Understanding

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Are any other of you Russian learners experiencing what I am?

I watch Russian movies with English subtitles, as well as listen to Russian music, to increase my comprehension and whatnot.

When listening to music, I catch a lot of words, and can often understand a lot of it. However, if watching movies, I can barely understand anything, even when, according to the subtitles, I know I should be understanding it. Even when I listen to some phrases multiple times, I'm still not recognizing anything.

In some parts, I definitely notice the people mumbling a lot, which could be part of the problem, but other times they're not, so I'm not sure what the problem is. The worst for it is the most readily available movie, Ночной Дозор (Nightwatch). I know subtitles aren't always direct translations, but they should be, in a lot of cases, at least somewhat close.

Can anyone recommend some Russian movies (that would be available in Canada) with English subtitles where the characters don't mumble, and can be fairly easily understandable?

Comments

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

I can't recommend such a movie, yet why don't you try and get one with russian subtitles? If you know exactly what they say it's much easier to distinguish the words. (I do it when watching english and french movies).

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Hmm, if I can find that, it would work to a point, but I'm not sure if my Russian vocabulary is good enough to completely understand eenough to understand what is going on. Also, it seems like most Russian movies I find here are only available with English subtitles, which makes watching them with Russian ones difficult.

Ideally, it would be possible to have both English and Russian subtitles at the same time.... but I've only ever seen that in movie theatres.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the same porblem here, I only could find one french film with original subtitles,

yet it seems that it is possible to find subtitles online and then watch a film with then. Unfortunately, I don't know yet what programs are need to do so.

[wildest.livejournal.com]

One of such programs is Light Alloy (http://www.softella.com/la/).
Subtitles may be found at http://divxstation.com/subtitles.asp, for example.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks a lot :-)

[awelon.livejournal.com]

I just watched "Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears" and the DVD that I rented had about 10 languages available for the subtitles. The movie itself came in Russian, French and English and the subtitles ranged from Russian to German to Italian to English...I think it was possible to watch the movie in English with German subtitles if you so desired.

I actually had a hard time getting the movie in Russian with the subtitles in English. I kept getting it the other way around, but that may be because I am technologically challenged :-)

I've also had the problem you described. Oddly enough, I watched the English-language movie "Everything Is Illuminated" (set in Ukraine, stars Elijah Wood, based on a book) and found that I could understand everything of the few bits of Russian. The only reason I watched it was because a friend thought I might be interested in, as I was in Ukraine last year. I didn't watch it for the language, but found it quite clear. Unfortunately, it is in English, so the only Russian comes when the Ukrainian characters are speaking to each other, and there is a small bit in Ukrainian.

I've found music to be easier to understand than movies.

[awelon.livejournal.com]

I didn't see that aciel had posted about Everything Is Illuminated. He's quite right about the amount of Russian in it, and I think I made it sound like there wasn't a lot (sorry). What I meant was that since it is an English-language movie, it's not all in Russian. There's also one sentence in Ukrainian.

How you can tell I'm tired....

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's not that they mumble, it's (most likely) that your idea of Russian phonetics is quite far from actual Russian phonetics. A good thing to start with can be a phono course of Russian, with native Russian narrators.
BTW how do you think you can yet really comprehend fast speech, real-time, if you admit that you are "not sure if [your] Russian vocabulary is good enough to completely understand eenough to understand what is going on" even in subtitles?

This was my issue with French, some 22 years ago - I could not understand a word of spoken French, until I had gone through a phono course, something like "Langue et civilisation Francaises".

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

If I can understand live native speakers and native speakers singing in Russian, I don't think the problem is understanding Russian phonetics. But thanks.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Try a couple of older movies, preferably from the 1970s and early 80s. I guess that must be easier to comprehend than the modern-day slang in "Night Watch." "Road Test" ("Проверка на дорогах",) or "My Friend Ivan Lapshin" ("Мой друг Иван Лапшин",) or, if you don't like realistic war dramas, "An Ordinary Miracle" ("Обыкновенное чудо",) "That exact Muenchhausen" ("Тот самый Мюнхгаузен") or "Formula of Love" ("Формула любви") can be useful: they speak good Russian there, and all those movies are quite essential for the understanding of contemporary Russian culture anyway.

for me, at least!

[eyeballmassage.livejournal.com]

i've found that english subtitles for foreign-language movies are awful when you're trying to pay attention to the spoken words. i can understand french movies fairly well without subtitles, but if english subtitles are on i am completely incapable of paying attention to the speech- the constructions are always slightly different and everything goes by too quickly to try to process both languages.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

Don't get frustrated. Understanding the media is hard. For whatever reason, understadning movies ant Television is the last bit of comprehension to come for most people (myself included). It's much easier to understand face to face interaction

And there is sooo much slang and jargon in Night Watch... It's a tough movie to start with.

The two things on the net I would reccomend:

The website memocast.com has any Russian movie you could hope for.
NTV has a video podcast if you have Itunes, so you can watch the news in Russian for free.

[fox-c.livejournal.com]

As an addendum,

I actually find podcasts to be an excellent way of getting passive language practice, in video or the now "old-fashioned" audio only ones. And there's A LOT of choice. I think there may actually be more Russian podcasters than British or French ones combined.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Even I do the podcasting :))

[ulvesang.livejournal.com]

Try watching them with teletext (the kind for deaf people)... much better than interlingual subtitles.

[russiandude.livejournal.com]

Many times when one watches a movie with subtitles one ends up focusing on the text instead of on the voices, or the actors.

Here are my recommendations:
Get some video news in russian. They may not be as exciting as movies, but they should not use slang and they will be easier to understand. See how much you can understand. Try picking a section and writing down what they are saying (writing down a whole 30 minute news program would be tedious, but doing 5 minutes is not quite so bad). Translate those five minutes. Feel free to stop the program and look up unfamiliar words. Pay attention to the people speaking - after some practice you will begin to "hear" better by watching the mouth movements.

I believe other people here can point you to some russian news you can watch online.

Good Luck.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mria/]

I did that when I was learning Spanish and it definitely helped. I'd second that recommendation.

[wh00z.livejournal.com]

There are many news sources that have mp3 downloadable highlights, also have their text version of same highlight. (for example russian channel 1).

[aciel.livejournal.com]

There's a good American movie called Everything Is Illuminated with Elijah Wood, and it's set in the Ukraine, but they speak a LOT of Russian. I'd say half of the movie is in Russian.

Not to mention that the characters in it completely reminded me of some of the people I met when I was in Moscow.

The best part is that it's comprehensible. They speak pretty clearly, without a great deal of slang. And they're Russian actors, so no stupid American accents.

Cheers,
John

a caveat...

[captainfisto.livejournal.com]

i agree, but beware that there is also some ukrainian spoken in this movie.

if i remember correctly, it only a few occasions and those are limited to the few times that they have to ask for directions (questions are asked in russian and people respond in ukrainian).

Re: a caveat...

[aciel.livejournal.com]

Ooh! That explains a lot. =P

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

Kiz-Dza-Dza the best Russian move!

[llz.livejournal.com]

if you have InterVideo DVD Player on your computer, you could try slowing down the playback rate? there's a button with a rabbit and one with some other animal (turtle?) -- just click the latter :)

i think normal speech is just very different to understand from singing -- i have your exact problem with spanish. don't think it's anything abnormal =p

[angstzeit.livejournal.com]

My girlfriend and I just watched "The Diamond Arm" last night on a DVD checked out from the Chicago Public Library. It has Russian subtitles. It also has English dubbing as well as many other subtitles and dubbings. The most amusing being able to hear it in Arabic with Hebrew subtitles. Maybe this movie can bring together people in the Middle East?
Anyway, a song was not dubbed and as far as I could tell (I don't read Russian very fast) the subtitles were pretty accurate.
As you may guess, I watched it in English dubbing and Russian subtitles. It can be somewhat educational picking out the differences.

[alex-mashin.livejournal.com]

Try watching Russian films with Russian subtitles: it will be more useful.