Answering the Owl - Learning Japanese with Ocarina of Time 3

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 miru. 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: the verbs in Ocarine of Time are usually in the casual form. In polite language, the -ru in plain form verbs like miru becomes masu. Negative form: miru becomes minai, and masu becomes mimasen. When speaking to friends and family, and when playing with randoms in Japanese games, use casual form. People play games as a form of escapism, including to escape from the social pressures of society. I can confirm that they don't expect polite grammar when playing CoD, or Destiny. My obvious lack of practicing spoken Japanese was probably clear and they may have just been nice to me.

Particles: かい (kai). Kai is a question particle that usually, if not always, demands a yes or no response. In the video below I can understand the owl's questions ending in kai but I guess wrong speaking to him when Link first gets to the castle. It's only used in casual settings! I'll explain below.

The Owl

There are three times that damned owl talks to you, but for once he's actually useful. Now we can look at some questions. At 2:30 in the video, he asks: わかったかい？wakatta kai? Wakatta is the past-tense of wakaru （分かる）, meaning "to be understood/clear".  Above, I explained that kai is a question marker, so altogether the sentence means: Understand? The subject (you) is probably implied here, but is not necessary to understand his meaning. Even if it was, the Japanese typically omit the subject in a sentence when context is clear on who or what is being talked about.

The actual answers you can give are: はい (hai) for yes, いいえ (iie) for no. Sometimes you get うん, or even ええ. They are both casual forms of "yes", but the polite はい is more common in written language. However, casual forms are just as likely to be used in games.

Note: I guess because it's for kids, Ocarina of Time does use hiragana in place of where kanji is usually supposed to go. Be careful not to write everything out in hiragana unless you absolutely have to.

I think I'm going to make the posts just long enough to examine one piece of information at a time, because that's all I usually have enough time to do each day between everything else I do. But on the weekends I might make pages that tie the separate posts together.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend