Can You Learn Japanese From Playing Dragon Quest
Tin can you learn Japanese with JRPGs? They can certainly assist a lot, and I recently discovered a very useful though uncomplicated strategy for maximizing their learning potential.
Recently I have been playing the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VII. I am adoring seeing Dorakue in 3D and finding the game very useful for learning. Dorakue 7 is actually one of the best JRPGs to learn Japanese with because it is very text‐heavy.
In fact, Square Enix has currently no plans to translate the game into English because it has and then much text that it would be unusually expensive to localize. An unstated reason, I suspect, is that Western RPG players have much less tolerance of extensive text (fifty-fifty in English, the lazy piffers) than Japanese players. A reviewer of the original Playstation version of this game is quoted on Wikipedia as saying that the first part of the game consists of "some of the near boring hours you volition ever play in a video game."
At my playing speed (very tedious even in the old English days) it was ten hours earlier I had a fight. Just these hours were packed with story. "Never mind the story, merely get on with the game" is the attitude of many Western players, I think. No wonder the company is hesitant about a translation.
Only I digress. The signal hither is that Dragon Quest Seven has a lot of text. I recently came to the conclusion that the best Japanese games for learning were visual novels – the Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright games both fall into this category. Best considering the proportion of text to annihilation else is much the highest. In Professor Layton i spends some time on puzzles, but the remainder is practically pure text with pretty visuals. In Phoenix Wright the "puzzles" are part of the text itself, and you take to sympathize the witnesses' stories in considerable particular to spot the 矛盾 mujun, contradictions in their accounts of events.
With Dragon Quest VII, even though it is one of the wordiest JRPGs always made, 1 notwithstanding spends a great deal of fourth dimension fighting monsters. While there is a footling text involved in the plough‐based fights (menus, descriptions of events), it is repetitive and brief. Not terribly useful for learning. Since you volition be spending hours of your play fourth dimension doing this, does that brand JRPGs a bad selection for the learner?
My answer is no. In the first identify, later on visual novels they are clearly the second‐all-time option for reading comprehension purposes. There is a lot of text and it matters (if you don't sympathise what a graphic symbol is maxim you may not know what to do next). JRPGs are expert practice. It is only that with all the fights they aren't constant practice. Except that…
The Dolly Clandestine to Learning Japanese with JRPGs
I just discovered a perfect way to brand those fights play into your learning.
Numbers.
JRPG fights are full of numbers. If you are familiar with table‐top RPGs you tin can practically hear the dice rattling nether the screen. And you lot can see the numbers too. Every time you hitting an enemy or an enemy hits y'all, what pops upward? A number. When you win, yous are told the amount of gold and experience you lot only gained. In numbers. When you level up, yous are given a string of numbers telling you which stats improved, by how much, and what they are now.
This is very useful for learners, even fairly avant-garde ones. The trick is to be disciplined and say each number, preferably aloud, when you run across it.
"But I know Japanese numbers. I learned them in lesson 2, 'way dorsum," you may be saying. Of class you know them. So practise I. Simply how fast do you know them? Tin you recall in them? Tin can you run across 32 or 469 and immediately come across not "30 2" or "four hundred threescore nine" but "san juu ni" or "yon hyaku roku juu kyuu" ?
That is what this exercise is about. Making numbers in Japanese non something y'all "know" but something you actually think in, every bit second nature and first language.
Y'all may really discover the pace of combat besides fast to do the in‐fight numbers at start. If so, just diligently say the 経験値 (experience points) and aureate numbers that come up afterwards each boxing and the stats when you lot level up. You can accept your time with these.
Work up to saying every number that comes upward in a fight as soon as it appears. This requires a footling 我慢 gaman, but you are thinking in Japanese culturally as well as linguistically, aren't y'all? So 我慢 is becoming natural to you, isn't it? You might make an exception for multiple hits (where an attack hits all or a group of opponents). I do, because I tin't exercise that in English (but numbers are my 短所 brusk suit in whatsoever linguistic communication).
But what y'all are aiming at is the point where you can see a number in Japanese when your mind is in J‐mode. You lot aren't thinking "thirty‐7, oh that'due south san juu nana", you are thinking "san juu nana".
It is tricky, because when Arabic numerals are used it is pretty much equivalent to reading a word in English. Your mind has mapped those characters to sure sounds. What you are doing is re‐mapping the Japanese numbers to your Universal number perception, only as learning Japanese should exist re‐mapping Japanese to Universal Grammar. Near learners never do either.
But yous will. With the help of JRPGs.
The only way to reach such a radical re‐mapping is huge amounts of repetition until the new map becomes instinct. The same way that, if you touch‐type, endless do taught your fingers where all the keys are, even when your brain tin can't instantly recall the data. In other words, moving the Japanese number system from conscious recall to instinctive and instantaneous association.
Such do in isolation would be mind‐numbingly tedious. But JRPGs volition kindly throw an endless stream of numbers at you while you're having fun. And you can plow what was wasted time from a learning indicate of view into highly valuable practice.
Fifty-fifty as your characters gain experience points with each battle and keep leveling up, and so will you gain number‐remapping experience points with each boxing and continually level up toward your total remap.
It is such a kind world, isn't information technology?
Source: https://learnjapaneseonline.info/2015/01/14/learning-japanese-with-jrpgs-doing-it-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=Recently%20I%20have%20been%20playing,it%20is%20very%20text%E2%80%90heavy.&text=The%20point%20here%20is%20that,has%20a%20lot%20of%20text.
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