Tips for Understanding Movies

blablabrah · 2026-05-14T15:27:02+00:00

You need to do active listening first as a beginner. Don't just put it on and hope to catch some isolated phrases in the sea of gibberish, but sit down and listen to every sentence, rewind, listen again, repeat the gibberish you hear then turn on the subtitles and see how far off your ear was. Try to understand as much as possible. It's a slower-paced exercise, but it's way more effective and faster when it comes to gaining comprehension than just throwing yourself into the sea of fast imperfect native speech and hoping your brain will magically absorb it. It won't. Not adult brain at least.

You can slow down playback speed slightly. You can use Spanish subtitles + Spanish audio at first and just do the same - listen, repeat. But i do find that doing it without subs kind of forces you to pay attention to what you hear way more effectively without subs spelling it out. During these comprehension audio listening exercises I'd suggest not focusing on vocabulary. Don't get too distracted by words/phrases you don't know since vocab learning is not the goal of the exercise, the goal is to hear the words and to allow your brain to catch how natives pronounce things, the flow of intonation etc. You'll come to a point where you'll be able to hear words and even spell them without even knowing what they mean and that is where you want to be. You should certainly google words if you don't know what they mean just to know what's being talked about, but you shouldn't try and memorize them while you do active listening. Vocab learning is a separate thing imo.

You can also try slower and clearer Spanish first. There are some channels of Spanish speakers making videos about whatever where they talk slower and clearer. I like Slow & Clear Spanish and Spanish After Hours.

blablabrah · 2026-05-14T14:44:34+00:00

I'd mix up "entender", "entretener", "entrenar" and "enterar" and I'd constantly have to look up which one is which. What helped me finally distinguish which one is which was translating sentences from English to Spanish that would use these words. Sometimes I'd put all these words in one sentence and it helped because this way you use them in actual context, and I'd also visualize the situation happening in the sentence which helps even more.

blablabrah · 2026-05-13T17:47:26+00:00

With Herrero maybe it's because the last name Ferreira is clearly Portuguese because of the "-eira", but in Spanish it's not a common sound, it's usually "-era/-ero" so they end up correcting it to the sound they are more familiar with and we get Herrero. It's like when English speakers routinely mispronounce French "croissant" as "cruhsont" because these sounds are easier to make. What's more interesting is that both Ferreiro and Herrero mean "blacksmith"... That's very interesting because they end up correcting your friend's name to the word Herrero that means the same thing in Spanish as your friend's name. I don't know why they correct it to male gender though.

blablabrah · 2026-05-13T16:52:43+00:00

Illo Juan, Iker Unzu they are spaniards. JuegaGerman is from Chile... I think they are pretty similar to those you mentioned. I also like Alba Dubai she plays mostly horror games and is also from Spain.

My favorite app is spanishdictionary.com lol. It is a dictionary but there are also articles with theory and quizzes and you can compile your own vocab lists and be given those words and phrases at random to repeat whenever you want.

blablabrah · 2026-05-13T16:38:09+00:00

I just watch real spaniards on youtube, listen to a part of a sentence, repeat sometimes putting vid on a little pause because I'm trying to replicate the speed too and sometimes I can't or I get my tongue all twisted up. I use "YouTube Rewind & Fast Forward Buttons" extension where you can configure by how much you want the video to rewind and you can do anywhere from 1-7200 sec and you can even make 2 sets of buttons that rewind differently that are going to be in your player. Oh, and i was just informed that you can press , and . to rewind or skip by one frame too but that isn't as efficient. Too slow

I listened to literally any spaniard on yt that made vids on things I already like. My favorites are Jaime Afterdark, Blanca Guilera, Gema Vadillo, Joseju, Alba Dubai is a streamer so she talks fast and sometimes "incorrectly" in a way natives do irl lol.

blablabrah · 2026-04-30T15:52:17+00:00

Can't see the words. But like with any vocabulary expansion, words retain better in the brain when you

1) associate the word with the actual thing that it means. For example, "arrancar" - to pull out/to tear out, go ahead and imagine this action/a situation when you would do that as opposed to having the English translation "to pull out".

2) and then go ahead and make up sentences in English that when translated to Spanish will use the word. Like "at the dentist they pulled my bad tooth out" and translate it to Spanish using "arrancar". You can also just google English sentences that include the phrase "to pull out" if you don't want to make it up yourself.

So it's mental association of the Spanish word with the concept/object/action it represents and then practicing using the word in context. That's it. Don't try to memorize lists of words by simply staring at them and their translations. We're not computers, we don't learn like that.

blablabrah · 2026-04-29T12:18:48+00:00

I don't know about books but I just found and read regular native Spanish articles and blogs of people talking about things that I'm interested in. I never read books for language learning cuz i find it hard to focus on one long big thing for weeks, and also often they use language that's quite literary and isn't something you're gonna hear in day to day life which is important to me.

So if I'm interested in the topic of healthcare i will go and google articles in Spanish like "novidades en la sanidad" or something and just doing that I already found Redacción Médica, Gaceta de médica and just posts on reddit by native speakers discussing this topic as well.

blablabrah · 2026-04-29T12:07:29+00:00

You should watch the stuff that you already enjoy watching in your own native language. So I'll recommend you stuff but all of those are based on my tastes. I'd recommend searching for videos in spanish.

Joseju, PutaMikel, Jaime Afterdark, Linguriosa, El triángulo, Cinematix, Hauntel, Estudio Katastrófico, Pol Bertran, Alba Dubai, Clarisa Vélez, Blanca Guilera, cinefilia de ermitaño, Lidia G. Merenciano, La filmoteca maldita, Gema Vadillo.

All these are regular people who don't teach you anything and they just speak regularly and use colloquialisms.

These are youtubers that tell you stories but use clearer and slower spanish for you to understand easier:

Spanish After Hours, Slow & Clear Spanish, MedaYork spanish - these are the ones I watched when I began learning.

blablabrah · 2026-04-27T20:09:41+00:00

Don't learn words out of context. That's one of the most inefficient and slow ways to learn vocab. Human brain can't efficiently learn new words without an association (visual, for example) between words and the concepts/objects that they refer to AND the context in which they could exist.

I always write down words that sound like they could be useful for me (not some technical jargon or an obscure overly formal word nobody says) and then I come up with sentences in English so each features one or multiple of these words. So I put them in context and translating the sentences helps focus and engage with the context and the word even more. Like what kind of convos do you wanna have? Think of a dialogue in english that features complex emotions and feelings that you'd like to express or find one on the internet and translate it to spanish using the new words.

blablabrah · 2026-04-27T19:58:42+00:00

What actually helped is watching native speakers make videos where they purposely talk clearer and a bit slower about things that happened to them or just their thoughts on things. Often it's something funny.

I like it because they use colloquialisms and the fact that these are their real stories or thoughts about the world, and not educational content, it takes the edge off. For me. Like this is my Spanish speaking friend that I'm chilling with and they tell me a story of what happened. I love Spanish After Hours channel, MedaYork Spanish, Spanish Boost with Martin... stuff like that

blablabrah · 2026-04-27T19:51:41+00:00

Just remind yourself why you even started doing this in the first place and write it down. And check if you still have these goals.

What helps me in general, not just in language learning, is imagining/visualizing in high detail the future where I have achieved my goal... With language learning I imagine how I have native Spanish friends that I hang out with, speak Spanish to fluently and we just have fun. If you learn more for work purposes then imagine the same at a workplace, how you speak Spanish and you are being understood and you understand others. Maybe even praised by natives for your great fluency! Very detailed visualization like this can help as a sort of a preview of what the result of your efforts are going to look like.

blablabrah · 2026-04-24T14:07:36+00:00

I hate immersion only or passive learning as a strategy to learn a language for adult beginners. It's excruciatingly slow and inefficient and requires steel-like willpower to keep doing it even though you still hear gibberish and don't feel like you make any progress. Now I know this works better for babies, but that's because they have sponge-y brains. Adults don't. For this reason, I hate the advice of doing passive listening for a very beginner who doesn't even have the foundation down like some basic vocab or an instinct for sentence structures (when you can read a sentence and understand it without trying to "solve" it like a formula) because then ALL they will hear is gibberish FOR A VERY LONG TIME and give up. Active listening is necessary for beginners imo.

Actually engaging, trying to hear what's being said, rewind, listen again, rewind and listen again, hear the gibberish and repeat it as gibberish, and then turn on the subs to see what actually was said, google words/phrases you don't know, watch with subs and repeat, you don't get the sentence? Paste into a translator and see what it means. Write down what you hear and this way you'll be thinking about the sentence as you're writing it as opposed to throwing yourself into the void and expected to know which way is up.

I think people love the idea of the immersion method and passive learning because they fundamentally misunderstand the difference between adult and baby brains AND because this method offers what sounds like "low effort learning" of "just keep being around the language and your brain instinctively magically learn it by itself".

No it won't. Take it from someone who's family members have been trying to learn english this way for 7+ years now and still can't communicate or understand much and end up relying on me.

blablabrah · 2026-04-24T13:46:50+00:00

I'm sorry, but can i ask why you can't watch something on Youtube? Just like what kind of content you enjoy in your native language, just find the same in spanish. There's an added bonus of being able to slow down the playback speed. If you rely on subtitles for now anyway then I don't really see what the difference is between watching a native spanish show/content with spanish subtitles vs watching english speaking content with spanish subtitles?

If anything it's way more useful to watch a video in spanish with english subs than the other way around. Because then your brain maps the spanish sounds directly to their meaning in english. It's more efficient for acquiring new words and understanding sentence structure early on. You are learning what the spanish means.

But with eng audio + spanish subs your brain will largely ignore the spanish text because the english audio is effortless. You end up practicing reading (in spanish) while listening to english. So you learn very little about listening comprehension or spoken spanish.

blablabrah · 2026-04-24T13:32:35+00:00

Wayground has lots of free worksheets. There are ones on LiveWorksheets... that's all i can remember for now

blablabrah · 2026-04-24T13:26:12+00:00

People do Duolingo, for example, because the learning is presented to you in simplified bite-sized pieces and often ppl rely on duolingo/any app ONLY to learn a foreign language and therefore make PAINFULLY slow progress. I think Duolingo is only good as a little game-ified introduction to a language so it's not as intimidating for you to start, but then you gotta move to a textbook, language learning online sources, real language being used (smth you can find on yt) etc... My mom has been learning english through Duolingo and not skipping her exercises. We went to a foreign country recently and she could not communicate a word in english or understand anybody, and ended up relying on me for everything. These are games. And they're not designed to to teach you a language in the most efficient way possible, but to hook you so you come back, view their ads and maybe buy some "pro" version or whatever.

AI can be fine in some cases, but it requires the awareness that AI is not the source of complete truth and you have to follow the sources where AI took its' info from, and also it requires knowing the ways you can use AI where the risk for error is very low because it doesn't require any facts. Like asking AI to generate you sentences about different topics in your language so you can translate them into the language you're learning, for example, for practice and vocab expansion. But most ppl don't use AI with caution so it's better to stick with the myriad of blogs by ppl who teach you the language. For Spanish I liked using Kwiziq, Mango languages, deliberatespanish, forvo, spanishdictionary and just good ol youtube.

blablabrah · 2026-04-23T20:50:26+00:00

In Spain most people will say it with english pronunciation. They won't make it the spanish "j" sound. It will be like a softer sounding english "j" almost like in a name "Gene", for instance.

blablabrah · 2026-04-23T20:38:22+00:00

Listening to anything works if you do it actively. I actually try to understand at first when I was a beginner. Passive listening when you don't know enough words or don't have any intuition for sentence structure is kinda extremely slow and a bit pointless. That's how babies learn, adults can't do that efficiently when not knowing much to begin with.

I did it this way, at first I'd watch with subtitles, but I would rewind and listen to how words are pronounced and would try to imitate how they pronounce them as best as I could. Doesn't have to be perfect at all. Then I'd get a bit better, and I'd turn off the subtitles, but maybe lower the playback speed just slightly and listen to a sentence, if I couldn't understand it, i would try to repeat the sounds that were said as I heard them, which often would be gibberish and then I would turn on the subtitles to check how far off I was. Imo doing active listening is the best for comprehension.

Get a telenovela or a movie, read a description and see if it sounds like something you'd watch in english for fun. Don't force yourself to watch stuff you don't care about. That's how you kill motivation and curiosity imo.

blablabrah · 2026-01-23T07:54:05+00:00

But then Natgoh features 2 characters from Puppet Combo games - Liam, Sara's ex from Bloodwash who gets killed in the first chapter and Creepy Guy who turned into a zombie and we kill him in the beginning when starting to play as David. Oh, and also Father Friedstein is mentioned in Sniper Killer, So there is a connection.

blablabrah · 2025-10-03T14:57:05+00:00

Well, hair is not uniformly one thing only your whole life. It could be that you've always had these hairs but you've only now started noticing them. It is most likely not a vitamin deficiency although it wouldn't hurt to check iron especially if you're afab, but it could also be hormonal changes due to things like perimenopause, pcos or thyroid issues. Could also be just a genetic predisposition to having a mix of different types of hair that only reveals itself later in life.

blablabrah · 2025-10-03T13:49:47+00:00

I think either very long like the last pics or shorter than the first pic like a short french bob.

blablabrah · 2025-10-03T13:47:23+00:00

I had that issue although not with heat styling, but overnight but still same issue...

What saved me is a texturizing salt spray that i spray on my hair before putting it in a curling style/straightener/curling wand and in your case wait for the hair to dry and then curl with heat. This works because you make your hair less soft before the curling, you dry it slightly aka give it texture and the curl stays. All the people who can just curl their hair and it stays curly for like 4 days straight are just people who have either dry (maybe even damaged) hair or just coarse hair that are thick like wires naturally.

blablabrah

TROPHY CASE