You’ve seen the film right?  Keanu Reeves downloads knowledge of Kung Fu and various other martial arts straight into his brain.  Well, guess what?  You can’t do that with languages. Not yet anyway.  However, I discovered something rather marvellous the other day: The Matrix may be able to help you with your language learning after all…

A French cousin came to visit for a week with her son and one night we decided to watch The Matrix together.  Since her son doesn’t speak much English, I was going to put French subtitles on but I discovered that my Bluray version had various voice-over options in multiple languages.  So instead we watched with French dubbing and English subtitles!  I was then further surprised by just how impressive the dubbing was.  I’ve watched French dubbed films before and some of the voices have been, frankly, comical.  Not so with The Matrix.  Oh no.  Neo sounds like Keanu Reeves, Morpheus sounds just like Laurence Fishburne, and Trinity like Carrie-Anne Moss – all speaking French!  Even Agent Smith has that wonderfully deliberate Carl-Sagan-esque delivery that Hugo Weaving first voiced.

The Matrix may or may not be your first film choice, but how many other films might be in your home DVD or Bluray collection secretly hiding a couple of hours worth of foreign language exposure?  Definitely worth a second look…

Gareth