Meeting #11: Breaking Bad – A little subtitle marathon

As the title reveals, our 11. Meeting was supposed to be a movienight. We thought quite long about what movie or series we should choose, because we all had our favorites but we also had to consider that it had to have German and also Spanish subtitles. In the end we decided for Breaking Bad, although some of us had already seen the whole series, me included. But still it was very fun to watch it again. For me this was a very good way to use what we have achieved and learned during our last sessions, because it combined the reading and translating while following the subtitles in Spanish and it also led us very often to questioning for new vocabulary. Of course we couldn´t just read the subtitles and understand all, but with the help of the English voice over we were able to connect it. So I would say at least basic phrases and questioning, as well as some other phrases were no problem for us.

On the other side I think it was for Oscar quite complicated, because the written German in the subtitle was often a very “high” even difficult form. But still he was able to connect a lot and we helped him out if some phrases sounded strange to him. One good example was when the protagonist, Walther White, gets the diagnosis he has cancer. In English the spoken sentence was like:”… I am sorry to tell you but you have lung cancer” and in German :”… Es tut mir leid Ihnen das mitteilen zu müssen, aber Sie haben Lungenkrebs.” The strange thing in this is that the German word „Krebs“ means „cancer“ in English, but also „crab“. Things like that are always quite strange and sometimes funny when you notice them.  After the first episodes we just continued and I guess we watched approximately 6 episodes of the first season. I really liked that way of learning, because I used it a lot to learn English before. For me it is a very good way and should be much more used in schools since it is a very easy and also interactive and motivational learning technique. I will really try to continue with it when I am back home, maybe I even try some other languages.