I grew up watching foreign movies almost exclusively dubbed. French TV in the 1980s-2000s dubbed everything; it was nearly impossible to watch stuff with the or

I grew up watching foreign movies almost exclusively dubbed. French TV in the 1980s-2000s dubbed everything; it was nearly impossible to watch stuff with the original audio track. And I will say something that will probably surprise most of you: up until age 10-12 I never noticed the lips didn't match precisely the voices and I never even realized it was dubbed(!) Even when I learned most of what I was watching was dubbed (there is so much American content on TV) it did not seem obvious to me. It certainly never bothered me. Maybe my brain subconsciously realized watching the lips was not giving out much information, so I learned to ignore lips. Even today as an adult, if I don't know the actors and I watch a French dub, I am not able to instantly tell it is a dub. I have to watch carefully for at least 10-20 seconds to make a guess. Maybe this speaks more of the fact that French dubs are actually really well made (they will choose translations so that French word cadence matches the English word cadence). On the other hand I have watched other dubs, especially non-English movies dubbed in English, where it's blatant that they were dubbed and it is very distracting. In any case, I always get a kick when I tell my American friends that I watched US content dubbed all my childhood and it never bothered me :-)