Now as I've said previously I am an English student doing my undergraduate degree in linguistics and British/American literature. So I naturally have a great love of English as a language. I can work my way through centuries old literature and analyze it to smithereens like it ain't no thing, ramble on incessantly abut British (royals) and American History (particularly immigration and racial history), work my way through complicated linguistics and listen to all sorts of accents and understand them.. But, because I am not a native speaker the language can throw me for a loop. Specifically when it comes to spelling and sometimes auditory English. And I still don´t know what the word 'mutton' means or 'veal'.
So watching my favorite shows can be quite a ride sometimes. Especially when I don't catch what the actors are saying. It's simply a fact that I sometimes need to listen to the audio several times before I catch what the characters are saying. And sometimes it leads to terrible misunderstandings:
In episode 1x20 of NCIS:LA Kensi talks about a man complementing her boots and calling them unique. I heard 'boobs' - needless to say I sat there open-mouthed wondering what on earth I was hearing.
In one episode of season 3 (I do not remember which one) Granger is talking about someone's fiancé - I heard Beyoncé and started wondering why on earth they were mentioning her.
In Modern Family Gloria has a great scene where she talks about having asked for a box of Baby Cheeses and instead got a Baby Jesus - I had to say both words out loud several times to catch the difference between them phonetically.
In episode 8x22 of NCIS DiNozzo shouts: "You can't outrun me, I'm wearing tubesocks!". And I sat wondering what in the world tube socks are. So I googled it .
But sometimes, watching TV shows really helps.
NCIS has proved to be quite the linguistic tool for me when they correct Ziva's use of idioms. I don't know half of the idioms she uses so I honestly love learning them. So it's an extra bonus for English language idiots for me to watch the show.
And in Castle episode 2x02 Castle was correcting use of language and grammar throughout the entire episode and talked about the proper use of irony. It was a treat for me to watch as a linguistics student.
In one episode of NCIS:LA Kensi corrected Deek's pronunciation of the word "lightning". It was actually interesting for me to hear. I´d be very happy if they'd one day cover the word "comfortably" which I hate pronouncing.
So watching TV is not only interesting but also educating!
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