Fixing my accents comprehension problem
I first came to US when I was 18, but I never stayed for more than 3 months at a time. I have decent English, but I’m just no good with comprehending foreign accents. I have hard time understanding anything other than perfect American accent.
Because of this, I always watch movies with subtitles. I would probably get 85% of what was said, but I’m always worried of missing something in those remaining 15%. Especially when watching Grand Tour, I don’t want to miss any jokes!
I think it would help me a lot if I just stopped using subtitles, but I’m watching movies for entertainment, not studying. Well, why not have both. I came up with this super simple method:
- Watch a movie without subtitles
- If you miss anything, re-watch last 5 seconds with subtitles
If you’re watching movies on a computer like me (I don’t have a TV…), then you can reach out to the keyboard at any time.
It should be pretty easy to write Apple Script to do this with your favorite media player, but I went directly to the source and forked IINA, a new open-source video player for macOS:
That’s all it took! (Well, almost.) This piece of code goes back 5 seconds, enables subtitles, continues playback, then disables subtitles.
Like I said, should be equally easy to write a simple AppleScript for VLC, or what have you, but I’m more fluent in Swift, so I went with that.
I’ll let you know how my new method of relaxing/studying works out!
PS: Looking for a new movie to watch? Check out our Tinder, but for movies — Popcorn!
