Yes, I can usually follow French language films and TV without needing to concentrate too hard with about 90% accuracy, the extra 10% needing my full attention, but foreign stuff dubbed into French I really struggle with.
It’s not just the lip-syncing, but body language, gestures etc. play a much larger part in understanding than many people might think. Perhaps more in French and Italian, but not entirely absent in German as well.
Are facial expressions, gestures, body language etc all that different between languages/cultures? Speaking of the main western ones.
Yes.
Where to start? - I took German evening classes for 3 years during term time from 2016 to 2019 and felt like a total dunce as I still couldn’t speak it by the finish. One class I was in during the second year had far too many students in it and some were a lot more advanced than the others like myself. The teacher advised the more advanced students they should be doing C level but none of them were willing to move up to that class as it started later than A2/B1 at 7.30pm and didn’t finish until 9pm. I even took extra lessons with a Swiss lady I found living in my home town on a trip back to Scotland.
My husband attended with me, but we decided to take a break during the autumn of 2019 because his mother died in London and he’d been shuttling back and forth to London every other weekend for about 3 months before she died so he was tired. Unfortunately the pandemic came a long and we never got back into it, he didn’t need German for his job and neither of us really wanted to take classes on something like Zoom.
We can both read German and his spoken German is better than mine. I struggle with word order and have to think about everything. We have neighbours from all over, some German, but all of them want to have conversations with us in English.
It looks like my OH is going back to work in the autumn (he’s also got an AI project he’s been working on over the summer). If that’s going to be the case I’ve decided to have another stab at learning German and if I don’t succeed this time then I’ll give up. French is far easier for me as I spent 4 years learning it in high school; I also spent 2 years learning Latin but am totally bamboozled by German!
I feel your pain.
Incorrect word order once landed me in the hospital. 
The one and only time I’ve managed to speak German properly was when I tripped and fell in the street in Basel city centre. 3 people rushed forward to assist me, asked me if I was OK or wanted to go to hospital and I replied in fluent German. I think it was the shock of falling, the front of my training shoe had got caught on an uneven piece of concrete.
I can only compare it to those people who get a bash on the head and when they come round they are speaking in a foreign language 
The only common reactions I’ve seen across cultures is light in people’s eyes (dilatation of the pupil) when happy, or relaxation of face muscles (not under stress). Someone can be literally jumping, other one gesturing with the hands, and someone else as stiff as wood, but eyes are more or less the same.
Never cared about this before, but when learning a language from zero…it’s good to pick up cues of where the conversation is going even if most of the words are not understood. Of course this works in person, I don’t think I could read this on TV.
I spent 10 years working for the Japanese in a Securities House in London and some of my colleagues took language classes (ulterior motives - they wanted to know what their bosses were saying about them behind their backs ha ha). You have to be careful with the intonation of words in Japanese as if said the wrong way it can be taken as rudeness, one particular colleague used to come up against that all the time.
Thanks, it’s indeed a way different experience when the facial movements are real. Unfortunately I found the recent episodes boring. I found it funny that I can’t watch the older episodes on ARD website without any geo-ip bypasses.
Really? Strange.
Here’s a few I can see no problem (randomly picked)
Should keep you busy for a while 
I was going to say that: the recent episodes work, but not the “archive”, for example Tatort: Die Faust - hier anschauen
but when writing this post the video suddenly started, looks like the geo blocking is using a clever socio-technique, making you walk off if you’re not persistent enough 
Yeah and here comes the funny bit: Only the Swiss and Austrian productions are being geoblocked
(I don’t know why Roxi claimed it was 100% German production, everybody knows the Swiss deliver Tatort episodes as well).
So if you sat in Germany you could easily watch an old Swiss production but not if you’re in Switzerland. No comment on that.
You can read about it here:
in German. Great exercise.
Schimanski.
Best Kommissar ever.
Figured you’d be into Machos
Recently I rewatched Schimi on ARD, nice 1980ties ambience, wondering why they did not simply check the cell phone data?
Nah, I like Schimi, enjoyed Lessing and Dorn, love the Köln Tatort along with Münster and Kiel. Can’t say I liked the Swiss Tatort or the Bavarian ones and could not get behind the Austrian Tatort.
Having said that; Babylon Berlin, set in the Weimarer Republic was a Tatort by any other name and it is brilliant.
yeah, them plonkers, why didn’t they?
Might be the day/weather/something in the air - it suddenly crossed my mind today why cars no longer have a choke. (Do.not.ask.me. where this came from). I remember those things and in spite of always driving old cars no, I never drove 1930-ies cars as the internet tried to make me believe today when researching the where abouts of chokes.
Back to crime films, can’t keep up with you as I never watched much of Tatort & Co.
edit: no idea why the system made a link out of me do no ask me …
Hi Cherub:
Check out the possibility of a German language coach. A language coach, best one-on-one , is a different story altogether. You’ll not only learn the language but a totally new perspective on learning it.
Language coaches adapt easily to different learning styles and necessities. Maybe you don’t even need a correct word order for the things you want to do in German.
A language coach would be able to counsel you on this, while more traditional teachers wouldn’t even consider these options.
Good luck for your German language learning journey 
I watched Tschugger (with subtitles). Didn’t improve my German, but culturally, I found it very funny - on its own kitschness (‘cutre’ in my own language) – pure “Bauern” humour Also very funny that my OH (Swiss from Zurich) could understand about 60% - the other 40% is Wallis dialekt (well on the 4th season, at least they speak some French)…
I recommend also a very black-humoured detective series Maloney Maloney - Play SRF they speak rather slow, and with not much accent…
The choke died with the carburetor along with the distributor when fuel injection and electronic injection took over. The choke functionality is still there but all computerized.
yes, I realize that. As I always drive old cars I experienced that development later than others
Still doesn’t explain why that crossed my mind yesterday. Some unrelated info must have triggered it.
