Learning German: 10 pieces of advice you can safely ignore
#3 Watch movies in German
Once you have convinced people that you are serious about learning German, people will give you some tips that they found helpful when they were learning English. Movies will come up.
It’s important to understand that while they mean well, and can speak one or two other languages fluently, very few have learned a new language from scratch as an adult. This means that they don’t really know what advice to give to a complete beginner or even a novice.
Watching movies is a great strategy… to perfect your German, but if you are still not able to follow a conversation on the street, don’t bother.
First of all, watching a movie should never feel like hard work, it’s an enjoyable experience, meant for feelings of relaxation, not depression. Having that feeling of relaxation that you get from watching Die Hard for the 1000th time ripped away from you is nothing short of self-flagellation.
Second of all, don’t watch English movies that have been dubbed into German and given German subtitles. There’s so much dissonance going on there that you’re just setting yourself up for failure. Ever heard of the term ‘lost in translation’? Yeah, it’s a thing. Watching English movies dubbed into German is like trying to learn German with Google Translate. Cultural differences in how people talk are very important to pick up on, and these are lost in dubbings. For example, it’s perfectly polite to say to someone in German “give me the salt” whereas in English you would be a little more polite and say “could you pass me that please?” Then there is the lip-sync-twitch — watching someone’s mouth continue to move, long after you heard their sentence end. To me, this is like watching a scratched DVD.
Stick to German TV or movies, with German subtitles. The more simple and stupid they are, the better — you have to strike a balance between entertainment and homework. This is why shows like Tatort (a long running, seriously, like decades long-running, weekly crime/murder mystery series) or Verstehen Sie Spaß (hidden cameras, elaborate pranks on real people… like Candid Camera) are great, they’re predictable (which makes it easier to guess what they are saying and follow along) and they are entertaining. They rarely go into deep topics or have confusing storylines, so you can more or less figure out what’s going on even with no subtitles on mute, and are entertaining enough to keep you watching. The good news is that most German programs come with subtitles and are available online… at least your the GEZ tax is being put to good use somewhere!
Some also claim that watching your favourite English movie in German is a great idea because you already know the plot and even the dialogue. If you put aside for a second that this is probably a great way to ruin your favourite movie for life, then ok, give it a shot. Remember though, taking away the necessity to follow the plot and decode the dialogue is a huge part of comprehension, so you’re kinda reducing the effort required to a small fraction, which is a little like riding your bike downhill in the lowest gear.
So to summarise:
Watching a German show, in German, with German subtitles, once you are able to follow a conversation (around the B1 level) is a great way to better your German.
Watching a Hollywood production, in dubbed German, with or without subtitles, when you are a beginner is a waste of time.
