Hi,

I know kana (both hira and kata) and I know some kanji. I'm half way through RTK1, just ordered Genki 1 with Workbook AND  Assimil's Japanese With Ease to fill in blanks.

My goal learning Japanese was so I could play Dragon Quest games. I want to go beyond that of course, but being able to play and understand a DQ game would be amazing. Given they're aimed for all ages, what can I expect in terms of language barrier?

For the record here's some pics of the average DQ game:





Yeah, I am embarrassed that the reason I started learning a language is to play a game series, but it's how I feel.

These games have furigana sometimes but still. I plan on getting Genki II, Guided Readers, participating in Lang-8, and practicing speaking Japanese with my friend who is fluent (she's helping me), and read manga like Yotsubato as I progress. But in my mind, I'm hoping I'll be able to play a DQ game in Japanese in two years so I can play 11 when it comes out. The problem is I feel like I'm probably underestimating the language? What can I expect and does my plan seem reasonable?

If you don't mind using a dictionary to look up nearly every word, then you could do it now, but in would be, in a word, unpleasant.

The thing about RPGs is that since they are in a fantasy setting there are going to be a ton of obscure words, like oubliette, arbalest, and helm will all show up, along with obscure religious terms.  

Could you have a reading ability in 2 years? Yes, but it's going to be a fair amount of work.  By fair amount, I mean multiple hours a day everyday.  If you have a more human schedule of 1-2 hours most days of the week, then 3-4 years is more reasonable estimate.

(2016-05-29, 11:50 am)RandomQuotes Wrote: If you don't mind using a dictionary to look up nearly every word, then you could do it now, but in would be, in a word, unpleasant.

The thing about RPGs is that since they are in a fantasy setting there are going to be a ton of obscure words, like oubliette, arbalest, and helm will all show up, along with obscure religious terms.  

Could you have a reading ability in 2 years? Yes, but it's going to be a fair amount of work.  By fair amount, I mean multiple hours a day everyday.  If you have a more human schedule of 1-2 hours most days of the week, then 3-4 years is more reasonable estimate.

That may be true if you try to master Japanese in a broad spectrum of areas, but if you use Dragon Quest as your study material, and don't care if you'd come off as very strange at best in a conversation, then it's certainly possible to do. And also, there is a difference between knowing enough to enjoy the experience, and being able to play the game as if it were in English.

So depending on your available time, your goals etc. I'd say it's very possible. I wouldn't count on full understanding though.

Judging from the images you provided, you'll probably have trouble with certain passages of the game though, seeing as some characters like to use older grammar forms and so on.

That's unfortunate. I guess I did underestimate the language.

My plan:

Learn Kana (finished)
Learn every day Kanji (half finished, currently working on and taking a short break)


Now that I am halfway done with RTK I'll start Genki I. Follow up with Japanese With Ease and Genki II. When I finish RTK I'll start on Core2k. While doing Genki and Assimil I'll start doing speaking practice with my friend.

When is a good time to introduce more fun learning material like games and manga?

How much time have you spent playing Dragon Quest games in a language that you know well? (I imagine if you're this enthusiastic about them, it's probably a fair amount.) Replaying a game in Japanese that you already know is much easier than playing a new one. You can ignore any plot text that's too hard. Menus and battle text come up over and over again, and should be easy to learn if you already know what to expect from them.

After replaying a known game (or several), playing a new game in the same series is then likely to be more accessible.

DHelenF Wrote:How much time have you spent playing Dragon Quest games in a language that you know well? (I imagine if you're this enthusiastic about them, it's probably a fair amount.) Replaying a game in Japanese that you already know is much easier than playing a new one. You can ignore any plot text that's too hard. Menus and battle text come up over and over again, and should be easy to learn if you already know what to expect from them.

After replaying a known game (or several), playing a new game in the same series is then likely to be more accessible.

Okay, so playing something like I-III would be better than something more current?

I've not played them, but a quick search suggests I-III are close to all-kana, which doesn't take advantage of the effort that went into RTK. If those are the games you've played a lot, it might still be worth it. I'm having a great time playing 1st gen Pokemon, even though I did RTK and most of my vocab cards are kanji on the front

(2016-05-29, 2:14 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote:

DHelenF Wrote:How much time have you spent playing Dragon Quest games in a language that you know well? (I imagine if you're this enthusiastic about them, it's probably a fair amount.) Replaying a game in Japanese that you already know is much easier than playing a new one. You can ignore any plot text that's too hard. Menus and battle text come up over and over again, and should be easy to learn if you already know what to expect from them.

After replaying a known game (or several), playing a new game in the same series is then likely to be more accessible.

Okay, so playing something like I-III would be better than something more current?

HelenF means that you should play a game you played before in English that you know well. Like an older Dragon Quest game you played recently and know the game mechanics (battle sequence, menu screen, save screen, etc) like the back of your hand. That way, playing the exact same game in Japanese won't be too much of a hurdle since you already know the mechanics of the game.

Also semi older games have plenty of walkthroughs (攻略). Here is one for Dragon Quest 9. This is just one of many sites. It takes times for newer games for people to write up walkthroughs (because you know, people have to playthrough the game first).

TD; LR : play a game you already know so you have less to learn; more fun!

(2016-05-29, 2:40 pm)RawrPk Wrote: HelenF means that you should play a game you played before in English that you know well. Like an older Dragon Quest game you played recently and know the game mechanics (battle sequence, menu screen, save screen, etc) like the back of your hand. That way, playing the exact same game in Japanese won't be too much of a hurdle since you already know the mechanics of the game.
...
TD; LR : play a game you already know so you have less to learn; more fun!

Yes, that's what I meant. And personally, I'm finding that it helps to know the game really well. So the most useful games are the ones I was obsessed with as a kid. Anything I played for the first time more recently, I won't have invested that much energy into it.

(2016-05-29, 2:32 pm)HelenF Wrote: I've not played them, but a quick search suggests I-III are close to all-kana, which doesn't take advantage of the effort that went into RTK. If those are the games you've played a lot, it might still be worth it. I'm having a great time playing 1st gen Pokemon, even though I did RTK and most of my vocab cards are kanji on the front

Hmm.

You're right about the lack of kanji.

Here's DQIV.



Here's FFV by comparison.






FFVII:



All of these I know like the back of my hand.

(2016-05-29, 2:32 pm)HelenF Wrote: I've not played them, but a quick search suggests I-III are close to all-kana, which doesn't take advantage of the effort that went into RTK. If those are the games you've played a lot, it might still be worth it.

The SNES ports have a lot more kanji.

(2016-05-29, 3:14 pm)cracky Wrote:

(2016-05-29, 2:32 pm)HelenF Wrote: I've not played them, but a quick search suggests I-III are close to all-kana, which doesn't take advantage of the effort that went into RTK. If those are the games you've played a lot, it might still be worth it.

The SNES ports have a lot more kanji.

True.

(2016-05-29, 1:34 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote: When is a good time to introduce more fun learning material like games and manga?

The short and easy answer to this is: when it is enjoyable.

In the beginning you'll have to look up so much you won't even be playing the game/reading the manga. But after a while you'll fine a nice balance between looking up and playing. It's usually a good idea to try every once in a while to see how well you're faring. You'll know when you're ready, because you won't want to stop.

魔晄炉 extended my kanjipeen, thank you

(2016-05-29, 4:18 pm)anotherjohn Wrote: 魔晄炉 extended my kanjipeen, thank you

How so? Any particular method?

I didn't have a word that uses 晄 but thanks to 魔晄炉 my kanjipeen has grown to 3431 (and one step closer to 100% 人名用 coverage to boot).

Welcome to the forum

(2016-05-29, 4:49 pm)anotherjohn Wrote: I didn't have a word that uses 晄 but thanks to 魔晄炉 my kanjipeen has grown to 3431 (and one step closer to 100% 人名用 coverage to boot).

Welcome to the forum

助けてうれしいです。

So when playing a game in Japanese I need to keep a dictionary open and look stuff up and then add to anki as I play?

(2016-05-29, 5:00 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote:

(2016-05-29, 4:49 pm)anotherjohn Wrote: I didn't have a word that uses 晄 but thanks to 魔晄炉 my kanjipeen has grown to 3431 (and one step closer to 100% 人名用 coverage to boot).

Welcome to the forum

助けてうれしいです。

So when playing a game in Japanese I need to keep a dictionary open and look stuff up and then add to anki as I play?

I don't think you need to add to Anki while you're playing the game. But definitely have a dictionary at hand while playing. A paper dictionary might not do btw. Better to use an app or even a website dictionary like http://jisho.org/ which even has radical (favorite) and draw search. Also looking up words electronically saves you time of retyping the vocab and you can just copy/paste into Anki of which you use after a gaming session.

(2016-05-29, 5:00 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote:

(2016-05-29, 4:49 pm)anotherjohn Wrote: I didn't have a word that uses 晄 but thanks to 魔晄炉 my kanjipeen has grown to 3431 (and one step closer to 100% 人名用 coverage to boot).

Welcome to the forum

助けてうれしいです。

So when playing a game in Japanese I need to keep a dictionary open and look stuff up and then add to anki as I play?

The degree to which people do this varies somewhat, but it's usually a good idea.

The reason you look up is to understand what is being said. The reason you add to anki, is to retain what you learned. Usually people mostly want to spend energy learning and retaining important words, but some people like to go all out and learn made up words from specific titles such as 魔晄炉 from FF7. So it's nothing you "need" to do, just find a balance that fit your goals and doesn't burn you out.

Edit: Rather than adding to Anki WHILE playing, it's probably a better idea to just write the word down in notepad or something and add them all at once later.

(2016-05-29, 5:00 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote:

(2016-05-29, 4:49 pm)anotherjohn Wrote: I didn't have a word that uses 晄 but thanks to 魔晄炉 my kanjipeen has grown to 3431 (and one step closer to 100% 人名用 coverage to boot).

Welcome to the forum

助けてうれしいです。

So when playing a game in Japanese I need to keep a dictionary open and look stuff up and then add to anki as I play?

My advice is to play them on something that let's you take screenshots.  Then take screenshots and add them later.  The screenshot will help recall significantly compared to just adding the word by itself.  It will also take less time than writing down notes.

Some tips for learning with screenshots or manga pages that I've figured out:

-Aim for images that only have 1 word or phrase that you're learning.

-If there are static character portraits then you should blur them so your eyes don't focus on them and focus on the scene instead. 

-I cloze delete the word/phrase in question by putting a box over it in photoshop, if you're just doing recognition then you can skip this.

I personally find screenshots to be a great tool for helping me remember and my screenshot deck is now my favorite deck to review.  You should still probably go through a coredeck first, it would be good to have a baseline.  It took me a few years before I could enjoy games like dragon quest so take that as you will.

Taishi Wrote:learn made up words from specific titles such as 魔晄炉 from FF7.

Added only to confirm the obvious reading (and for the kanji stats) - there was nothing to 'learn', obviously.

What I did discover is that 晄 is an alternative and somewhat obscure way of writing 晃.

Thank you all so much! I love this site and this community!

Personally, when I'm playing a game on my computer, I have a dictionary app open on my phone. I don't take screenshots usually - only if I want to save a difficult sentence to work out the details on later or the like.

Later on, after I'm done with my gaming session, I can add words to Anki based on the lookup history in my app. Most apps I've used also have a way to create at least one list of saved words, some apps allow multiple lists. Using that can be useful if you're worried about losing track of words that rotate out of the lookup history with too much time or too many lookups.

Screenshots are a pretty good idea though if you like to make cards with content from your media. I usually get my example sentences from the dictionary, for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons is that sentences in novels can be just too long to want to have on a card. Games don't have that problem to the same extent.

Sooo.

I feel like I should be doing more than I should. I think I'm going to start doing at minimum 4 hours of Japanese a day. I'm considering balancing the rest of RTK, Genki 1, and Core 2k at the same time. Is that too much? I'm guessing the Core2k is too much and I'll do that after finishing RTK, but I want to start doing actual Japanese now in conjugation with my RTK. Can't wait.

(2016-05-29, 6:42 pm)Queen of Mars Wrote: Sooo.

I feel like I should be doing more than I should. I think I'm going to start doing at minimum 4 hours of Japanese a day. I'm considering balancing the rest of RTK, Genki 1, and Core 2k at the same time. Is that too much? I'm guessing the Core2k is too much and I'll do that after finishing RTK, but I want to start doing actual Japanese now in conjugation with my RTK. Can't wait.

I would grab the biggest Core that you intend to complete ever ... or just grab Core10k just-in-case. (The bigger ones include the smaller ones and it's awkward to 'upgrade' later).

Then suspend all the cards in it.

Then when you start Genki, unsuspend the cards for the vocabulary in each chapter. Now you have Anki working with your Genki course instead of distracting from it.

Also I recommend Erin's Challenge http://www.erin.ne.jp/ as a supplement to any textbook course. It's mostly made of skits, and it's great for improving your listening comprehension. You can also access the audio in a manga or a script version for each skit. There are some other bits and pieces for vocabulary building and grammar learning that don't hurt either.