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Comment by geebee | Hacker News Reader

I often watch French language tv shows or movies to keep up my language skills. I recently watched "Call my agent." Way better than "Versailles" ;)

Thing is, it's very difficult for me to understand. But I realized that if I put on CC in French, I can understand it no problem, almost as well as if the CC was in English. But without the CC, I can't understand it well enough to enjoy the show.

This leads me to believe that my difficulty in understanding spoken vs written French might not be so much grammar and vocab of spoken French, but rather the difficulty of translating sounds to words in real time.

I really should leave the CC off entirely, but I want to enjoy the show, so for now, my compromise is to watch with CC in French. I am almost certainly compromising my language skills this way, though.

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> This leads me to believe that my difficulty in understanding spoken vs written French might not be so much grammar and vocab of spoken French, but rather the difficulty of translating sounds to words in real time.

I'm an English-only speaker and watch English with subtitles and it definitely increases my understanding too. I think I definitely have a problem mapping sounds to meaning, names especially can take me 3 or 4 times to hear properly when introduced if it's a little noisy. It gets embarrassing to ask them to repeat themselves.

Spoken conversations also don't stick as well in my memory - if I read something once there's a good chance I remember it adequately, not so much for listening.

I asked some French friends if there was any good French TV that I could watch to learn more, but also enjoy at the same time. They started talking amongst themselves and I honestly thought they hadn't heard me, until about 5 minutes later they turned back and just said: "Non" :D

Engrenages, le Bureau des Légendes. You will not regret it.

As a français, I second this. I'm extremely critical of most TV shows and I tend to quit very fast when get the impression I'm losing time. Engrenages is about the only TV shows I am able to watch in french, and it's a really good one. I'd would say, frankly, that it's our equivalent to The Wire.

For an learner who wants to understand, I’d strongly recommend _Le petit prince_e and _L’homme qui plantait des arbres_. Both about an hour long, beautifully animated, adapted verbatim from books that have easy to find translations.

Both as meant for children (and adult who think like them) so you might feel condescended to — but both have a very simple, classic language, distinctly articulated that makes it easier to follow for foreigners.

The stories are wonderful too: about what makes a life worthwhile and conservation.

The other recommendation I’d make are:

* audio-books that might not have movie equivalent: the accent in _Regain_, by the same Giono as _L’homme qui plantait des arbres_ has me to tears;

* any version of Criminal (the UK one was popular but the French, German and Spanish one are great too); all have the same minimal set and nothing but dialogue (it feels like a hilarious and successful exercise in saving money on production);

* hopefully _Lupin_: it’s brand new, I haven’t watched it yet but friends say it’s great. It seems to have a wide variety of contemporary accents, fast paced dialogue so not for the early learner.

Le petit prince, although understandable by children, evokes deep philosophical ideas and a subtle sense of humour and can also be a great experience for adults. The language is beautiful and would really shine in a good audiobook.

> hopefully _Lupin_: it’s brand new, I haven’t watched it yet but friends say it’s great. It seems to have a wide variety of contemporary accents, fast paced dialogue so not for the early learner.

Yes, Lupin is great for that. The accents are not too heavy and the text, though not high literature, is not too dumb (often a problem with series, to be honest). The language is contemporary with a bit of slang but nothing outlandish that I recall. Also, the American accents of the dubbed version are completely out of character so the French audio is the way to go anyway.

Watch "Au service de la France" and "Family Business", both really funny. Second one is a bit vulgar.

May I recommend https://madelen.ina.fr/ They have old tv shows that are easier to follow then contemporary series. I also enjoy to watch French dubbed US shows on Netflix that I‘m already familiar with.

I really enjoyed 'Marseille' (it's on Netflix I believe). Although I'm fairly proficient in french I watched it with the french subtitles on so I could learn all kinds of new swearing words and verlan (street language where you inverse the order of syllables).

The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légendes) is the only good French show I've seen lately, and it's also one of my favourite shows period.

My all time favourite French show, Kaamelott, would be utterly inpenetrable for non-native French speakers because it relies heavily on verbal comedy and speech registers.

I have that experience with anime. Sometimes Japanese subtitles really help.

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