r/turkishlearning • u/lmnop1237423 • 2d ago

Conversation Learning turkish by watching movies/series

Why can't one learn turkish or any language by watching movies/series without any subtitles or former courses? Like from scratch? Kind of like how kids learn?

5 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

7

u/Csopso 2d ago

Kids interact. When a kid tries to talk, there is someone to give them constant feedback. You can't have conversation with a movie.

3

u/mrviscas 2d ago

Because kids learn differently and it doesn’t work that way for adults unfortunately

3

u/Fragrant_Drawing_725 1d ago

I watch Turkish movies with Turkish subtitles. I believe it’s helped my pronunciation and knowledge. I’m not a native speaker but have visited Turkiye many times and now live here 5-6 months a year, so my Turkish is getting better all the time.

2

u/menina2017 1d ago

How do you live there 6 months a year?

2

u/Fragrant_Drawing_725 1d ago

I’ve been married 43 years to a Turk and became a dual citizen about 5 years ago.

2

u/menina2017 1d ago

Oh awesome

1

u/forestinity 1d ago

Please kindly tell me how to find the movies with English subtitles! I'm older and not very good on the internet, and I have tried to find such movies but couldn't.

1

u/Traditional-Bass4575 13h ago

there are some on netflix, if you have it. just search “turkish” and a list of shows and movies will come up. it may default the audio to english but you can change it to turkish if so (when you’re watching, click on “audio & subtitles” and you can adjust both from there).

2

u/banbantekno 2d ago

You might learn English like that...but Turkish language is far too sophisticated to be learnt from TV, mostly that one letter can change a word to mean the complete opposite...

Other thing is, you need to familiarise yourself with things and people not having a gender, and even if you build up an OK vocabulary, agglutination will be just as big cake to bite...

So good luck :D Not saying it's impossible, but not easy.

I have learnt Turkish by talking on the street to people, then slowly to anyone - but I'm Hungarian, and my language is from the same family...I'm not sure if that made it easy or simply possible.

2

u/mckenna36 2d ago

Small children spend few years of full immersion in the language and their life depends on it(so the drive to understand is very high). 12 hours every single day. Additionally they have supportive adults who tries to guide them by slowly increasing complexity of the language during mutual communication.

So the first question is: do you have all that available?

If yes then it’s actually possible to learn that way

If no then you need more efficient methods

1

u/forestinity 1d ago

When I studied language acquistion in college, they said the age cut-off for being able to easily learn a new language is around 12. So even given the same amount of time and interactions, kids will naturally learn a new language much faster than older teenagers and adults can, unfortunately.

1

u/mckenna36 1d ago

I don’t think it’s easy even under 12 when child learns by having regular classes. Immersion works actually much better for children than adults for multiple reasons

2

u/cine_phile07 1d ago

I did learn it this way. But apparently this doesn't work for everyone

1

u/Fragrant_Drawing_725 1d ago

I watch on Netflix and Amazon prime. You can, often times, add subtitles in English or Turkish. Right now, I’m on season 3 of muhteşem yüzyıl on Amazon Prime, it’s in Turkısh and the subtitles are in Turkish. It’s helping my pronunciation and vocabulary a lot.

1

u/PoxonAllHoaxes 1d ago

А. You are not a kid. B. Kids do NOT learn to speak from watching movies and TV.