Why I love soap operas as a language learner

I’m not a language prodigy. You know, those people you watch on YouTube talking about how they can speak 19 different languages and are currently learning 3 new ones — I’m not one of those.

But I am a linguaphile — I love language, and I love words. I even love fonts.

I like to think my second language, English, is as good as my Arabic, which is my native tongue. If you also count my intermediate-level German, my beginner Spanish, and my modest ability to decipher French sentences, you could say that I speak three and a half languages.

This post is for people like me, who love learning new languages without even realizing it, without feeling like they’re studying.

Don’t get me wrong: I love to study. But it’s also nice to be able to learn some things organically, without sitting down for two hours every day studying verbs or going over vocabulary lists.

In my language learning journey, I was accompanied by a lot of invaluable tools. Textbooks and grammar workbooks are indispensable. Reading books and articles in your target language will get you a long way. Listening to music in your target language is incredibly helpful. Duolingo and other language apps are a fun way to stay in touch with the language you’re learning on a daily basis.

But of all the resources I had at my disposal, there was one that helped me develop my language skills more quickly and more effectively than any other — the soap opera.

I learned pretty much all of my Spanish and about half my German simply by watching TV. I watched anything I could find that interested me, but I specifically watched a lot of soaps, or, for Spanish learners, telenovelas.

Soaps or telenovelas are a special kind of TV show, and they’re perfect for learning a new language.

And here’s why.

Soaps are domestic.

Soaps are nothing fancy. They are typically low-budget productions, and most of the plot takes place in settings like the home, the workplace, or the local cafe.

By watching soaps, you get to learn a dozen ways to greet someone, to order a coffee, to ask for the bill, to have a pleasant conversation or a fight, to talk casually to a friend, or formally to your coworker. Soaps will show you hundreds of scenes from normal, everyday life.

Soaps are slow and repetitive.

Soap operas typically air daily. It’s hard for writers to write enough plot for a new episode every single day, on a low budget. Instead, the story is stretched out over many episodes, with very little happening in each episode. The script is often repetitive and the acting is slow, giving you the perfect chance to process what’s happening in the scene and understand what everyone’s saying.

Soaps are melodramatic.

Soap operas are synonymous with melodrama. It’s what puts so many people off them, but it’s also why so many people find them addictive.

For the language learner, the melodrama is a definite advantage. It’s an opportunity to learn heavy or emotionally-loaded phrases that you wouldn’t learn in a typical classroom. You get to learn strong and impactful ways to express yourself on serious or sensitive topics.

Soaps are multi-faceted.

Soaps don’t fit neatly within a particular genre. They have a habit of combining humor, melodrama, romance, suspense, and sometimes even the supernatural, all into one unique genre that is the soap. Watching a soap gives you a fuller experience of native speakers in different modes and with different overtones, from the serious to the funny or the absurd.

Soaps are made up of many episodes.

Most soaps I’ve watched are made up of many, many episodes. I’ve watched shows with a thousand episodes and more. Following the same show for a long enough time will give your brain a chance to process, and your language skills the time to evolve.