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[Bjoern the Smexy]

Yes, I learned much of my English through videogames, though not necessarily jRPGs.

The first game I can remember to purposely playing in English (as opposed to German, my native language) was Zelda Ocarina of Time. Whenever I read a text block in English in the game I tried to remember what it said in German adn drew conclusions from there. It worked pretty well for the most part since the German script was translated from the English one for the most part (except for a few character and item names).

It was a fun experience. I recommend doing it.
At least as long as you memorized a game's script in your native language first and know a bit or two about the difference in your native language's grammar and English grammar.


I want to try to learn Japanese that way too, but I think that would be a task way too hard for me to accomplish. The reasons may or may not be obvious as to why (mainly momrization of all the Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji and the lack of an extensive dictionairy to check some words and stuff. Also I have no clue about Japanese grammar).

 

[faridmon]

I think that people like to exaggerate. Nobody learns English *just* by playing games. In reality that was a small part of all the different things that increased their English proficiency.

Most of my intermidiate English have been learned through Paper Mario...

 

[PetriP-TNT]

I kinda learned english from playing NES and later SNES too.

 

[cacildo]

I noticed i understanded the english language while playing FF6 (ff3), a good 15 years ago.

Never took any class and videogames kind of did the trick. But as you can see im not exactly the Ace of english language. My writing is especially stiffy.

Nowdays with the internet, any difficult word can be checked at google, what makes everything easier (but definitly not perfect, as you can see)

 

[Wazzim]

You'll only learn to recognize little words like 'Yes' 'No' and 'Potion' etc. which is pretty handy for menu navigation. You'll never really learn the words without some knowledge of the writing though (I learned Katakana for the JPN Dissidia for the weapons/items back when it was released, wasn't worth it).

 

[DeliciousDoc]

I think all the people saying learning language through games is impossible assume that those who do it start by picking up a game and through the power of willpower, use tools to understand every word and every sentence.

In my case, I learned both English and Japanese through games. When I was learning English, it was as a child and I remember asking my parents for help when I needed to understand a part such as the "tip of the nose" hint in zelda. I remember asking my parents what nose meant (so I was by no means advanced before I played the game) and I still didn't get it. I just kept fumbling on. Later I found out that was a very cryptic hint that even monolinguals didn't understand. English translation of games back then were pretty bad for native speakers as well. Eventually there was a point where I understood everything. Biggest advantage is being immersed in the environment. Only weakness is that you are rarely asked to input so your comprehension might be good but your production would be terrible. That's where balanced learning comes in.

Japanese is basically the same thing except you don't have a familiar alphabet to fall back on. On the other hand, games didn't have speech back when I was learning English.

 

[Bomber Bob]

You learn a language if you use it actively.

So playing game helps learning a language.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

I learned a surprisingly number of phrases playing Ocarina of Time with a dictionary. Helped me out a lot, to the point that I started playing text heavy games to improve my English. In the end I graduated from an English institution 'round here just to get my degree.

 

[Hasemo]

You should immerse yourself in the language you're learning but don't forget to learn the stuff like grammar and (most importantly here) the kanji from textbooks etc.
Nevertheless, games are great as a study help, but I would choose the ones with voiced dialogues, so that you won't have to draw the kanji in electronic dictionaries if you don't know it. Tales of Vesperia PS3 is one of the best of those IMO, plus Star Ocean for the PS3 has the option to change vo+subtitles/text/menus to Japanese. I strongly recommend it.

 

[Lord Ghirahim]

Post-TWW Zelda games (furigana!) for beginners, RPGs for advanced learners.

 

[KyteTron]

I've been learning it through, not exactly JRPG's, but date sims/eroge. That said, I made sure to have a good grasp of the kana and have AGTH aiding me. But it works wonders since I can't stick to a textbook outside of a classroom for 5 seconds... let alone in a classroom, but this keeps me entertained and actively involved at the same time.

Full credit goes to stefanus at Hongfire for the method.

 

[Lionheart1827]

Kinda related, even though my first language is english, I started playing games like FF and Chrono Trigger at a young age, probably around 6 or 7. Playing RPGs definitely improved my vocabulary and grammar as a young kid.

Also, when I went back and played the games when I got older, certain jokes and other one liners put into the game that originally flew over my head I suddenly got which resulted "OHHH so thats what that meant."

 

[NaughtyCalibur]

If you know the kana and have an understanding of basic grammar (e.g., the topic particle pronounced "wa" is written with は and not &#12431, then you can definitely benefit from it, so long as you have good resources at your disposal. Things like Japanese vocab and kanji dictionaries go a long way. What I tend to do is use a combination of these sites:

Denshi Jisho -- Anytime I don't recognize a kanji I'll search for it on this site, which will then lead me to a basic definition and how it's used in sentences and such.

Google Translate -- This probably isn't 100% necessary and there could be better translation software out there for all I know, but I like to cross reference what I think something says with Google's translation. This usually yields shitty results of half-translated nonsense, but typically it confirms/denies whether I have the right idea or not.

Handwritten kanji search -- Basically if my eyes are failing to find the kanji on Denshi Jisho, I'll use this to attempt to draw them out. I'll admit, however, that it's completely useless unless you have a full grasp on stroke count and order, which is a shame. The one on Window's IME Pad may prove more useful to you.

But those alone aren't enough, because even if you do manage to successfully translate a whole dialogue box (something that can take a good 15-45 minutes depending on how much you know), you'd be doing yourself a disservice to simply move on to the next box and so on and so forth throughout the course of the game. Instead I feel it's imperative that you use a program like Anki to make cards for each sentence that you've learned, and then study them on a regular basis. I'd imagine that by the end of the game you'd have thousands of sentences to keep you fresh.

Like anything, learning a language is about repetition. So if you expect to come out of a few JRPGs with anything even remotely resembling fluency, you'll be sorely mistaken. Get about 100 under your belt and then maybe you'll have something.

 

[Dunan]

I picked up a lot of Japanese as an intermediate-level student who took on the challenge of the then-untranslated FF5. It was at just the right level, and the nice big 16x16 fonts were easy to read. (At the time, before sub-pixel rendering, it could be difficult just to tell what character you were looking at when the font size was 10 pixels or smaller.)

I also tried Seiken Densetsu 3 and, while it was quite a bit tougher, I still understood a lot of it. FF7 was my first PS1 game and I was playing the Japanese original. I'll never forget solving the puzzle in the Shinra library, where you had to move some books that were out of place. No FAQs, nobody to guide me, and I figured it out. What a huge confidence boost!

Tales of Phantasia on the PS1 was another big one -- just the right language level for a student, plus the thrill of playing an untranslated game. I highly recommend this one even today as the graphics hold up very well.

A lot of other people in my Japanese classes were big anime fans and I was never that into it. So while they got good at speaking but struggled with reading and writing, I was the opposite. And all it took to fill that deficiency was half a year as an exchange student. After that I felt like I had really reached a level where I could fully function in Japanese society.

Those games were just one part, but I can think of many worse and less enjoyable ways to spend a few hundred hours on language acquisition.

 

[Dreamwriter]

Spoony Bard!


...odd translations aside, characters in videogames and anime do not speak like normal people do, so are not good ways to learn the language. Maybe to practice it, but not learn.

 

[Huff]

I think I remember a blog johntv wrote on dragon quest and how it started his learning of Japanese and his entry into the game industry.