A personal preference for subtitles
Netflix has become a huge part of our everyday lives—Netflix and Chill being a very popular idiom—and a great way to unwind after a long day of lectures, tests, assignments, and jobs. Aside from its endless entertainment factors, Netflix also provides an opportunity to learn and hone different language skills using subtitles and dubbing in a variety of languages.
Recently it came to my attention that some individuals (myself included) always watch Netflix with the subtitles on despite the show or movie being in English.
My preference for subtitles started because I watched a lot of documentaries and shows in different languages and needed them to follow along.Afterwards, I didn’t bother changing the setting and just kept them on when I switched back to English from French, Japanese, and so on.
Another reason for my preference is that subtitles help me stay more engaged with what I’m watching when my mind is “reading,” so to speak.
Though for others, I can understand that subtitles are more distracting. It can be difficult to concentrate on the action of a scene due to the captions underneath, silently narrating every explosion, car chase, or door creak.
I asked some of my friends and family if they like subtitles and all except two—who used them to stay on top of their French—said, “No.”
So despite being an unusual preference, keeping the subtitles on can help sharpen one’s ability to learn and understand different languages and dialects.
It’s difficult to learn a new language with Netflix alone, especially since some movies and TV shows will not show in certain languages—but that doesn’t make it any less useful. We all have our favourite movies or shows that we know line for line. These can make learning a different language easier as we are already familiar with the English dialogue. When learning another language, we can focus on the subtitles while learning how to read the language.
I tend to be better at reading than listening when trying to keep up with the conversational side, but what I find helpful when I switch to a different language on Netflix is picking up key phrases.
It’s also really interesting watching the Avengers speaking French with different voice actors when I know how they really sound. Whoever does Robert Downey Jr.’s and Chris Evans’s voices for Tony Stark and Steve Rogers have the original actors’ vocal inflections down and they are honestly fantastic to listen to. If I hadn’t known better and already seen it in English I would have thought The Avengers was originally in French.
Photo by Mariah Bridgeman.