stupiddog Wrote:I have started playing, but I crashed and burned very early, I just have too few words in my portfolio to understand it yet :~-(. Well, it was worth a try.

When facing the very first enemy, Lightning says this:
そこで見てろ
I translate this as "Look at that!" (soko -> that thing, de = particle for place of action, mitero = ???)

It's obviously 見る, whose te-Form would be 見て. But what is that ろ after that good for? I could not find that verb suffix in any grammar book I posess It would be great if someone could explain.

I have a question here. Why do you think you need to understand where everything in that sentence comes from? The feeling you got from it "Look at that" or "Look over there" is right. Why do you need anything else?

By the way, that just happens to be an example of the many Japanese sentences you won't find in grammar books/textbooks/anywhere. You just need exposure.

I'm almost half way through KO2001 right now and I'm going to wait until I'm finished with it before I buy a PS3 and start playing FF13 and some of the other stuff I missed (except MGS4 that's hard to understand even in English).

I have a compatibility question -
If I buy an american PS3, I understand it plays region free games but does it also play bluray movies region free? Or would I only be able to play american bluray movies but not japanese ones?

thanks

beerninja Wrote:I'm almost half way through KO2001 right now and I'm going to wait until I'm finished with it before I buy a PS3 and start playing FF13 and some of the other stuff I missed (except MGS4 that's hard to understand even in English).

I have a compatibility question -
If I buy an american PS3, I understand it plays region free games but does it also play bluray movies region free? Or would I only be able to play american bluray movies but not japanese ones?

thanks

All BluRay games and movies are region-free. I often import both PS3 Games and BluRay movies from Japan with absolutely no worry about them working on my US PS3.

Edit: You know, that's not quite true... America and Japan are the same region for BluRay... Other areas of the world may not be able to import.

wccrawford Wrote:Edit: You know, that's not quite true... America and Japan are the same region for BluRay... Other areas of the world may not be able to import.

Here's a handy region chart via wikipedia for those that want to see how the regions fall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blu-ra...th_key.png

If you live in America, you're set.

kerosan41 Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Edit: You know, that's not quite true... America and Japan are the same region for BluRay... Other areas of the world may not be able to import.

Here's a handy region chart via wikipedia for those that want to see how the regions fall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blu-ra...th_key.png

If you live in America, you're set.

That's cool. I guess since I have a J-Import PS3, I would be set regardless, but I wonder why they decided to lump Japan with the Americas this time.

I haven't gotten really into Blu-Ray's yet, and I see some Japanese Blu-Ray ISOs floating around on the net, but I don't think I can burn them with my current DVD drive setup. (Needs to upgrade)

Can anyone suggest what I need to buy? I see Blu-ray readers and writers/burners out there. I'm assuming I need the burner to burn ISOs, correct?

KREVA Wrote:Can anyone suggest what I need to buy? I see Blu-ray readers and writers/burners out there. I'm assuming I need the burner to burn ISOs, correct?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the blank media is still about 20 dollars a disc for the 50GB discs. I think its pretty cost prohibitive.

kerosan41 Wrote:

KREVA Wrote:Can anyone suggest what I need to buy? I see Blu-ray readers and writers/burners out there. I'm assuming I need the burner to burn ISOs, correct?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the blank media is still about 20 dollars a disc for the 50GB discs. I think its pretty cost prohibitive.

You can get a set of 10 25GB discs for the same price on eBay. Still cost prohibitive to me, but not too much. To be honest, I'm more than happy with my blu-ray rips I download off the internet (both 720p and 1080p), but I'll always be curious as to what a real blu-ray disc looks like on my personal HDTV until the time comes when I actually decide to fork out all of that extra money to either buy a blu-ray drive for my computer, or buy a blu ray movie, which I think is likely to happen first.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:I have a question here. Why do you think you need to understand where everything in that sentence comes from? The feeling you got from it "Look at that" or "Look over there" is right. Why do you need anything else?

By the way, that just happens to be an example of the many Japanese sentences you won't find in grammar books/textbooks/anywhere. You just need exposure.

Thanks for explaining, so I guess that "ro" at the end is just some time of slang?

The reason why I want to understand everything is that I want to take as much grammar and new vocabulary along as I go through the game. Well, actually, it's a huge amount (during the intro, I had to look up almost every sentence ), but I think it will help to get my listening comprehension up to speed very fast. It might be frustrating, but hey, if frustrations could stop me I wouldn't be at 3/4 of RTK1

stupiddog Wrote:The reason why I want to understand everything is that I want to take as much grammar and new vocabulary along as I go through the game. Well, actually, it's a huge amount (during the intro, I had to look up almost every sentence ), but I think it will help to get my listening comprehension up to speed very fast. It might be frustrating, but hey, if frustrations could stop me I wouldn't be at 3/4 of RTK1

My point here was more like, "don't worry so much about it, man."

Seriously though... think about just how much media there is out there to use. Why do you have to go through this game "getting everything out of it"?

You can just go through it, have some fun, and you'll learn even by not looking everything up. Trust me. Plus, if you look everything up, you'll definitely get sick of it very quickly and just quit.

*PS* - Also, the ろ is a command form. Sometimes the い in ている will be dropped. Then the る becomes a ろ and voila, you've got a command.

kerosan41 Wrote:I did however find the script in BOTH LANGUAGES to for Final Fantasy IX. Makes me wish my fancy new ps3 was backwards compatible. >_<

All wishing aside, you totally *can* make use of that FF9 script you found using your PS3. The newer models aren't backwards compatible for PS2 games, but they'll run both downloads and physical disks for PSX games from any region. (Unfortunately, unlike games, Blu-rays and DVDs aren't region-free.)


Working my way through XIII now. I'm no heavyweight when it comes to the Japanese, but so far language limitations haven't posed a problem. I'm getting most of it with only gist, and the subtitles are helping a lot. Story is compelling so far, but it's pretty linear, and I find myself missing the exploration factor. Visually stunning, of course. On a language learning level, both character speech and subtitles are moving along too quickly to really take sentences apart and think about them grammatically; but then again, maybe I'm just too interested in actually playing the game to use the pause/PS button effectively.

zanzibar Wrote:On a language learning level, both character speech and subtitles are moving along too quickly to really take sentences apart and think about them grammatically; but then again, maybe I'm just too interested in actually playing the game to use the pause/PS button effectively.

I think this is a good thing, actually. It's definitely training my ability to assimilate Japanese on the fly, instead of picking apart each sentence.

Not that there's much choice, since pausing removes the subtitles from the screen. Heh.

wccrawford Wrote:

zanzibar Wrote:On a language learning level, both character speech and subtitles are moving along too quickly to really take sentences apart and think about them grammatically; but then again, maybe I'm just too interested in actually playing the game to use the pause/PS button effectively.

I think this is a good thing, actually. It's definitely training my ability to assimilate Japanese on the fly, instead of picking apart each sentence.

Not that there's much choice, since pausing removes the subtitles from the screen. Heh.

just use the playstation button and the subtitles will remain

chamcham Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Not that there's much choice, since pausing removes the subtitles from the screen. Heh.

just use the playstation button and the subtitles will remain

Oh my God. You have ruined me.

lol Thanks for the tip. I'm going to try not to use it, though.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:By the way, that just happens to be an example of the many Japanese sentences you won't find in grammar books/textbooks/anywhere. You just need exposure.

Many textbooks and grammar books have explanations of the underlying grammar of 見てろ, it's just not easy to look up if you don't already know what it is. I think that saying "you just need exposure" gives completely the wrong idea, as you can see from the response -- the person assumed that this ろ was just some random slang, when in fact it's a completely normal and regular conjugation of a verb that you can find in any resource.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:By the way, that just happens to be an example of the many Japanese sentences you won't find in grammar books/textbooks/anywhere. You just need exposure.

Many textbooks and grammar books have explanations of the underlying grammar of 見てろ, it's just not easy to look up if you don't already know what it is. I think that saying "you just need exposure" gives completely the wrong idea, as you can see from the response -- the person assumed that this ろ was just some random slang, when in fact it's a completely normal and regular conjugation of a verb that you can find in any resource.

Yeah, but the real question is this: Does it matter whether he thinks it's slang or a normal conjugation? Some more exposure will teach him how to use it, then that's all you need. What's the problem?

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Does it matter whether he thinks it's slang or a normal conjugation?

Yes. I may be particularly anti-"exposure is all you need", especially compared to some people here, but I think it's going way too far to suggest that someone doesn't even need to know how verb conjugations work. You're never going to be able to get to an advanced level if you're relying on simple exposure to teach you everything.

In some situations, I do agree with the idea that it's OK not to understand everything and that you're not going to find everything in books. But I would not put basic conjugations in the category of "it's OK not to understand it". Exposure to things you don't understand or understand incorrectly is tainted exposure.

But beyond study methods, claiming that 見てろ cannot be found in textbooks or grammar books is demonstrably false. Whether you think people should learn the forms from a textbook is beside the point, you can't say that they're not even there at all.

(I also think it's a bad idea to suggest that exposure to Final Fantasy XIII dialogue will teach you how to use imperative forms. See the あなた, きみ, おまえ thread.)

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Does it matter whether he thinks it's slang or a normal conjugation?

Yes. I may be particularly anti-"exposure is all you need", especially compared to some people here, but I think it's going way too far to suggest that someone doesn't even need to know how verb conjugations work. You're never going to be able to get to an advanced level if you're relying on simple exposure to teach you everything.

In some situations, I do agree with the idea that it's OK not to understand everything and that you're not going to find everything in books. But I would not put basic conjugations in the category of "it's OK not to understand it". Exposure to things you don't understand or understand incorrectly is tainted exposure.

But beyond study methods, claiming that 見てろ cannot be found in textbooks or grammar books is demonstrably false. Whether you think people should learn the forms from a textbook is beside the point, you can't say that they're not even there at all.

(I also think it's a bad idea to suggest that exposure to Final Fantasy XIII dialogue will teach you how to use imperative forms. See the あなた, きみ, おまえ thread.)

Call it a difference of opinions, but I can't agree with anything you say here at all. Going on a slightly reverse example here, my Japanese friends who speak the best English are the ones who don't study English. They are the ones who live here and interact with people while reading books in English.

It is also important to note that out of those who are the best at English, the ones who are almost totally indistinguishable from native speakers are the ones who read a lot in English.

Also, I'm generally not the best source to say that stuff isn't in textbooks, because I don't really use textbooks. However, in my study at college of Japanese we used Genki 1 and 2, and I'm quite sure that wasn't taught in either of them. Also, we used some textbook I forget the name of during my semester abroad in Japan and that didn't have it in there either. That's my basis.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:...my Japanese friends who speak the best English are the ones who don't study English. They are the ones who live here and interact with people while reading books in English.

...so presumably they were born with the ability to read & speak English?

harhol Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:...my Japanese friends who speak the best English are the ones who don't study English. They are the ones who live here and interact with people while reading books in English.

...so presumably they were born with the ability to read & speak English?

Okay, now that we're up into being deliberately obtuse, can you guys start a new thread? This one is about FF13 and NOT about a flamewar between people who can't possibly understand each others' methods of learning.

harhol Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:...my Japanese friends who speak the best English are the ones who don't study English. They are the ones who live here and interact with people while reading books in English.

...so presumably they were born with the ability to read & speak English?

Nope, the best one has only been here 2 years so far. The second best a little less than a year. He has been reading English for a while though.

wccrawford Wrote:Okay, now that we're up into being deliberately obtuse, can you guys start a new thread? This one is about FF13 and NOT about a flamewar between people who can't possibly understand each others' methods of learning.

Nah, that's ok. I'm done. I don't really care to argue anymore. If they want to learn by studying grammar, that's fine. I choose not to. Whatever you want.

Back to FFXIII - I pre-ordered it from Play-Asia and it still hasn't gotten here yet. Anyone know the deal? Did they take too many pre-orders or something? For a while on their site it was saying up to a week to ship. Now it says 24hrs, but still nothing at my house.

unless you ordered overnight shipping... it should still take a while to get to your house i imagine... i never really noticed how long it takes them to ship anything as i can always preoccupy myself with studying before whatever i want gets here

Yeah, but I mean it has been a week already since it's been released. Not only that, but there's a ton of people online who've said they have received the game from Play-Asia already.

My bet is going to accepting too many pre-orders.

stupiddog Wrote:When facing the very first enemy, Lightning says this:
そこで見てろ
I translate this as "Look at that!" (soko -> that thing, de = particle for place of action, mitero = ???)

I've not seen the context behind this yet, but my first reaction was more that she's telling someone to stay [there] and watch.

そこ ＝ there (where the person she's speaking to is)
で ＝ (place of action)
見て（い）ろ ＝ be looking/watching.

So basically "stand back and watch [how I handle this/etc.]" was what I got from it.

Yeah that might make more sense...

Can anyone enlighten us as to the context?

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Yeah that might make more sense...

Can anyone enlighten us as to the context?

The poster said it was when she was facing the first enemy... So the scene went something like:

Big enemy comes crashing in.

そこで見てろ

Lightning proceeds to attack, with Sazh (who she was talking to) helping her attack it, but a bit reluctantly.

I think the originally 'Look at that!' is closer, since she wanted to call attention to the monster and wasn't trying to tell Sazh to stay out of her way or anything. She also isn't the type to brag about combat skill.

Note: I haven't seen that scene for 2 days now, and I was in Japanese overload at the time, so my recollection might be off.