Role of historical documentaries and follow-up commentaries in learning and understanding other cultures and languages (on the basis of the English original and the Ukrainian and Russian translation)

The article is focused on the study of historical documentaries and follow-up commentaries as a significant source of learning foreign languages and cultures through the Internet. History is reflected in any language and culture, making their vocabulary always rich and diverse. As an illustration material, we have chosen a mini-documentary about the family life and work in the Victorian England by the British historian Ruth Goodman and commentaries about the topic from ordinary people. Both the documentary and the commentaries abound in modern English idiomatic constructions, historical notions and terms, culture-bound vocabulary, and grammar constructions which often do not have direct equivalents in the Ukrainian and Russian translations. This means that studying such films and native speakers’ opinions about their own history learners can easily grasp the main discrepancies and similarities between the source language/culture and the target language/culture, and draw relevant historical and cultural parallels. Since commentaries are very close to the colloquial speech learners of English and future interpreters may get an easy access to the conversational up-to-date English in use without quitting their native countries. All these things prove the importance of including such documentaries together with follow-up commentaries into the classes of English as a foreign language.