The Joy of Barely Understanding Foreign Media

March 2026

I think one of the biggest steps when learning a foreign language is transitioning from “learning” to “using.” And a big part of that switch is moving away from media made for learners.

Why would you want that? Partially because content for learners is usually not that good. Those books, shows, and games mostly just try to lump required vocabulary together until it resembles the real thing. And you probably want “the real thing” if you want to enjoy the language.

Of course, the problem is that the “real” media is often harder to understand. It doesn’t align with CEFR levels and assumes a bunch of background knowledge. For this reason, I stayed away from native media for my first two years of learning German. I trusted the comprehensible input idea that you should understand most of the input for it to work. I’m calling this bullshit: you can understand as little as you can handle.

Yes, it’s nice to understand everything, but there is another mode. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the game director of Dark Souls, famously read a lot of English books in his youth without understanding half of them. His mind filled in the blanks, and he engaged with those works in a personal way. His games simulate this, feeding players bits of fragmented lore.

I think there is a lot of joy to be had in this mode of interacting with media. And guess what: anything becomes Dark Souls if you’re clueless enough!

For example, I’m finishing my playthrough of a German point-and-click game series, Deponia. At my B2 level, I don’t understand half the vocabulary and most of the wordplay. Like a hungry rodent, I’m hunting for scraps of meaning, guessing words based on memories of familiar sounds. And every time I understand what each character tries to say, it feels like a little victory. But from the bits I get, the visuals (and an occasional glance at the Wikipedia plot summary) - keeping track of the plot is doable. And the story is leagues better than any graded reader I’ve seen.

You probably don’t want to use this approach on top-tier media, though. I would find it frustrating to miss the nuance of true masterpieces, which is why I’m using it only on B-tier stuff. Something that can hook me, but doesn’t feel essential. Something I’d skip otherwise. And those works often gain a quality they didn’t have when I need to fight to understand them.