SpartaN

My internet has been spotty the last couple days due to weather. That's why there hasn't been any posts. Also, I plan to post biweekly from now on (meaning twice each week). That doesn't mean I won't post more often sometimes, but as a rule I will post about every three days. This is so I have more time to put toward my writing, and working on my property which is essentially falling apart. More importantly, it will give me time to make quality posts. I don't want to just have posts that say literally "this is how you write letter A".  The advantage of being a small blogger is that I can change the schedule and methods with which I do things and it won't have as negative of an effect. And let's be honest, this is the time to improve. While I've just started is the perfect time to adjust as needed to find that perfect balance between my private life and the internet.

Let's say you just want to say "I am". How would you do that? What are the benefits of using a series like Zelda to learn another language? Chances are you have played at least one game from the franchise in the past. If you try learning with a new game, one you've never played in English, you will probably spend most of your time stuck on names. Being able to distinguish what the names belong to (a person, location, thing, etc.) can get confusing especially in longer sentences. By playing a familiar game, you won't have that problem and you can use that time productively learning new words, learning new phrases, and save yourself the frustration. は　 (wa) は designates the topic of a sentence. Even though it's the 'ha' syllable, it's pronounced 'wa' when used as a particle. The first word everyone learns is ' konnichi wa '. A lot of people misspell it as こんにちわ, but it's actually こんにちは, using the 'wa' topic indica...

Anyone who has ever played a video game has noticed that one almost never, even in children's games, finds only basic "subject - verb - object" sentences. The same is true of Japanese video games. If you were hoping that a game for children would be easy to read, you'd be wrong. Sure, it's easy for a Japanese child. Every day we become dumber while they grow stronger. After all, they are smarter than us. Or are they? Let's consider the fact that they grew up speaking the language. It's no surprise then that they would understand more difficult sentences than most foreign adults with diplomas who have only been studying the language for a few months. For them N64 games are easy to read. However, there is one area they still struggle with. That area is kanji. Like us, children in Japan also don't know most of the twelve hundred letters taught in primary and secondary schools. If you've been following my Learning Japanese with Zelda  videos, you n...

If you do use The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time  as a form of immersion into Japanese, you might occasionally  pretty much constantly find new letters or words you are unfamiliar with. In a European language, you can simply search the word as it appears on the screen. But what about Japanese words? How do you find the specific kanji you don't know? You can't just search the word, because you'd have to know it's pronunciation already in order to do that. It's not like they all come with furigana  after all. Despite these difficulties, there is a way, but first I should inform anyone interested in learning new letters to look into 'how to search a Japanese dictionary' with radicals (the components of kanji that stem from other basic kanji). Nonetheless, I have found a link to the entire in-game transcript here:  zeldalegends.net I've linked the transcript on my Resources page, along with other useful links for those looking to learn str...

There is commentary, but something I didn't go into in the video was  mountain kanji and related terminology. Kanji to learn : 山 (やま; yama ) mountain; 登  (のぼ‐る; noboru ) to climb; and 道 (どう; do ) road. Death Mountain Trail In the picture above is Death Mountain Trail, with "Death Mountain" in katakana and "(mountain) trail" in kanji. The katakana if straight forward: デスマウンテン, desumaunten , which is literally "Death Mountain". It's a typical use of the katakana to transmit English words.  The kanji is: 登山道, tozando , meaning mountain trail. The usage of 登 together with 山 means "mountain climbing" ( tozan ). By itself, 山 is yama . In this case it uses it's on'yomi, or "Chinese reading". So yama  becomes zan . 登 is a third grade letter, and is usually substituted with 上 when spelling のぼる (to climb). 上 is the character for up, and is spelled うえ by itself. It's an easier letter seen in firs...

No longer will Link wander the world in silence.

Remember how the owl just won't leave you alone in your quest to save Hyrule? And how at the end of every wall of text he feels the need to ask you whether or not to repeat what he literally just told you? It's like that, except in a foreign language. Unless he words it just right, and isn't asking in the negative "do you not  want me to repeat?" Only then can I answer him correctly. Never again! Kanji to learn : 見る ( link ) and 行く ( link ). 見る and 行く are both verbs. 行く 'to go' in particular is used quite often in Zelda to describe where Link is going next. It's romaji spelling is iku , and it has special grammar rules as a u-verb that are a bit less common that ru-verbs like 見. 見る means 'to see' and is romanized as mi ru . Even by themselves, verbs are accompanied by a hiragana suffix that denotes the tense it's in. Japanese verbs are grouped according to their default suffixes ( miru  is a ru-berb, iku  is a u-verb).  Important :...

I will be renaming the non-Zelda posts to reflect their content, because they are more-or-less just lists of katakana terms seen in games. Not meant to cause any inconvenience. I think the new way I'm gonna present information will be more convenient and consistent with "for beginners" that doesn't seem like just "anything I come across that I'm able to figure out myself" lol. Thanks for being patient

Part 1 focuses on the monologue by the tree for a complex sentence that you can practice breaking down to help make sense of sentence structure. It was, chronologically, the first dialogue in the game, but this one will focus on easier sentences and some kanji you should learn early on. Kanji to learn: 木 ( link ); 森 ( link ); 子 ( link ); 今 ( link ); the next two are important despite only being see once or twice; 中 ( link ); and 出 ( link ). The kanji listed are all grade one except for 今 which is grade two. However, 今 is very common. A lot of kanji taught in higher grades are just as common as the lower grades, in some cases even more so. Take watashi  (私) for instance. It isn't taught until grade six (though most kids already know it) and it's the letter for "I", or "me" when referring to oneself. Kokiri Forest This place is mentioned all over the game, and is fairly easy to remember. It's the katakana for Kokiri (コ 'ko'; ...

I've found a good video editor at last! But until I release my first quality video, I will just keep breaking down footage from the captures I already have. I will put the time stamp to jump to where you can see what I'm talking about, and maybe you just want to read the text yourself for practice. Opening Sequence 0:34「ハイラル王国に広がる深き森…その森を守り続けできたワシを、人はデクの樹と呼んでおった…」 Starting slow I'll look at "ハイラル王国に広がる深き森". ハイラル:  ハ ha ; イ i ; ラ ra ;  and ,  ル ru . We have two of the R-group syllables and a vowel in one word. Altogether it should read heiraru  to make English "Hyrule". I mention that there is two R-group letters, because I know that I struggled with differentiating the R's from each other so this might be a good in-game reference to help. 王国 is a common term for kingdom. It's a combination of two kanji: 王 meaning 'king' (おう; ou ) and 国 meaning 'country' (こく; koku ). King is one of the easiest kanji out...

So, now that I can read load, save, and start game, I need to actually play the game. The exact katakana you'll see varies by game, so I've narrowed it down to RPGs like Fire Emblem . The first image is the action menu in Fire Emblem. Not only does it share a lot of the same terms as in other games, it has additional ones unique to RPG's like Final Fantasy and the Legend of Zelda . Take a look: ユニット ( unitto ) - Unit: brings up unit info, like health, strength, hp, etc. アイテム ( ietemu ) - Item(s): lists your items. スキル ( sukiru ) - Skill(s): characters in Fire Emblem have special abilities called skills. コンフィグ ( configu ) - Configure: Brings up the options menu (sound, video, etc.). セーブ ( seibu ) - Save: let's you save the game. ターンエンド ( taanendo ) - End Turn: end's your turn ( taanendo  is lit. 'Turn End'). It's prompting me to choose So I go to end my turn prematurely (to ensure that my mage doesn't die) and the game prompts me to ...

I know there are many gamers who like to collect Japanese games. After all, Japan makes most of them. However, I don't know many here in the States who are actually able to navigate the screens of their beautiful product. Consequently, they are unable to participate in playing their favorite games, or even those exclusively from Japan, due to language barriers. Of course, you should play in the language you know, and that is how games are meant to be played. I, myself, am playing Nintendo games in Japanese as a beginner in the language (just learned hiragana, katakana, and ~ 100 kanji). Right now, if I had to say, I'm half way to N5 based on mock tests I've taken this week. But as I learn more, I also want to share what I've discovered. And that's why I'm beginning my Playing Video games in Japanese from a Newb series. *As soon as I find a good video editor that I'm comfortable with, I'll begin uploading content about 'Japanese for gamers...