As a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, I would like to underscore that although Brazilian and Portuguese dialects are considerably different, they are not unintelligible. I believe that both dialects are more distinct than the difference between American and British accents, but not by a significant margin. In my opinion, Spanish is quite easy to understand, almost as if it were another dialect of Portuguese, whether in reading or listening. As a child, I used to play games and listen to the Spanish language without studying it at all.

@tutorage

6 ай бұрын

As a BP learner, I agree. It is much better than nothing to listen/read European Portuguese.

@rogemsilva3802

6 ай бұрын

@@tutorage Is there any particular Brazilian accent that you find harder to understand?

@thestealth2448

6 ай бұрын

Slightly off topic but do you as a Brazilian find Galician easier to understand than Europe Portuguese?

@rogemsilva3802

6 ай бұрын

@@thestealth2448 I've just done some research on videos of people speaking Galician; I don't remember ever having heard it before. In my opinion, it sounds like Portuguese with a Spanish accent; it was quite easy to understand and had a familiar feeling to it. Additionally, both dialects are easy to understand. With some exposure, a Brazilian native speaker would understand it without any problem in no time.

Learning content is actually really useful for passive listening. And if it's a language closer to yours you'll get a lot from it.

I am an English teacher. With complete beginners I find full immersion by means of comprehensible input, TPR (Asher) and TPRS (Ray) to be extremely effective. I was surprised you didn’t touch on these approaches. Are you aware of them and, if yes, what are your thoughts?

I'm learning Quebec French specifically and it's wild because I can understand Quebec French perfectly but have a lot of difficulty with Parisian French, which makes immersing with non-Québécois content a bit difficult!

With regards to immersion I think the more you understand the better. Or rather level appropriate - maybe at your level + 1 so to speak. But if you're not watching Dreaming Spanish you probably can't control the level so easily. I wish there was Dreaming Korean. In order to improve my comprehension I spend most of my time reading instead of listening.

Is the American word 'dialect' the same as the British word 'accent'? In Britain, different dialects means people in different parts of the UK will use different words (eg 'bairn' for 'child')

@hellishlycute

6 ай бұрын

accent and dialect are the same in american and british english. accents usually refer to just different ways of pronouncing words, dialects differ in vocabulary as well.

@hellishlycute

6 ай бұрын

*dialects might also differ in grammar a bit

@jomellpajarillo9448

6 ай бұрын

In addition to what @hellishlycute said, sometimes dialects can differ completely. For example, in Philippines English and Tagalog are the most commonly used languages, but there are different areas that have different dialects such as Ilocano, Cebuano, etc. that are just whole new languages.

Great video. I just wanted to ask you something. I am learning Greek and I believe in the value of comprehensible input. The way I make it more comprehensible (fully comprehensible) is to use videos with Greek and English subs, and to have both of these subtitles visible at the same time, as I am going throught the video. This allows me to know exactly what the sentence means. My Greek is at a lower intermediate level so I know enough to know the function of every word in the Greek sentence in the subs. I just don't know enough vocab. So when a new sentence starts I quickly scan the English subtitle, so I know what the sentence is going to mean. Then I read through the Greek sentence as it is being spoken. I always know what the sentence means from reading the English text, but I make sure to always try to understand the Greek text itself. I think this works very well and I am sure I am advancing using this method. I know that eventually I should stop doing this and go to Greek only subs. What do you think of this method?

@daisugabatabata

6 ай бұрын

English subs are a crutch and should only be used in the very beginning if incomprehensibility is really bothering you, you could watch something first with English subs on and then watch it again with Greek subs, but keep in mind than you should get rid of English subs the moment you reach even very basic comprehension. Also rewatching the same thing over and over again with srs-type intervals is very beneficial in the beginning stages (obviously with TL subs or no subs).

@jimmorrison2657

6 ай бұрын

@@daisugabatabata You have said that this is bad, but you haven't said in what way it's bad. I know there are at least some positive points to this method. I have been doing this for about two months and my comprehension has gone up a lot, even when I now watch material with no subs. I do believe you that there may be negative aspects to this but I haven't seen them yet. So if you could explain them to me, that would be great. Thanks a lot.

@daisugabatabata

6 ай бұрын

@@jimmorrison2657mainly two points: 1 - You could end up building a bad habit of wanting to always have English subs. You want to get rid of them eventually right? Might as well do that as early as possible. 2 - Inaccurate translations, in a sense that since concepts cannot be mapped one to one between two languages, English subs cannot retain full nuance of vocab and grammar, you risk making false assumptions about vocab and grammar. It technically could be sorted out with more immersion later on, but again, why not just avoid it in the first place?

@jimmorrison2657

6 ай бұрын

@@daisugabatabata Interesting points. I agree with point 1. I am not so sure about point 2. What I am trying to do is increase the comprehensibility of the material. I think everyone agrees that this is a good thing to do. If I read the English text first, I have increased massively the comprehensibility of the Greek sentence which I am about to hear and read. The translation may not be accurate and will be missing some nuances, but it will be fairly close. When watching content with no subs, but which is comprehensible because of something else (let's say visual cues), I could easily understand the wrong thing from that too, if my interpretation of the visual cue was wrong, which could happen often. I think that the English sentence is going to be more likely to give you a more accurate version of what the Greek sentence is really about. I am not ruling out what you said on this. I will have a think about it, but I am not so sure about it. Again, I do agree with your first point, and for that reason I will stop using English subs in the next few months, but for the moment it is giving me good results.

@stevesmith291

5 ай бұрын

If you're enjoying the material so that you can spend time with it and if your comprehension is improving, then your method is a good one for your level.