Learning a Language for Film Studies

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MichaelB
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#26 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 09, 2013 9:26 am

Pronunciation is much easier if the spelling system is both phonetic and consistent - which isn't the case with either English or French!

However, it more or less is the case with Italian, Spanish, German and Slavic languages like Czech and Polish, so in theory pronunciation should be straightforward. That said, in the case of a language like Polish, there's sometimes a pretty big gap between knowing how a word should be pronounced and actually being able to get your tongue around it - and I'm very glad that my piano teacher taught me how to pronounce the name 'Dvořák' correctly when I was still in single figures, as it means that the distinctively Slavic 'ř'/'rz' sound holds no terrors for me.

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colinr0380
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#27 Post by colinr0380 » Thu May 09, 2013 11:54 am

MichaelB wrote:Amusingly enough, though, Ken Loach is much bigger in France than he is in any English-speaking country, even though he tends to favour extreme regional authenticity when it comes to accents/dialects. But I suspect that's part of the problem - English speakers, especially outside the UK, often find his films hard to follow (I believe they often get subtitled in the US, and Sweet Sixteen had its first reel subtitled on its British theatrical release in order to ease people into it). In France, this obviously wouldn't be an issue at all, and so his films are probably easier viewing for that reason. (Similarly, Visconti had to redub La Terra Trema into Italian when Italian audiences found its original Sicilian dialect incomprehensible - but audiences reliant on subtitles wouldn't have been bothered at all).
To quote the Tony Garnett interview in this month's Sight and Sound:
[On Kes] I showed it to the man from UA, and as he walked out he said to me, " I would have preferred Hungarian"! He couldn't understand a word of it. The distributor here refused to put it out. Finally another distributor put it out in five cinemas in Yorkshire and it broke the house record in every one, so then it came to London. They wanted us to do subtitles everywhere south of Nottingham.

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GaryC
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#28 Post by GaryC » Thu May 09, 2013 12:10 pm

MichaelB wrote:Amusingly enough, though, Ken Loach is much bigger in France than he is in any English-speaking country, even though he tends to favour extreme regional authenticity when it comes to accents/dialects. But I suspect that's part of the problem - English speakers, especially outside the UK, often find his films hard to follow (I believe they often get subtitled in the US, and Sweet Sixteen had its first reel subtitled on its British theatrical release in order to ease people into it). In France, this obviously wouldn't be an issue at all, and so his films are probably easier viewing for that reason.
Sweet Sixteen has been shown at least twice on BBC2 with English subtitles throughout...and the first screening caused Scottish viewers to complain about this!

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#29 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu May 09, 2013 12:29 pm

YnEoS wrote:^on pronunciation

Do you think that might have something to do with having been exposed to the language a lot through films beforehand? I've heard lots of language learners say that while passive listening before learning is nearly useless in terms of passive acquisition, it does give you a good sense for the feel of a language. Not that a lot of language listening automatically equates perfect pronunciation, but perhaps it gives you a very strong idea of how the language should sound, and helps you notice flaws in your pronunciation very early in the learning process.
This undoubtedly helps. I find from watching so many foreign films I have an instinctive feel for how different languages sound. I don't know why. My sister is like this, too.

But this ability, at least for me, is unrelated to exposure. When I started taking Latin in University, I'd never really heard the language before and couldn't tell you how to pronounce it, but I got the pronunciation down quickly after the first lesson on it. Then it was on to the truly difficult stuff, like all those goddamn conjugations.

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colinr0380
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#30 Post by colinr0380 » Thu May 09, 2013 1:00 pm

I can't remember if I've told the story before of when I was in my early teens and taking a Latin GCSE course with a small group of other pupils after school. Looking in the TV listings one day I saw a film showing late at night which just said 'In Latin With English subtitles'. There had been no more information on the page than that. Trying to be helpful I mentioned it to the teacher!

Of course that film was Sebastiane, and the teacher who had said she would watch out for it very delicately told me at the next week's lesson that it wasn't particularly suitable for showing in class! (And ignored my questions asking why not, since it was in spoken Latin) It took me a few years to finally find out exactly why it was unsuitable!

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Black Hat
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#31 Post by Black Hat » Thu May 09, 2013 1:03 pm

May I also suggest putting on a news channel of the language you want to learn. My French is nowhere near as sharp as it should be but whenever I get annoyed about that watching the French news helps me out a great deal.

Also any suggestions on how or where on the web to learn Czech? A buddy of mine is learning.

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TMDaines
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#32 Post by TMDaines » Thu May 09, 2013 2:01 pm

Black Hat wrote:May I also suggest putting on a news channel of the language you want to learn. My French is nowhere near as sharp as it should be but whenever I get annoyed about that watching the French news helps me out a great deal.
SBS in Australia is great for this sort of stuff. They do so much foreign language audio material on a variety of stuff. They tend to be my go-to Italian podcast. DW has a lot of good stuff for German learners.

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YnEoS
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#33 Post by YnEoS » Thu May 09, 2013 2:08 pm

Black Hat wrote:Also any suggestions on how or where on the web to learn Czech? A buddy of mine is learning.
If you've got a lot of motivation there's a Foreign Service Institute introduction course and a complete Defense Language Institute course for Czech in the public domain. They're not exactly fun and the learning curve is steep, but they're free and extensive with lots of audio materials.

A lot of times if you take the self-teaching path these are the only in depth resources available for a lot of less popular languages. I've been pretty heavily dependent on them for learning Cantonese.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#34 Post by Lemmy Caution » Thu May 09, 2013 3:50 pm

I've always thought the news was rather difficult in a foreign language because the context shifts every few minutes and every story has its own terminology. I always thought it was easier to tackle a show such as a travel program or cooking or something else with a consistent theme. I've found news easier if first you watch/read the news in your native language and then try the foreign news after you're familiar with what went down.

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Never Cursed
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#35 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Nov 01, 2022 2:45 am

Not entirely certain where else to ask this: does anyone else here have expertise (either native-speaker level or high secondary proficiency) in Modern Hebrew?

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knives
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#36 Post by knives » Tue Nov 01, 2022 6:13 am

I do albeit I’m better with medieval Hebrew.

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ellipsis7
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#37 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue Nov 01, 2022 11:09 am

MichaelB wrote:
Thu May 09, 2013 5:03 am
(Similarly, Visconti had to redub La Terra Trema into Italian when Italian audiences found its original Sicilian dialect incomprehensible - but audiences reliant on subtitles wouldn't have been bothered at all).
There was the original version in Sicilian dialect which was shown in 1948 at the Venice Film Festival and later an Italian dubbed & foreshortened version was released into theatres in 1950... The script, first published in 1953 by Bianco e Nero Editore and later by Cappelli, has both the original dialogue in Sicilian dialect and the Italian translation alongside...
Per la lavorazione del film, iniziata nel novembre del 1947, Visconti ricorse solamente ad attori non professionisti. Sono infatti gli abitanti di Aci Trezza che davanti alla macchina da presa parlano in lingua siciliana e vivono la loro dura esistenza quotidiana.
Il film viene proiettato per la prima volta il 2 settembre 1948 alla Mostra del cinema di Venezia. Esce poi nelle sale nel maggio del 1950 in un'edizione ridotta e doppiata in un "dialetto" siciliano più comprensibile.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#38 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Nov 01, 2022 6:36 pm

knives wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 6:13 am
I do albeit I’m better with medieval Hebrew.
What made you take up mediaeval Hebrew?

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knives
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#39 Post by knives » Tue Nov 01, 2022 6:38 pm

Levi ben Gershom

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#40 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:56 pm

You're really leaving me with more questions than answers here.

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knives
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#41 Post by knives » Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:14 pm

I’m interested in medieval philosophy so the Hebrew texts I usually pick up are of that variety.

beamish14
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#42 Post by beamish14 » Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:37 pm

Do a lot of film graduate programs still demand a level of proven competency in a language other than English? I know UCLA’s does (did?)

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domino harvey
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#43 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:42 pm

Yep (or should I say, oui)

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#44 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:52 pm

knives wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:14 pm
I’m interested in medieval philosophy so the Hebrew texts I usually pick up are of that variety.
What's the relation of mediaeval Hebrew to modern Hebrew? Is it like middle English to modern English in terms of comprehensibility?

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knives
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#45 Post by knives » Tue Nov 01, 2022 10:26 pm

It depends a lot on location. The German and especially French located writers are heavily Aramaic infused whereas the Spanish writers and their diaspora have a heavy Arabic sensibility, but are generally more comprehensible to modern readers.

Between modern and medieval Hebrew there’s a lot of similarities in vocabulary thanks to a few quirks in Semitic languages. The grammar can be radically different though thanks to modern Israeli Hebrew being heavily influenced by Germanic Yiddish grammar. A lot of concepts missing from older versions of Hebrew have been filled in with Arabic and English words.

One of the most interesting changes has been in the word אלא which used to mean rather with the implication of retracting from the previous clause (for example you might say, I thought I’d like ice cream אלא it was pickled flavored) which has become more or less become synonymous with אבל which means something like ‘but’ as an addition to an otherwise true statement (e.g. that was fun אבל I’m really tired).

To more clearly answer you any modern Hebrew speaker could pick up a text from even two thousand years ago and basically understand what’s being said with words largely being spelled the same and usually meaning the same thing. Even Biblical Hebrew isn’t that different so that less technical texts are fairly intelligible (something like Isaiah is basically incomprehensible for most Israelis though).

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#46 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Nov 01, 2022 10:38 pm

That's pretty fascinating. Thanks.
knives wrote:It depends a lot on location. The German and especially French located writers are heavily Aramaic infused whereas the Spanish writers and their diaspora have a heavy Arabic sensibility, but are generally more comprehensible to modern readers.
Funnily, the same for middle English. The closer an ME writer was to London, the more comprehensible they are to modern speakers because the London dialect was the basis for modern English thanks to chancery standardization. So while a modern speaker can read a London-based author like Chaucer with only a bit of effort, a work written in northern England like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is going to present a lot more difficulties.

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MichaelB
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#47 Post by MichaelB » Wed Nov 02, 2022 4:28 am

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:42 pm
Yep (or should I say, oui)
Out of curiosity, how would they define "proven competency"?

For instance, I'm not remotely fluent in any language other than English, but I can certainly get by in French and Italian, even if my Polish and Czech are strictly one-way in that I can increasingly get the gist (my Polish vocabulary in particular is now well into four figures and gets a daily workout), but don't ask me to devise even basic sentences on my own unless you fancy a massive belly laugh at my expense.

But when I joined the BFI in 2002, free French classes were a staff perk (sadly axed in the very next cost-cutting round), and I remember my teacher saying after the initial assessment that my spoken French was pretty good but my written French was... well, probably what you'd expect from someone who's watched loads of French films, read quite a few French subtitles, spoken a fair bit of French, but hadn't actually written anything longer than a sentence since I walked out of the A-level exam room nearly two decades earlier.

Handily, my Indicator colleague Nora Mehenni is a native French speaker, so whenever we handle French-language material (such as those Bertrand Tavernier video essays in the Bogart box) she does a literal translation, I convert this into more idiomatically English subtitles, and she cross-checks them for any mistakes that I might have introduced along the way. Which works very well because we're both cine-literate enough not to fall into the trap that I sometimes encounter with subtitled extras, a favourite example being a reference to "Rossellini's film about the doctors", which caused much head-scratching on my part until I realised that the interviewee wasn't saying "i medici" (i.e. "the doctors") but "i Medici" (i.e. the Florentine Renaissance family), and the film being referred to must have been The Age of the Medici. But the original translator wasn't technically wrong.

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knives
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#48 Post by knives » Wed Nov 02, 2022 6:47 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 10:38 pm
That's pretty fascinating. Thanks.
knives wrote:It depends a lot on location. The German and especially French located writers are heavily Aramaic infused whereas the Spanish writers and their diaspora have a heavy Arabic sensibility, but are generally more comprehensible to modern readers.
Funnily, the same for middle English. The closer an ME writer was to London, the more comprehensible they are to modern speakers because the London dialect was the basis for modern English thanks to chancery standardization. So while a modern speaker can read a London-based author like Chaucer with only a bit of effort, a work written in northern England like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is going to present a lot more difficulties.
The funny thing is that the standard text people study is one of the earliest French writers, Rashi, who is decidedly more difficult for modern readers than someone like Maimonides who despite writing for a more mature audience (legal scholars versus thirteen year olds) has a more modern flow. Rashi apparently does help a lot of French scholars though as he writes French words phonetically quite often.

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Altair
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#49 Post by Altair » Wed Nov 02, 2022 6:50 am

MichaelB wrote:
Wed Nov 02, 2022 4:28 am
domino harvey wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:42 pm
Yep (or should I say, oui)
Out of curiosity, how would they define "proven competency"?
In my own academic field - art history - it's expected in US universitis to have a 'reading level' in two foreign languages, so I had to sit exams in French and Italian. Much lower level than fluency and it doesn't require a speaking ability, but means that you should be able to read and comprehend academic texts in those langauges.

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Matt
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Re: Learning a Language for Film Studies

#50 Post by Matt » Wed Nov 02, 2022 3:01 pm

My film studies grad program “required” competency in a second language but they never tested me or anything. I think the program assistant saw all the French classes on my undergrad transcript and just ticked a box on a checklist.

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