Have any of you ever watched something, such as films, web-series, cartoons or songs, that wasn’t English based?

What was the media, how did you find it and did you consume more media hereafter?

(if you watched a movie that was dubbed in English, it counts as well)

49 comments

  1. Anime is a huge thing, and so are JRPGs and Kpop. I watch FMAB and Black Lagoon, and I listen to Tokio Hotel’s German releases

  2. All the time. Lots of foreign films both in theaters and at home. Netflix has lots of “originals” that are foreign films or TV series. There have been some very major hits here in the US from S. Korea recently. Lots of kids and adults watch Japanese anime. I have even seen Netflix pushing more Indian content. One that comes to mind is RRR. It’s relatively easy to get non-English content.

  5. Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt is one of my favorite movies. (Don’t be scared off by the German art house vibe, it’s fun and creative.)

    I also watched Deutschland Bleiche Mutter (Achtung, approach with care. Great art but it feels like you’re being pummeled with human suffering.)

    Let the Right One In (Swedish, I think? Fantastic weird movie)

    Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese)

    Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese)

    “Tiburon” by Projecto Uno is a fun dance song that I play a lot. Various Spanish-language pop songs.

    Probably others I’m forgetting

  6. Lots. Japanese cinema/music/TV (no, I’m not into anime), Chinese language movies, South Korean cinema/TV/music (I’ve listened to K-Pop since about 1998). I’ve also watched the occasional movie in French, Spanish, and German.

  8. Lots of the video games I play originate in Japan.

    Most of the mainline Pokemon, Mario, Zelda games.

    I’ve watched a variety of JP anime, both subbed and dubbed.

    I’ve watched some Korean horror. Pretty easy to find on streaming services during October.

  10. Yes, all the time. Thanks to streaming services and Youtube for making non-English content more accessible.

  11. I’m gunna try to List languages of films I’ve seen. I suspect I’ll be disappointed by how limited the list is, but it’s more than just English: Korean, Japanese, Greek, French, Spanish, Hindi, German, Russian, Persian.

    For music I can’t even guess, I’ve listened to music without knowing for certain what language is being spoken, from Ghanaian funk to Nustrat Fetah Ali Khan.

    For movies and tv I definitely consume more Korean and Japanese content that anything else besides English.

    For music I consume much more Spanish and French music than any other language other than English.

  12. Yes you’d be surprised what you can find on streaming websites. tons of horror movies are made in other countries and I love Horror. However I don’t watch them that often because I love to multitask and I miss subtitles because I’ll get distracted.

  15. Sure, plenty. However, it’s not so specific that I seek things out from a specific country or culture. It’s more like “this movie looks interesting…oh it’s not in English, alright.”

  16. I watched all the Godzilla movies growing up. I saw Martyr, a French movie. I watched Squid Games, Train to Busan, and that Korean zombie show with the high schoolers. I’ve watched plenty of old Jackie Chan movies. I watched Don Quixote. I listen to a ton of Shakira, and some Selena. I listened to some old Korean rock and my mom had the CD to from when she was in the army and stationed there. I watched Itlan soccer (in the 2000’s this was peak soccer in the entire world and I’ll die on that hill). I’ve listened to a lot of Wardruna and Scandinavian music. I’ve listened to both Trapanese and Japanese pop (note: NOT J-Pop). I’ve also consumed more anime than any sane functional adult should. Back in the day sometimes I’d watch old Dragonball Z movies in Spanish because that’s all I could find on YouTube. There’s probably a bit more I’m forgetting atm. And this isn’t even me starting on video games which would be a post twice as long as this entire comment, and that’d be me giving you the abridged version.

  17. I’ve watched a few movies that were dubbed, mostly found them on Netflix or at the mall. The 3 that I can think of were very good.

    The platform

    Das Boot

    Admiral

  18. I could probably fill most of the comment box just with non-English bands that I like. I can think of music I like in: French, German, Spanish, Icelandic, Old Norse, Gaulish, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Armenian, and probably more.

    I watch a decent number of random foreign films – probably French more than most for live-action, and like everyone I’ve seen plenty of Japanese animated films. Usually I just do subs.

  20. France has a lot of really excellent animation and I watch some of their animated shows/movies. I even go so far as to watch some good student films. Also, the French aren’t afraid of being cheeky or celebrating the female human form, so that makes their animation more enjoyable to watch.

    I also like a lot of French punk music since it’s very good and I can understand what’s being said most of the time. As one might imagine, I also enjoy French cinema like *Le Cercle Rouge*. I also really enjoyed *Bienvenue à Marly-Gomont*. Rémi Gaillard is great, too.

    Andrei Tarkovsky is my favorite director and all of his films are in Russian. I just use subtitles.

  21. I have watched a collection of movies from different countries. Japan, Italy, England, Korea and Finland. My favorite movie is Babette’s Feast. It is truly a classic.

  22. I also speak Dutch and can understand German, so I’ve watched a lot of TV from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

    For languages I don’t understand, I was a big fan if Nordic noir, particularly the original Danish version of The Killing, The Bridge, and Wallander.

    Borgen from Denmark was also excellent.

    I still listen to a lot of Dutch, Flemish and German Schlager.

  24. Japanese cartoons and video games were huge in the 80s and 90s.

    I did catch *The Seventh Seal*, *Rififi*, and some Kurosawa on TCM. I don’t know if Leone’s Man with No Name Trilogy counts, but I saw them, too.

  25. I watch and listen to a decent amount of content that isn’t in English. I’ve watched things in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Turkish. The movies and shows that I watched were a mix of anime, martial arts movies, horror movies, and a few Guillermo Del Toro films. As for music, I’ve listened to songs in countless languages because I’m into metal, and I’m willing to at least try out any band I can find.

  28. Sure. Bollywood films, anime, manga, Korean dramas, some movies from Mexico, Norway, France, etc. Not as much music as other media.

  29. Yes

    I am totally addicted to a show called Seaside Hotel (English name) that is in Danish with English subtitles. The only English in the show is when one character sings.

  30. I’ve watched tons of TV shows and movies created in other countries on Netflix. Many have the option to watch in the native language with English subtitles or dubbed into English.

  32. Tons.

    Lots of foreign films.

    Foreign music.

    Foreign TV and animation.

    Books.

    Heck, I even read 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish. I basically wore out a Spanish to English dictionary doing it and still missed like 90% of the nuance and idiom.

  33. Yes, I’m trying to learn Persian and listen to a lot of Persian music. My favorite Persian singer is Farzad Farzin. He’s a popular Iranian singer. My absolute favorite singer is Ofra Haza. She was an Israeli singer. She was recently voted as one of the greatest singers of all time by Time Magazine.

  35. Yes. Spanish, Korean and French films. I started going to the Laemmle Theater in my 20’s (25 years ago,) to watch foreign films. I’ve never stopped.

  36. Absolutely. I just finished RRR, enjoyed Call My Agent, loved Kingdom (the Korean zombie in the Middle Ages), do cardio to Blackpink and Carlos Vives and Cafe Tacuba, grew up on Star Blazers, and cheered on the Numa Numa kid in the early days of the internet.

  37. Yes, I grew up in Germany and still watch German news everyday (Tagesschau).

  38. Some Korean movies (the good ones), Japanese TV shows (the non game-showy ones), and Mandarin rock (which is good).

    Some non-English European pop music and TV shows.

  39. Yes, mainly from anime from Japan. Though it’s not just Japan. I also love 2nd Generation pop music from South Korea and xianxia danmei novels from China.

    I also enjoy literature from around the world; from Russia to Italy to Iraq.

  40. I started watching anime about a year and a half ago when the Western cartoon market completely tanked. There’s some good shit! My favorite is Anohana, it’s only 11 episodes but it will rip your heart out and stomp it into tiny little stupid pieces. I also took a dive into K-Pop because everyone wouldn’t shut up about it, and it has its moments. The appeal for me is that the chords and melodies that are played out in Korea are much different than the ones that are played out in America, so it still sounds fresh to me. And I’d be remiss to forget spaghetti westerns- Sergio Leone was that bitch. How does Italy make better American movies than America?

  41. Does Money Heist count? We watched at least one season before deciding the characters and plots were cheap soap opera.

  43. Loads of series/movies and music. The people who automatically discount non-English produced content are doing themselves a massive disservice and I’d go so far as to say the ones who watch English dubbed content rather than the native dub aren’t much better off.

    Native languages of content I’ve watched:

    German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Arabic, Hindi (probably Punjabi as well), Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Thai and a number of others I’m sure I don’t remember.

    If there’s music I listen to somewhat regularly in another language, it’s German. I have and do occasionally listen to music in other languages too such as: Russian, Finnish, Spanish, Danish, Italian and French.

    Again, the world has so much more quality content to take in if people can look past things that are only in English.

  44. I’ve played games for Japan, France, Poland, UK, Russia and China.

    Watched movies and TV from Mexico, Colombia, UK, Germany, Russia, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, India, Canada.

  45. I studied German in high school….

    Our teacher had a satellite dish that she was able to get some German TV off of. She brought in an hour of German MTV for us to watch. From there I’ve branched out and got into a few other German groups. And for the last few years, Spotify’s yearly wrapup tells me half+ of my music is in German.

    Along with music, we also watched a few movies – Babe is the only one off hand I can remember…

    And of course we’ve read several stories. I’ve done a lot of the Brothers Grimm, as they wrote it, not the family friendly Disney adaptations.

    Channel surfing one day I found out local PBS airing Der Tatortreiniger, The Crime Scene Cleaner. Greg Davis has a series based off it on Prime I think, that just dropped it’s 2nd season back in February or so…

    I’ll occasionally stream an episode of the Tagesschau, German daily news. I’ve got ARD & ZDF’s apps on my Chromecast. A lot of the shows are Region locked to Germany & Austria, but they’ve got a few you can watch in the US.

    I’m sure I could probably come up with more German stuff if I really thought about it.

    Elsewhere… Ragnarok is a series from Norway (on Netflix)… Beforeigners is on HBO I think. John Dillermand is a Danish stop motion show about a man with an exceptionally long penis. Forget where I initially found out about it, but John Oliver did reference it on his Last Week Tonight show once…

    And I have several of the Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko’s books, in particular his Might Watch series. Though they may not count as I have the English translations, not the original Russian. Though I did manage to snag a German eBook version at some point. I got into his work by accident. I was walking through Blockbuster looking for a good movie to bring home for our weekend movie night & found Night Watch just randomly sitting on a shelf. It sounded interesting so I rented it. I was the only one who actually liked it. But then I later found out there was a sequel, Day Watch and a planned third movie but it has yet to be made… And then surprise, it’s also a book series… They are amazing books. After reading them I rewatched the movie and yeah, the movie doesn’t do the books justice. The movie just mixes up three different separate stories. It kind of makes sense as a single story but reading them individually is so much better…

    Oh speaking of my weekly movie night… While I continued doing German in Uni, one of my friends studied French & he needed to watch a French film for one of his assignments… He brought over the French film that Dinner for Smucks was based on. So I’ve seen at least one French film to.

  46. Listened to Rammstein when I was taking German in high school. In the Netflix era a whole world of subtitled media has opened up to me – German, French, Spanish, Polish, Hindi, Korean, etc.

    Music-wise I have come to enjoy so-called “desert blues” from North Africa and am a big fan of bachata music in Spanish, although I was first exposed to that on local radio because of the large Spanish-speaking population.

  47. Yes Indian movies and news.

    Favorites

    Roja
    Zindagee na Milange dibara

    News Dhruv ratee on you tube. He had excellent researched news about current events that make them easy to understand

  48. I tend to watch Asian content more since it has less sex in it. American shows and movies are over saturated with it, and it’s gross to me.

  49. It’s important to remember a significant portion of Americans in the southwest are bilingual and consume spanish media. And it’s not only the folks with Hispanic origins.

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