Eh? Whadjasay?

First of all, I see in my statistics for this blog that I've apparently had visitors.  I highly encourage anyone who finds this blog interesting or helpful to comment on any posts of their choosing.  I'll appreciate the feedback and will respond.

As I've mentioned before, I'm watching foreign TV shows and movies every day, often through the ever-popular YouTube.  My assessment of this method of exposing oneself to spoken French, Italian, or Spanish is mixed.

By far, at least in the U.S., the biggest selection of foreign films and TV programs are in Spanish.  There are dozens of American TV series like Bewitched, Bonanza, The Wild, Wild West, Alfred Hitchcock Presents etc., skillfully dubbed in Spanish.  The funny thing is that many of these dubbed shows are re-dubbed from other languages, especially German.  Two of my favorite foreign detective shows, Inspector Derrick and Komissar Rex were filmed in German and then dubbed in Spanish.  You can tell because all the actors' names are German and in city scenes all the signs are also in German. 

You'd think this would be detrimental, but on the contrary I think it actually makes understanding the dialogue easier.  Why?  Well, it seems to me that German is generally spoken at a slightly slower pace and the dubbed Spanish or Italian has to match the movement of the actors' lips.  Thus the pace of conversation is slightly slower.  When I've watched shows that were originally recorded in French of Spanish, I barely catch a word or two.  Italian, for some reason, seems a tiny bit slower when spoken by natives.  Both Spanish and French seem extremely elided and its hard to tell when one word ends and another begins.  Also, Italian clearly pronounces every character, except in a few fairly rare cases when there's an apostrophe, such as all'università, (at or to the university) which loses the 'e' in alle.

If anyone out there (come on I know you're there) knows of some good Italian shows that are available on the Internet (for free, of course), please let me know in a comment.  I've discovered a juicy Italian soap opera called Un Posto al Sole (A Place in the Sun).  It has nothing to do with the Liz Taylor/Monty Clift movie of the same name.  I only understand about a fourth of the dialogue, but it's chock full of belle femme e bei uomini italiani, so you can watch it without being bored, even if you have no idea what's going on.  Ciao for now.