French Subtitles: Building French Vocabulary

I enjoy a diverse array of reading pleasures. When I was about 12, I once found a book in the attic of an abandoned house. Vraiment. I am not making this up. Anyway, it just happened to be the first Sherlock Holmes stories I ever read. The book was all moldy and brown from disuse and exposure to the extreme weather conditions Minnesota dishes out. This may explain why I tend to sneeze a lot around Sherlock, but I was so hooked on the stories that I have been a big fan ever since.

Another result of early exposure to Victorian British English is that I am an avid consumer of large and difficult to read books. Apparently, this is the direction I am going with my French, too. As I have mentioned before, every day I read something in French whether it be a newspaper, part of a book, or just subtitles of shows... that is when I can find French subtitled film or TV. I must love to puzzle it out.

Being a big fan of renting movies and shows from Netflix, sometimes I've found a TV show that offered a choice of subtitles in French. My best find so far has been "Burn Notice," a TV show still in production. The show is a fun romp, if not sort of repetitive in plot, of spies, gangsters and assorted bad guys solving crimes in the Miami, Florida area. There are lots of sun and babes in little clothing. I could not possibly watch this show without throwing in the additional feature of English subtitled in French. I have learned a lot of French vocabulary from this show. The translation is somewhat lacking though; I can tell that the French is much simpler than the English.

Today, I began watching "Sex and the City" from its first show. Ooh la la! There are a lot of episodes. I like the clever narrative that runs through the show even if I'm not a fan of the "naughty" single-girl N.Y. lifestyles. But with French subtitles it is so much better! This is a French translation that will really build vocabulary in the use of terms your French teacher does not want to discuss. It's not worse than most French movies; it is just more intense in the use of them. But, assuming I watch a lot of these in the future, I won't be as dependent on English subtitles to figure out the flavor of the characters in a French movie.