10 Phases of Watching German TV as an Expat

Moving to another country is a complicated process, and watching TV is an excellent way to have insight into the culture and improve your understanding of the language. Plus, true to Germany's "tax everything possible" policy, everyone has to pay a TV tax regardless of whether or not they have a TV, so you might as well use it, right?

I started learning German pretty intensively right around the time when I started dating my boyfriend, who can't speak much English. Due to external circumstances, we moved in together pretty quickly, and my German was still in its infantile stages. It was also the first time that I had access to a TV since coming to Germany. Alone at home while my boyfriend worked, I ended up watching several hours of TV each day. Note: I was also working out, cleaning the apartment, and getting outside when the weather was nice. No judging! While it was incredibly tedious at first, it played a HUGE role in improving my German very quickly.

For fun, here are the 10 basic phases of watching German TV:

1. You just stare at the TV, unable to pick out more than just a few words. At this point you're watching to get used to the sound of the language and not for comprehension. You are also still watching movies and TV shows in your native language, possibly with subtitles in German if you're being ambitious.
2. You've studied a bit and learned some more vocabulary. Most of what you hear is still gibberish, but sometimes you can understand an entire sentence! A small victory indeed, but you pat yourself on the back anyway. At this point you'll take anything you can get.
3. You're slowly increasing your vocabulary so you know what these crazy-looking subtitles mean. And you are realizing that German grammar has almost nothing to do with English, forcing you into a little black box of "I can't do this!" despondency. You finally realize you really can't do this on your own. Forget your hopes of magically learning German -- it's going to take some serious studying.
4. Take a break from the TV (it's not like you understand the shows anyway) and spend some time with actual books to learn this impossible language. You're pleased to realize that those viewing hours from step 1 - 3 were not wasted -- you have a slightly better understanding of the spoken language than you thought. You're still struggling to keep your head above water at this point.
5. OK! Break over. You've got the basic grammar down and you've memorized an impressive list of the most common vocabulary. Time to turn on the TV again.
6. You're watching your favorite TV shows and movies in German, with subtitles of course. And I mean movies that you have seen a million times and can almost recite by heart. A pocket dictionary is by your side at all times. You spend more time staring at the subtitles than watching what's happening with the actors. Frustratingly, sometimes the captions don't match up with what they say.
   Unforseen side effect:
   TV is no longer the relaxing, brain-numbing pastime it once was. You have to work to watch. A 20 minute sitcom leaves you feeling like you've been teaching yourself calculus -- which you have been, in a way.
7. You're slowly memorizing the German text from watching the same shows over and over. You don't rely on the subtitles anymore and can actually watch the action on screen now, jumping back to subtitles quickly for a bit of help.
   Unforseen side effect:
   You are really, really thrown off by the mismatch between the actors' lips forming words in English and hearing the German voice over. You never before realized how much you relied on mouth movements to understand what someone is saying. You have to train yourself to stare at their eyes. Also, while they usually find a German actor with a similar voice, sometimes you are totally thrown off by the voiceover. This happens way more often with cartoons, for some reason.
8. Fast forward in time. You've been studying since Step 4 and now it's time to leave your safe TV/movie reruns (thank goodness, you were getting so sick of them!) and venture into real German TV. You quickly realize that the news, and documentaries, are your new best friend. They speak Hochdeutsch (proper "high" German) and clearly. No confusing slang, mumbling, or accents. Also, while closed captioning is required for handicapped persons, the actual amount of captioned shows varies. And when the show actually does have captions, you realize that, like your favorite newly-hated TV shows, the captions often don't match up.
   Obvious side effect:
   You quickly become an expert on current world events and WW2 documentaries (which .is apparently all that Germany has, unless you stay up late and watch UFO conspiracy docs, imported from the US). Great for trivia nights!
   Unforseen side effect:
   See that cultural differences really do exist, especially towards nudity. Naked voluptuous women showering? No problem! Show it on the "Good Morning Germany"-type show when families are breakfasting together. "But it's just a human body," they say. "Kids see their parents and each other naked all the time," they say. Yeah, maybe -- but it doesn't stop my boyfriend from yelling "TITTEN!" whenever boobs flash on the screen.
9. Graduate to normal TV shows, but keep your training wheels, aka subtitles. You are getting better at understanding conversational German and learning all kinds of interesting expressions (and swear words, because they don't carry the same weight as they do in English and are used relatively frequently in normal conversation). You're also getting pretty jaded from seeing butts and boobs on screen.
   Unforseen side effects:
   Realize how many TV shows America exports, and how great they are compared to German TV. Become actually appalled at the quality of most German TV shows, with either a) are not funny; b) are just plain annoying; c) have terrible effects, acting, and plot lines; d) are a pitiful shadow of American TV shows.
10. Several months after your TV journey started, you graduate to the last and final step: watching whatever you want without subtitles (but let's not lie, most shows didn't have them anyway). No, you don't understand 100% -- but the balance is more like 90% for news shows, and 75% for normal TV. What you don't get is easily figured out by context clues on the screen. And there's always the "Ask a buddy" option if you're watching with a native speaker...unless it's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," in which case you need to just give up now because you're never gonna understand that show. Congratulations! You've persevered and now have a wonderful/shocking/shameful window into German culture whenever you want.
    Unforseen side effects:
    Become so annoyed by Germany's sitcoms, dramas, reality TV, and soap operas (other than GZSZ, which is the only soap opera I'd ever watch because it RULES) that you give up on watching them altogether, which is ironic because you started this whole process so that you could watch them in the first place. Luckily, they are pretty good at showing good, relatively new (American) movies every night at 8:15, directly after GZSZ -- so there's your evening TV program.