For me it was rewatchng Breaking Bad for learning German. It was wonderful. Also recently found out German podcast that reads Reddit stories which I am addicted to in English, and I already picked up a few half-known or new words from that! And for Swedish I learnt many words from listening to indie band Humörsvängnijngar which repeats phrases in songs constantly. An incredibly amazing indie music too! I've kind of forgotten about watching content in Swedish besides just listening to short stories. So your speech helped me now convince myself to go back into Swedish Pokémon or whatever else fitting my taste. Tack för din hjälp och har en bra tagen!

When i was at school and Lord of the Rings had just released, i watched that movie _a lot_. There was no Netflix back then, so we just watched the same DVDs over and over again. At that time i was still not comfortable watching movies in English. But i thought the voices in the trailer were very cool and i knew that movie by heart anyway, so i just kept watching the original version and "shadowing" all my favourite lines. I then did the same for Terminator 2 and Die Hard. And while that didn't make me fluent, it at least got me to a point where i could understand most of and feel comfortable with other movies and TV shows in English. Because i watched three movies basically on repeat. That might sound crazy, but considering that a surprisingly small number of words make up a surprisingly large percentage of a language - if you know every word of three long movies, you probably know the core vocabulary of that language pretty well. So yeah, find something you can obsess over in your target language, that's the gateway to immersion.

Great video! I love to rewatch TV shows, so I started to watch them in French to get more use out of it😁

Just started watching Legend of Korra in German dub on Netflix. Been annoyed for ages they didnt have ATLA in any other languages then realised they have Korra in a few!

There are loads of movies i have seen more than 50 times. Sometimes, for example, ill put Aliens on and then immediately watch it again once it has finished. And ill do a double watch some times 4 days in a row. I watch them so much i know all the dialogue in the movies 😎

As a fellow language enthusiast who happens to make their living as a professional 3D Animator (yes, it's the best job ever) I just enjoy the hell out of how much love Lamont has for The Spiderverse movies. (and Animation in general ♥♥♥) And he is correct btw. The amount of effort and skill put into making Into The Spiderverse is way above the norm. It literally made animation history and was regarded as THE modern masterpiece in the industry. Until Across the Spiderverse came out that is. Somehow the team at Sony Imageworks managed to surpass themselves. If anyone here happens to be interested in making movies (not just animation. just, movies. fullstop.) just watch and analyse the crap out of Across The Spiderverse. I'm not kidding. I'm senior enough to have become a teacher now too and this is one of the first things I tell my students. Its literally a masterclass in pretty much everything. just sayin... 🙃

I’m sure that would help me a lot. Whether I could retain some of my sanity, is an open question. Kids are so great at watching stuff over and over again, but adults don’t seem to like it as much. I remember when i was in my twenties, i was teaching English in Taiwan and the kids in school were required to memorize English texts (although most of them were not doing itvwell). I decided to try it myself with my intermediate and advanced Chinese textbooks. Although it was pretty boring, my speaking skills improved a lot. I started using really authentic sentences that did not sound translated from English. I would write much better (linguistically) although people thought it was weird because my handwriting looked worse than somebody in kindergarten.

Are you traveling in to Sweden this summer? We need an update!

Oh, Arcane has a Japanese dub. Handy to know.

Subtitles rarely match audio unfortunately, but the Language Reactor extension can fix that, total game changer for language learning imo.

so should i just watch netflix in my target language even if my vocabulary in it is approximately 37 words? genuine question, how much do i need to understand for it to be actually effective?

I can attest to the fact that watching movies and TV in your target language can make you fluent: In 1989 and 1990, I taught English in Tokyo at a conversation-based school. One of the students...who was in the most advanced level we had...had never been to the United States or any other English-speaking country, but had learned it all from movies and TV. The guy was amazing. The only downside was that one of his favorite genres was detective and police investigation...so, he occasionally said things that came across as odd to a native speaker unless you knew that about him. (even then, it was a little strange). His English was easily as good as other students I had who had spent a couple years in the UK, Canada, US, or Australia (those were the countries I remember) as a student abroad or something. The only person who was better than that group was one of the American Embassy translators that attended (who asked for non-American instructors when possible to gain more exposure to other variations of English). As for the movie I'd watch 50 times...The Fifth Element. We've already watched it about 20...it's a favorite and loud enough to mask fireworks during Independence Day and New Years (one of our dogs is super frightened of them and thunderstorms). I need to see what languages it's available in. :) Thanks!

Good Swedish movie series: Beck Johan falk Bron (both danish and swedish) Irene huss Wallander // Swedish guy

As usual, top notch advice 👏

A problem i come across is there is no cc subtitles so there is the same meaning in the audio and subtitles but different words used, which is very annoying when trying to learn a language (for me its italian), is there any fix to this? greetings from croatia,

Me gusto tu gorra, ¿donde la compraste?

I'm getting more and more the sense that this is just an ad for Bridgeton. But anyway great video, I'll guess I'll check out Bridgeton. Also I just realised that I do know a movie I could watch! The Truman show! I've seen it so many times in English already. Förresten, jag har inte sett tv serien. Men Björnstad är en riktigt bra bok och jag tycker att du borde läsa den om du inte har gjort det redan. Kanske faller den dig i smak. Brukar själv alltid läsa böcker på engelska men då det finns en riktigt bra bok som faktiskt originellt är skriven på Svenska, då fan. En annan grej, lite ur säsong just nu men, Kalle ankas jul. Obligatorisk jultittning, varje julafton klockan ett. Om du inte har sett den ännu så har du en lucka i din allmänbildning.

Any Koreans or Korean-learners know a show or sitcom that's good for learning the language, similar to what Friends does for ppl learning English?

I changed my profile to spanish and put the vpn to spain, and yet disney plus still doesn't give me the spain spanish dub of star wars the clone wars. The audio is available, and the subtitles are available in latin american spanish... but no spain spanish :( any ideas how to get it?

I suppose if I ever buy any (or otherwise have one that's free) I probably could when I get started.

Does anyone have tips on finding content in Irish? Im looking to learn the language but am having lots of trouble finding things to listen to. Thanks in advance for any help 🙌🏻

Whomever said you could not watch a Spiderman movie 50 times, has not heard of The Rocky Horror Picture Show phenomenon. 300 times was normal for that cult fave..

Does anyone know if Max shows dubs if you use a VPN? I have a Max (and Hulu) subscription but have generally been disappointed in the availability of subs or dubs not in English, Spanish or Portuguese, especially compared to Netflix or Disney+.

Migaku!

Started watching Peppa Pig in French on Netflix. Thought it would be the most tedious task ever, however I am slightly ashamed to say I ended binge watching it, and enjoyed the whole series.

russian + russian subtitles feels very weird i mean there is so muche word in this languagues (like 20+ variations for any verbs or even word) even when you translate you steel don't understand sometimes lol

For some languages its not so easy I tried it with Korean

Does simply changing the language of your already existing Netflix account not work, since I tried doing so to get more movies in Dutch and the language selection hasn’t changed?

Where did the hat come from!

Pepper pig is free on youtube 👍👍

New video!

15:50 I do think this is just a coincidence. Sure, the nordic countries would suggest there's a correlation, but on the polar opposite you've got Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, etc. which despite not dubbing their shows (back in the 90s not even kids cartoons), they still fare a lot worse than even countries like France and Germany, which do dub everything. Sure, not dubbing probably is a factor, but the majority of it can be attributed to socio-economic circumstance and nationalistic sentiment.

To anyone who thinks you can’t watch something repeatedly 50 times you underestimate my uber autism

I prefer using the original audio, not dubs. It would be too many decisions to make otherwise. First, what to watch and, second, what language to watch it in.

I so badly want to use your voice to improve my English.

FFS, now I want to eat a burger.

First