Hey, people.
Forgive me and my english.

The thing is, I'm going to play Pokemon Black (or White), and I hope I can do that in japanese, since the release date is around half a year earlier than the american version.
I wonder if anybody here knows how much you should know to be able to play it in japanese.
For those who don't know, the game is almost entirely on hiragana (except pokemon's names and some items, that are in katakana), I guess it has a kanji here and there, mostly for counters.
The sentences, at least in the english version, are pretty simple and straightforward, like kinda like child's storybooks, you could say.

The game will be released in about 6 months, so I want to know if anybody has any suggestion for me to achieve a "Pokemon playing" level in japanese in less than (or up to) 6 months.

A week ago, I've started 2001 Kanji odyssey, I'm adding the kanji, vocab and sentences.
I haven't added a specific amount every day, just doing as I can, doing recognition and production by kana and by sound on vocab, and only recog in kanji and sentences.
I already know the kana and I'm around 800 on RtK1.

Just doing that can provide me what I want in the timespan that I have?
Thanks for your attention and sorry for the long and maybe confusing thread.

Given your current progress and Black/White's release, I think you'll be able to understand plenty - certainly enough to enjoy the game without very many issues. If you haven't already, I'd recommend going through one or two of the previous Pokemon games in Japanese. You'll get a good feel for the kind of language used and will more than likely be prepared for Black/White in 6 month's time.

Burritolingus Wrote:Given your current progress and Black/White's release, I think you'll be able to understand plenty - certainly enough to enjoy the game without very many issues. If you haven't already, I'd recommend going through one or two of the previous Pokemon games in Japanese. You'll get a good feel for the kind of language used and will more than likely be prepared for Black/White in 6 month's time.

That's really good to read, I feel sincerity on your words! Thank you!
I was gonna start Platinum again, what about playing both languages at the same time? The only things that worries me about that are possible adaptations from one language to another, expressions like "いたい" being translated as "ouch", this kind of thing.

Maybe it's not a really good idea, to put both side-by-side, I'll end up trying to associate japanese words with english equivalents, and that's not really the point on learning a language, right? I guess japanese-only is better after all...

I played PKM Crystal in Japanese actually. It was really hard to read because of the pixel resolution but that shouldn't be an issue for you.
(Were there text in Chinese GBC games? hmm...)

Just because the Japanese is in ひらがな doesn't mean it's necessarily easy. There are lot's of 擬音語/ぎおんご. =__=' Probbaly half of the test is just 擬音語.

But you should do it and have fun! I think you will understand a lot but still learn a bunch of wrods. (That's the perfect level for you really!)
I'm importing 牧場物語双子の村 when it finally comes out. >

Quote:Maybe it's not a really good idea, to put both side-by-side, I'll end up trying to associate japanese words with english equivalents, and that's not really the point on learning a language, right? I guess japanese-only is better after all...

There isn't much harm in associating Japanese words with English ones, in my opinion. At least, not in the earlier stages of your studies (where mentally translating from Japanese to your native language is inevitable). I would be more wary of the English version taking liberties and changing lines completely, which I'm pretty sure Pokemon does frequently.

Side-by-side could be beneficial, but doesn't that mean playing through the same game twice? I'm pretty sure I'd get bored or burned out! I'm lazy and have a short attention span for things like this though, so perhaps you'd fare better.

How do you plan to play them side by side? I tried this with the Korean and Japanese versions of Pearl, but keeping the two games in synch was a pain. It was on the computer, so I could have the buttons affect both games at once, but the battles pop up at different times, different battles take longer/short, etc. Playing one game and then the other doesn't work so swell either.

For understanding the language in pokemon...I'd say it's important to have a good grasp on casual Japanese. Particles tend to be omitted, I think. Sentences are simple, but not in a textbook kind of way.
So, manga with lots of chatty dialogue, old pokemon games, and maybe sentences from tanuki corpus(for language style) would help with this.

"I tried this with the Korean and Japanese versions of Pearl, but keeping the two games in synch was a pain. It was on the computer, so I could have the buttons affect both games at once"
That's hardcore man! 8D

Now to google "tanuki corpus".

I tried playing pokemon diamond, and it was quite difficult for me. My main problem was vocabulary. There are just so many words that I didn't know at the time, and trying to play through it with a dictionary in hand was just an exercise in frustration. The language isn't particularly hard, but if you have a tiny vocabulary, it can be quite a task.
Also it doesn't really help that lots of the words and names and stuff are completely made up, so often you can try looking words up in a dictionary only to find that it doesn't exist, because its just some pokemon word.

@yukamina
I quickly dropped the idea of playing both, was just some thought.

@Zarxrax
That's why I wanna learn much as fast as possible, so I can actually enjoy the game.
I guess the made up words can confuse us non-natives, as a lot of them are just in hiragana like the rest of the "real" text. An example could be berries names.

Also, just to make a little clearer to everybody: My objective is not to learn from the game (even tough I'll end up learning something), I just wanna be able to play it like it was in english.

Thanks to all!
Other opinions are welcome.

gyuujuice Wrote:"I tried this with the Korean and Japanese versions of Pearl, but keeping the two games in synch was a pain. It was on the computer, so I could have the buttons affect both games at once"
That's hardcore man! 8D

Now to google "tanuki corpus".

lol
Pokemon in Korean would be the best resource for my Korean studies at my level, but only if I can compare it to the Japanese... But I gave up.
Pokemon parallel texts anyone? XP

I don't think there is anything for Korean but there are some Japanese translation guides I believe. Korea gets games like 3 years later. Poor Koreans. ;__;
BTW is it 보케트만스트 in Korean? I just guessed.

gyuujuice Wrote:I don't think there is anything for Korean but there are some Japanese translation guides I believe. Korea gets games like 3 years later. Poor Koreans. ;__;
BTW is it 보케트만스트 in Korean? I just guessed.

It's 포켓몬스터
the "s" sounds "t" when it's at the end.

Well, I have some 120 days until the autumn on the northern hemisphere, so that's about 17 kanji/day if I wanna finish 2001KO by that time.
Considering that I add 5-8 words and 3 sentences per kanji, plus the kanji itself, and I have three facts for each word card, so it's 3 times the number of words, then summing it up, I have around 23,5 new facts on anki for every kanji.

23,5 * 17 = Around 400 cards a day
23,5 * 2001 = Around 47.000 cards in total

In fewer words, I would never be able to finish 2001KO in 4 months

But, supposing that they consider "fall" starting at september 22-23 (astronomical), rather than September 1 (meteorological), and the game takes 1 month to arrive (sounds absurd, but that's about right), then:

2001/152 = little more than 13
23,5*13 = Around 300 cards a day

I don't think it's even humanly possible to retain such a gigantic amount of info every day, but getting at least at half of it when the game arrives would be such an amazing feat, I would be a hero in this forum!

Dream higher, hit the ground harder.

Darn. I was close. (Not really)
Yeah... I think you may want to do maybe 50 cards a day. ^__^

gyuujuice Wrote:I don't think there is anything for Korean but there are some Japanese translation guides I believe. Korea gets games like 3 years later. Poor Koreans. ;__;
BTW is it 보케트만스트 in Korean? I just guessed.

Do you mean with a Japanese script? I could use something like that.