I’m trying to learn French, and I’d like to watch some French films - more fun than grammar. I’m looking for a way to slow down the film but keep voices relatively natural, so I can better follow the dialogue. Easily done with audio, but I don’t know how to do it in video. My Oppo 105 will slow the video down, but no sound. Streaming or downloads are also possible. I have a Windows 11 machine and JRiver.
How about watching with English subtitles switched on, so you get a translation to what’s being said if you don’t catch the words.
Eg Lupin on Netflix - but there’s lots of slang which you may not know from French at school.
I do that, but my goal is to understand what they say by listening, and at this point in my self-education, they speak too fast.
You should meet my “cousin in law”! I’m sure he’d test a stenographer.
You might find using les sous titres en francais better. At least you’d get the separation of the words; that’s where I struggle as the speed increases.
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I’ve been sampling a dual language version of En Attendant Godot. Some surprising vocabulary there as well.
Turns out it’s easy to do with Netflix on the computer. So I can learn everything I need to know to become a jewel thief.
I remember some years ago being in a hotel in France and watching a made for TV movie with the sound turned right down as it was late, late. There were French subtitles.
After a bit I was thinking “My French must be better than I thought because I am really following this plot pretty well.” Anyway after a bit longer I turned the sound up to discover that the movie was in English (hence the French subtitles) and I was clearly picking up what was happening from lip-reading the actors and not translating the French subtitles. Very disappointing. So I turned it off and went to bed.
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You were lucky as most of the French tv I’ve seen, they dub everything!
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Not sure what standard your French is, but you might try watching children’s programmes. The vocabulary is simpler and invariably slower. It worked for me many years ago.
Unless it’s “chez les loud”; I can’t understand a single word, but my fluent daughters watch it with no problems.
Can’t remember what J-River is capable of when playing videos, but VLC will allow you slow down the playing speed.
Apparently JRiver will too.
It’s odd. This is a built-in feature of Netflix on a computer, but not Amazon or MAX.
[quote=“davidhendon, post:7, topic:30142”]
I remember some years ago being in a hotel in France and watching…[/quote]
In my case it was one of the “Alien” movies, where a lengthy dialogue line from one of the Space Marines full of “motherfu…er” expletives in English was succinctly sub-titled “mon Dieu!”
Made me laugh!
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Compare with that scene in the matrix:
When I was a teenager, in France with the Scouts, for some reason we went to the cinema where there was a Hollywood movie in English, with French subtitles. I have no recollection of what the film was, though it was either a comedy or had lots of amusing dialogue. The odd thing is that we English people laughed out of sync with the bulk, French, audience, as the subtitles evidently weren’t timed precisely with the dialogue!
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