Learning languages with Netflix: 2020 in review

The whole world watched a lot more Netflix in 2020, and viewership of non-English titles in the U.S. was up over 50% compared to 2019, according to data released by the company. I know I certainly watched way more foreign-language content last year, at least.

In addition to lockdowns giving me a lot more time to kill at home, another factor that helped me double down on foreign-language media consumption was the “Language Learning with Netflix” Chrome extension, which lets you watch a show with two subtitle tracks at once. I started using the extension in fall 2019, and it helped me work on my Japanese and Korean in the run-up to that year’s Polyglot Conference.

As far as I know, Netflix doesn’t produce a Spotify-style* individualized year-end round up for users, but if you go to https://www.netflix.com/viewingactivity you can download a spreadsheet of your viewing history in CSV format. So I did that.

(*My top genres on Spotify were K-Pop and Korean indie in 2020. 😅 In 2019, it was Turkish pop and Lebanese pop. )

Here’s what I found: in 2020, I watched a total of 204 episodes of Korean TV on Netflix, from 16 different shows — which makes sense since I’ve been focusing on Korean for most of the past year. My second-most viewed language was German with 51 episodes from three different shows, and then Spanish (38 episodes, one show), Japanese (32 episodes, 4 shows but mostly incomplete, one with lots of English), Turkish (31 episodes, two shows, sometimes with Arabic audio), Hebrew (25 episodes, three shows including one that was half in Arabic), Italian (24 episodes, one show), Hindi (23 episodes, two shows), Arabic (9 episodes, two shows (incomplete)), Polish (8 episodes, one show), and Mandarin (6 episodes, one show).

Off of Netflix, I also recently binge-watched 48 episodes of one show in Neapolitan, which would make Italian my second-most viewed language over all with a total of 62 episodes (if you count Neapolitan and Italian as one language, I guess).

These were the shows I watched the most episodes of in 2020:

• Money Heist/La casa de papel (Spanish, 4 seasons, 38 episodes) Entertaining show with lots of twists. Also, Netflix is apparently working on a Korean remake, which should be interesting.
• Dark (German, 3 seasons, 26 episodes) Time travel mystery thriller that gets wilder each season. I think this show and Money Heist are the two that have gotten most traction in the U.S.
• Suburra: Blood on Rome (Italian, 3 seasons, 24 episodes) Cool show about the intersection between organized crime, politics and religion in Rome. Features lots of Sinti/Romani dialog, though I’ve unfortunately forgotten most of what I learned about it before. The Roman dialect is also quite interesting. Was a good warm-up for the more hard-core (both narratively and linguistically) Gomorrah which I watched right after this.
• Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung (Korean, 1 season, 20 episodes) Most Korean dramas are just one season long, so this one ranks highest simply because it had a longer-than-average season. Intriguing historical drama/romantic comedy from the late Choson era, as the country is beginning to grapple with influences from the West. (Korean historical dramas are also interesting linguistically because a lot of the verb endings and constructions are different.)
• Stranger (Korean, 1 season, 18 episodes) Crime thriller centered around corrupt prosecutors, police and business magnates. A second season did come out in the fall, which I haven’t watched yet.
• Mr. Sunshine (Korean, 1 season, 18 episodes) Historical drama from the end of the Choson era and beginning of Japanese occupation. Also includes a lot of Japanese and English dialog. Korean subtitles weren’t available on Netflix for this, so I watched it with Japanese subtitles instead.
• My Country: The New Age (Korean, 1 season, 16 episodes) Historical drama set at the end of the Goryeo and the beginning of the Choson dynasty. The first few episodes (which include an aborted attempt to invade the Ming dynasty) were great but I started to lose interest towards the end.
• Itaewon Class (Korean, 1 season, 16 episodes) Revenge drama centered around a bar-restaurant in Seoul’s Itaewon district, which ironically became a big Covid hotspot right when I started watching this show.
• The Gift (Turkish, 2 seasons, 16 episodes) Mystery thriller involving the archaeological site at Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey. Interestingly, some of the mysterious beings in the show speak Kurdish or Syriac. 🤔 Available with Syrian Arabic audio so I watched half of the show in Arabic.
• Start-Up (Korean, 1 season, 16 episodes) The premise of this show feels hilariously convoluted (like, even more than usual for a Korean drama), but it was a fun watch overall.
• Memories of the Alhambra (Korean, 1 season, 16 episodes) Intriguing science-fiction drama, about half of which is set in Granada, Spain. Features Korean actors trying to speak Spanish with varying degrees of success. Also many of the “Spanish” scenes were clearly shot in Eastern Europe (specifically Hungary and Croatia).
• Sacred Games (Hindi, 2 seasons, 16 episodes) Indian crime thriller that touches on the history of organized crime and religious conflict in Mumbai.
• Babylon Berlin (German, 1 season, 12 episodes) Weimar-era neo-noir drama, lots of fun to watch. I watched the first two seasons years ago (while I was brushing up on my German for the Bratislava Polyglot Gathering) and season three came out in 2020. A lot of dialog is in the local Berlin dialect (e.g. “wat is dit?” instead of “Was ist das?”)
• My Holo Love (Korean, 1 season, 12 episodes) Fun science-fiction romance.
• How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) (German, 2 seasons, 12 episodes) Irreverent Gen-Z high-school crime show about dark web drug dealing. Features a group of Dutch characters who speak German with the main characters, and has a bit of linguistic humor resulting from that.
• Fauda (Hebrew/Arabic, 1 season, 12 episodes) I watched the first two seasons in 2019, and season three came out in 2020. A lot of the latest season is set in Gaza instead of the West Bank, and the Gazan characters speak with a different accent which feels a little more like Egyptian.
• The Protector (Turkish, 1 season, 10 episodes) There are four seasons in total but I’ve only watched one so far. Fantasy show based on an alternate history of Istanbul.
• Crash Landing on You (Korean, 1 season, 11 episodes in 2020) I started watching this North/South Korean romantic drama in 2019 and it was the first Korean show I watched to completion. Coincidentally, I had just finished reading a great non-fiction book about life in North Korea (Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea) just before watching this, which I think helped me appreciate the depictions of the country more. It was also interesting to hear (South Korean actors’ renditions of) different North Korean regional accents.

I’ve been trying to balance my weekly TV consumption geographically lately, which means watching roughly two episodes a week in an East Asian language (mostly Korean), two episodes in a European language, and two episodes in a Middle Eastern language (mostly Turkish).

For the next show on the European track, I’m planning to watch the French weed comedy Family Business, which would actually be the first French TV show I’ve ever watched. After that I think I’ll watch something in Portuguese, and then probably circle back to something in German. On the East Asian track, I just finished Strangers from Hell and haven’t decided what to watch next, since there are so many shows to choose from. For the Middle Eastern track, I’m going to wrap up Ethos and then either get back to The Protector or start watching Black Money Love, both of which also have Syrian Arabic audio.

My New Year’s resolution for 2021 is to get this blog going again, which means writing more short posts on a weekly basis, instead of spending weeks putting together a long post and then taking month-long breaks in between like I’ve being doing the past few years.

If you happen to be friends with me on Facebook, you’ll know I quite often post random thoughts on there about languages and language-learning, and I figure many of those Facebook posts can be expanded on (just a bit) to turn them into short blog posts. My goal will be to write things up within a single day (a rhythm I’m familiar with from my day job as a reporter) instead of dragging things out.

Anyway, stay tuned for next week!