Pinyin Cinema: Learn Chinese from watching movies with Pinyin subtitles

Language Learning Chinese
21

I think Youtube has paid channels (you need to pay to watch content). Have you tried that way (for cheaper streaming)?

22

I’ll look into it. What do you think would be a good price tag for each pinyin subtitled movie?

23

At request of a few of our subscribers, we have changed the free trial time periods.

It is now possible to get a one month free trial, to truly test out all the features.

24

Wow, you don’t normally see any company be so responsive. Kudos for that.

25

This is a very new project, and the goal right now is not really to make money.

Anything can change within reason if our users feel that an alternative would be better.

1 Like
26

Last week I posted a link to a new language learning site, in which users can improve their Chinese by watching movies, and playing learning games that use words from those movies. Since making that post, a lot has changed on the site, and many new features have been added. Most importantly, the duration of free trials have been extended, and learners can now use the site for free for up to 1 month.

55%20PM

https://pinyincinema.com/

27

I finished A Widow’s Tears the other night, and had a go with the learning games for it this morning.

I like the new landing page.

Btw, there was an issue last night and I couldn’t watch any movies, but this morning it was fixed.

1 Like
28

I only got to start A Widow’s Tears and got dragged away with other things, but it looked interesting and I’m looking forward to watching the rest of it!

29

Thanks for update. I’ve done a trial, but was hoping additional movies would have been added over the last month. It seems just the same 8 classics available. Is there a timeline for additional releases or is this just a personal side project going through one film at a time by yourself?

Thanks!

30

My two cents:

My first point doesn’t actually apply to these movies with pinyin subtitles, but a lot of people try and learn a language by watching foreign movies subtitled into their native language. That’s terribly ineffective. If your goal is learning a language, don’t do it, kids.

As for these movies with pinyin, I don’t think they’d be bad as a supplement for someone learning Chinese (and five bucks a month is very reasonable). Most people seem to like watching foreign films when learning a new foreign language, and so do I. And these movies look pretty interesting! Nevertheless, if your goal is to learn the most Chinese possible per hour of invested time, I think there are more effective methods. Some disadvantages of these pinyin movies compared with other resources offering graded audio with accompanying text in pinyin and characters would be:

  1. Movies are interspersed with extensive “wasted” passages without speaking.

  2. The accompanying visual distracts, in my experience, from intensive concentration on the aural contours of the new language.

  3. Movies are not graded, and movie dialogues often contain snatches of speech and colloquialisms that are not the best models for intermediate learners.

  4. Movies contain background noise and sometimes rapid/unclear speech: for most learners, texts narrated in a clear voice are better for listening and imitation.

  5. I think it’s important to be able to separate the written text (whether pinyin or characters) and the audio. That is, I think it’s important to be able to read the text before (or after) listening to the audio and listen to the audio (perhaps many times) without the crutch (and distraction) of simultaneous text. I don’t know whether this is possible in these pinyin movies.