<p>I have to put my leg up for a few hours every day, to reduce swelling on my knee, which is so boring, so I am trying to occupy myself.</p>
<p>Like Doc Martin, Downton Abbey, Sherlock, loved the recommendation of fortysomething, I prefer Hugh Laurie with an accent I think. :)</p>
<p>Trying to watch Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren, but apart for a few actors, I can barely make out what they are saying! Is it like immersion learning and if I expose myself to it enough I will just pick it up?</p>
<p>Lol, reminds me of a good friend of mine who watched the Billy Elliot movie, then having not understood a lot of the dialogue decided to watch it again with subtitles and was shocked by the amount of cursing in it which she had completely missed.</p>
<p>I’m English and must confess that when I go home to visit, I find myself struggling to understand some of the strong accents on the TV shows - especially Midlands and Northern accents. I sit staring at their lips trying to lipread. I used to find some American accents difficult to understand (including my husband when I first met him), but now I don’t have too much problem most of the time. So you may get used to the accents after a while. Though people sometimes still have difficulty understanding me - especially when I ask for water in a restaurant in the part of the US where I live (it has a T goshdarnit, not a D - I can say tomatoes with a short “a” sound, but wader, just can’t do it).</p>
<p>When we watched The Wire on TV a few years ago, we could barely understand half of it, so at a friend’s recommendation turned on the Closed Captioning (subtitles). What a difference it makes! Since then we’ve used CC whenever there have been heavy accents or just hard-to-decipher dialogue.</p>
I think it is and I think you will. It takes some tuning by your brain to adjust to the different accent but you likely will after a bit. The same thing happens with accent from other countries including even those within this country.</p>
<p>What I’ve noticed is - turn the volume up so you can hear the subtleties better and pay closer attention to it than you would a regular show - i.e. don’t multitask as much.</p>
<p>I use the closed-captioning when I watch “Game of Thrones.” Between the accents and the variety of proper names and references that I’m not familiar with, it helps a lot.</p>
<p>I remember seeing Master and Commander at the theater, and thinking how much I was missing since they’re aren’t captions. Watched it later on DVD and enjoyed it so much more with captions!!!</p>
<p>It use to drive me crazy when my parents had closed captioning on; this was for everyday shows and all shows! Now, I tend to use it myself more and more; almost to the point where I have trouble watching a show without it. So guess who’s kids now go bonkers when old mom and dad have on closed captioning ;)</p>
<p>Count me in as another fave of closed captioning. I discovered it when I was watching Waking Ned Devine. Now I use it for most foreign shows and also for shows that have a lot fast talking. It is amazing the difference it makes to me.</p>