Learning Another Language for Gaming

Let’s face it, if you’re into gaming and you want to learn another language then you’re probably going to do something that treats it like a game. Gamification, if you want to use the proper vernacular, is the process of changing a task or input so that it is treated like a game. Rewarding the person "playing" with the adrenaline and endorphins you'd get from similar gaming activity but for something much more functional. Gaming techniques and mechanics used for everything but gaming.

Be it fitness, languages, calorie counting, supermarket points or coffee shop stamps, many things in modern life have it and have probably had it in some way for well over a century. You progress as if it is a challenge, grinding and all the time either learning or achieving, or meeting targets. It’s something that makes you feel good as you go, trying to achieve the maximum "flow" for retention of your time and money.

If you’re into gaming, then the chances are a language you’d want to learn that’s useful for your enjoyment of video games (unless English isn’t your native language) is probably Japanese. It’s not the exclusive reason why I started trying to learn last year but it was a pretty big reason.

Retro gaming specifically is absolutely entwined with Japanese language games with many either poorly localised to English, edited for local markets with sections or characters completely cut, or even just not adapted at all and kept exclusively for Japan. This is something we’ve not really seen much of since the PS3 generation, with many games that are unapologetically Japanese now taking on an almost sub-culture-esque fan base and remaining as purely native language as possible (The Yakzua series is a great example of this). But the previous 20+ years before then are full of incredible games hidden behind a language barrier. And with eBay and the wide scope of internet shops and retailers, importing games has never been easier.

I don't have to learn a language in order to play these games. I have a good few Densha De Go (Let’s Go By Train!) and Initial D games that demand Japanese understanding. Either by the story or text, or by the controls and instructions. Phone camera translators help along with some online guides but like any gaming experience, you want to remove the reliance of support and make your own progress with as little help as possible (and save a massive battery drain).

It’s also worth mentioning that if you are so inclined many of these retro games now have fan translations, hacks and more to allow you to enjoy a game without the need for learning a whole language. But that doesn’t solve my personal problem - more transposes it to a different problem in completing a technical solution. And if you're using original hardware then it's even more complex.

Personally, the main reasons I want to learn “some” Japanese are:A) I want to enjoy the games in Japanese language and feel the achievement of understanding them.B) I want to learn another language to a point where I can read and understand it outside of gaming and...C) Well, it’s cool isn’t it?

There is one big problem. I’m not very good at learning languages.

A part of me suspects this is mind over matter in some ways. I never thought I was a particularly academic minded person for a lot of my life but I still managed as an adult to go to university and get a degree in English. So there is a part of me that thinks this is more of a mental roadblock to overcome rather than a barrier that cannot be passed. But history isn’t massively kind to me here.

I never learned a language at school. Well, I did for an initial three years which I massively struggled with but I had the unusual opportunity to drop languages come exam time. So with a mixture of disdain and a lack of maturity I did exactly that. Which meant that outside of anything practical (tres cerveza por favor?) I haven’t really tried nor considered learning anything of another language for well over 20 years. And like a moron I go straight into one of the hardest languages outside of my own to learn.

So in someways, the gamification of an app like Duolingo is perfect for me. I don’t have a lot of time to spare and I don’t have a local teacher. Whilst I want to dedicate myself to learning, the casual nature of learning a bit at a time and something exactly relevant, or just having the basics slowly being hammered into my stubborn mind over time, sounds good and suits my current work/lifestyle.

Except I very quickly found holes in this. Maybe this is a personal experience or a comment on my own ways of learning but having spoken to others this is a common theme. (Edit - I've come back to this a few days after writing it having seen many people complete 500 or 1000 day streaks and concede how little they've actually learned. To put into a time frame that's nearly a year and a half minimum "learning" a language every day.)

Using an app is quite a solitary experience. It means you don’t do several of the things that are almost essential in learning and understanding a language - practice and use of what you've learned with pronunciation, hearing real people use it and to either respond or react. Sure there is feedback and reactions and computerised speech. But I have found that I often forgot words, similarly sounding phrases or had trouble learning the basics given the lessons felt more “here’s how to understand the words used by pop culture” than practical.

I also found it alarmingly easy to get right. That’s not because I learned the words, phrases or anything. It was more of a process of elimination and easily accessible hints that were being used to progress. The language wasn’t being learned here, more the gaming pattern. It is too gamey.

I, as someone who plays games regularly, had found the optimum way to complete the game of the language learning app, which counter-intuitively had very little to do with learning the language. It was more accurately pattern recall or short term memory recall of various phrases or words that had been displayed most often in threes so you knew them come the end of stage test. But then you moved on and very little stayed as you progressed onto the next stage and when it did come back into the game’s rotation, that’s where you realised that there is very little retained by your memory - especially after some time away from the app.

Leagues, completion streaks and everything else were all well and good for hitting that flow that gamers so often enjoy but for the way my stubborn mind works, it seemed very poor for the actual learning element. And as such I can recall very little from the nearly three months I used an app for language learning, despite only stopping two weeks ago. And without the practice feedback, absolutely no way to engage with it practically.

But, persevere I shall in my attempts to learn Japanese even if a gamified way isn't working for me. Perhaps by learning a specific set of things first, like what the common words are in the games I play in Japanese in menu items and similar. I can gain some progression. I hope this time next year I’ll be in a place where I can understand the games I’m playing without aid, but for now, it's playing either in the dark or with Google Translate camera apps to help alight at the next station.