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Video Games in Other Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Dr. POW Groupie Canada Joined 4764 days ago 48 posts - 58 votes  Studies: German, English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 30 16 August 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is something I've wanted to try for a couple of days now. And if this sounds
silly, no, I am not a troll. I've been on quite a few gaming sites with members from non-English speaking countries, and they apparently have no problems typing in English on forums or in-game, and this comes from being familiar enough with the game and its community. According to a few, their experience with the English language comes from simply playing video games in English, either because they find it interesting or because the game is not available in their target language. But some of them do mention that their speech and pronunciation isn't very good, despite learning grammar fairly well. Yes, I'm aware of the issues with this learning method. The members of gaming communities don't use proper grammar, and I'm bound to pick up mistakes I might not be able to get rid of later on. Depending on the type of game I choose, I might only be learning how to type, read, or speak instead of being well-rounded. Also, the vocabulary I'm bound to learn will be centered and focused on the content of that game, and I'm slightly more interested in what is said in the real world, not dungeons or zombies or magic. But I'm wondering if anybody has tried using this as a method of learning. I'm probably not going to stop gaming anytime soon, and using it to learn will help me make better use of my time. Will this help me further my language skills in any language when learning grammar on the side as opposed to learning grammar alone? And what kind of game should I play? A chat-based one, or a text-based one? One that has been reviewed by others and is bound to have proper grammar, or one that shows how people in the real world speak? Pokémon in French anybody? What about WoW in German? Klingon perhaps? EDIT: And I did type "video game" onto the search bar. Nothing came up, but are there other topics like this? Edited by Dr. POW on 16 August 2011 at 5:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5119 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 30 16 August 2011 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I never tried this, but, IMHO, adventure games would most likely be the best games for language learning, because they usually have a lot of dialogs and texts in them than first person shooters or sports games.
Also many older adventure games are now available in the bargain bins for next to nothing. BTW, many major PC games released for the European market have subtitles and often dubbed audio for French, Italian, German and Spanish (FIGS) by default. Just check the options menu of the games that you play to see if they offer subtitles in languages other than English and have them displayed during gameplay. This way you might be able to pick up some words while playing. Also many major console games have FIGS support by default, but often no options for language selection. In order to change the language, you'll have to change country and/or region setting of the console. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4708 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 3 of 30 16 August 2011 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have looked at playing Runescape in French, although I'm just starting out in French. RS has a lot of terms for things you point out, and it has chat bars just like a chat room. Best of all you can play for free. I think it has potential, but I want to improve my French a bit first.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6713 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 30 16 August 2011 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't use this as a main method of learning but I do enjoy playing games in my target language Japanese.
The DS is a great console for playing foreign language games because it's region-free, cheap and easy to take with you and play on the move. In my opinion, the best game I've tried in terms of educational value is Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side (obviously only Japanese). It might sound a bit silly, it is of course a dating game but there are several points in its favor. 1 - Every piece of game dialogue has audio (except what the player character says). This means that even if you don't understand a kanji word you might recognise it from the sound. 2 - The language used is casual, normal everyday Japanese. The game setting is school so you don't get any useless-for-real-life specific vocabulary about dragons etc. So a lot of what you hear you can use straight away. 3 - You get a short quiz on every date where you have to select the right answer according to what the other person just said. It's like a comprehension test. 4 - It's fun and the storyline draws you in, so you want to understand what everyone is saying. But since you don't seem to studying Japanese I'll give you another reccommendation. There's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which is available in several European languages. It's a lawyer-based puzzle game, no audio unfortunately but there's a lot of text. You need to cross-examine witnesses, defend your client and solve the crime. The concept might sound kind-of dull but it's really fun and one of the most popular games on the DS. It might be a good idea to look up some common courtroom vocabulary first though (defense attorney, witness, victim etc). Games with lots of text (adventure games, RPGs etc) are the best in my opinion. You could pick up some of the language when playing MMORPGs but the danger is that you will be picking up very internet specific language, with lots of abbreviations that will most probably not be understood in real life. I think any kind of authentic material is great for improving your target language but you need to be doing some actual studying as well. So yeah, I believe games are useful, but not as your only learning source. And the non-English gaming members you talk about will definitely have studied/are studying English at school. Anyway, try it out and let us know how it goes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| akprocks Senior Member United States Joined 5085 days ago 178 posts - 258 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 30 17 August 2011 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
Search up ROM sites for whatever language you would like to study. I think I tried this a while back but my PSP broke down and I can't stand computer emulators. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dr. POW Groupie Canada Joined 4764 days ago 48 posts - 58 votes Studies: German, English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 30 17 August 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder what "Objection!" is in French. Maybe it's the same. It's also probably one of
the best choices, because just from the sound of it, I can tell that it won't have a bunch of endless grinding and leveling in order to progress, where the same text would just appear over and over again. I suppose that a single video game could contain thousands of vocabulary words, possibly more, depending on what the game is. Also, is it better to play a text-based game I've already played in English? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4728 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 7 of 30 17 August 2011 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a few video games with options of other languages, but as the US kind of has its
own region, I don't come across many. One is "Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons," which was bought at an airport in Amsterdam, I think, and the other is "Mario Tennis: Power Tour," and I'm not sure why it's got multiple language options. Anyway, I've found "Mario Tennis" to have the more dialogue in it, not to mention more current feeling stuff, but the problem with learning from it would be that it's pretty easy to progress through the game without really understanding the dialogue. I haven't focused a lot on language learning with them, though. I think at beginner levels I would want to play games I've done before, to give myself a little context, but that might be as much because I'm a little too lazy to keep looking things up in my dictionary. Anyway, both of my games have options for English, German, Italian, French and Spanish. It makes me wish I lived in Europe so I could have more games to play in Italian, but since most everything is getting region-locked now, I can't really import games unless I pay for an extra system as well. Alas and alack. I've considered using emulators myself, but I typically find them pretty clunky, hard to use. I'm definitely interested how it work for you, though! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6713 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 30 17 August 2011 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
It probably depends on the game but I haven't had much success with playing a game I've already played once in English. If I already know what to do and how the story turns out I'm not as interested to keep playing. If it's something brand new I'm playing then I play it because it's interesting and fun, whereas if I've played it before I'm playing it basically for the learning opportunity. So the difference is between doing something for the fun and the learning is something that happens almost without you realising it; or making yourself do something that isn't that fun just for the educational value. However, I know there are other people who find this really useful (i.e. watching familiar Disney films dubbed in the target language etc). But I don't think it would be that helpful for a game, especially if there is a lot of text, because you most probably aren't going to remember every single line, and will end up needing a dictionary anyway. I wouldn't recommend it for Phoenix Wright, because wanting to find out the true killer of each crime is the best part, and if you play it twice you've removed that fun straight away. And there's so much dialogue that the memory of when you played it in English will not help much at all. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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