Learn English with Game of Thrones: The Best Episodes
By: Frank Andrade
Tags: Game of Thrones, English Language, Data Science, Data Visualization, Language Learning

Learn English with Game of Thrones: The Best Episodes

Using data to find the best episodes of Game of Thrones to learn English with

Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash

If your native language isn’t English, you probably watched the dubbed version of Game of Thrones or needed subtitles to watch the original version. That’s OK; even I find the language in Game of Thrones a bit complicated. But, what if I tell you which are the episodes in this great TV show that cover only basic English words? Throughout 8 seasons, there must be some episodes where the characters use simple vocabulary, right? This is true! That’s why I used transcripts to find Game of Thrones episodes with the easiest vocabulary, so you can have fun watching them without subtitles. I’ll also compare the vocabulary used in Game of Thrones with shows like Friends and The Simpsons to know which TV show would be better to learn English with.

What Game of Thrones (GoT) episodes among the 73 are the best for you to learn English?

The British accent, speech pace and vocabulary used in episodes are some things that make GoT hard to follow even for native speakers. However, I ranked the 73 GoT episodes by difficulty of vocabulary, so you can re-watch them in English, starting with the easiest episodes. For example, I found that Oathbreaker (S6E3) and Beyond the Wall (S7E6) are the episodes in which characters used simple English vocabulary. I bet that If you watch them, you’ll be able to understand dialogues more than in the episode The Laws of Gods and Men (S4E6), which is the hardest episode to understand because of its hard vocabulary.

You can find all the Game of Thrones episodes in the image below. The episodes furthest to the right cover more basic English vocabulary

The code behind this analysis is available on Github — Image by Author.

The best episodes to learn English with Game of Thrones

The following are the top 10 episodes with the easiest vocabulary among all Game of Thrones episodes aired. Re-watch them without subtitles and you’ll understand dialogues more than in the average GoT episode:

S6E3: Oathbreaker

S7E6: Beyond the Wall

S8E2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

S2E4: Garden of Bones

S2E10: Valar Morghulis

S8E4: The Last of the Starks

S3E6: The Climb

S8E5: The Bells

S2E1: The North Remembers

S3E2: Dark Wings, Dark Words

Also, I found that Battle of the Bastards (S6E9) and The Red Woman (S6E1) are one of the episodes with fewer words spoken. I believe that happens because they have scenes with many fights, so less dialogue. If you watch them, you’ll have fewer hard words to worry about!

Tip: Check the vocabulary used in every episode before you watch them. You can easily do so by checking the chart ‘Every Word Said in Game of Thrones (Level 3and above)’ below.

Should I Learn English with GoT, Friends or The Simpsons?

Choosing a TV series to learn English is a hard task. Most people would recommend you a movie or TV show based on what they like or what worked for them to learn English, but let’s be honest, not everyone learns with the same formula.

If I have to follow what my research results suggest, I’d recommend watching Friends to someone who started learning English. At the same time, The Simpsons and Game Of Thrones would be an excellent choice for intermediate/advanced English learners who want to improve their vocabulary. However, here at Learn Language with TV, we encourage you to learn a language with content you love, so even if your English is basic, you could watch The Simpsons or Game of Thrones and improve your skills. After all, you already know which are the easiest episodes from those TV shows, remember?

Image by Author

Each TV show has some vocabulary that was created or is only spoken in their episodes. They’re labeled as ‘unique words’ in the chart above. Game of Thrones has many of these words, such as Winterfell, Westeros, Dothraki and Khaleesi. You can find more words like this in the following wordcloud with the shape of one of Daenerys’ dragon:

Character names were excluded, but I kept family names created on the TV show- Image by Author.

Which character Speaks the Most in 7 Seasons?

In case you’re interested to know which characters speak the most in almost all episodes in Game of Thrones, I ranked them by each season. To do so, I calculated which characters speak the most in the series and then classified them into seasons.

Play with the chart below to find how many times your favorite character speak in each season!

Image by Author

What hard words are they saying in 73 episodes?

Now that you know the easy episodes from Game of Thrones, it’s time to reveal my secret to learning languages with TV. To increase my English vocabulary when watching an episode of a TV show, I use the table below. You can find which difficult words you’ll hear in the 73 Game of Thrones episodes in a couple of seconds by using the table. You can filter by word, episode or season!

Image bu Author

This is how I increase my vocabulary in 4 languages by watching TV with the table above, step by step:

Step 1: I search the name of the episode I’m going to watch in the table above.

Step 2: I check the hard words repeated a lot of times in the episode by sorting the table by the ‘Repetition’ column

Step 3: I look up the meaning of hard words that I never heard before and are repeated a lot of times in that episode

Step 4: Watch the episode and have fun!

If you do this, you’ll increase your vocabulary and also the chances to understand dialogue in an episode, which includes deep conversations, jokes, etc.

Conclusion

I know how it feels to be unable to understand dialogue when watching your favorite TV show. In this article, I used my data science knowledge to find the Game of Thrones episodes with the easiest English vocabulary, so you can re-watch them and have fun learning English. I also compared it with other TV shows to find the ideal show for you to learn English with.

The code behind this analysis is available on Github.