How to Learn Languages with Super Mario

Since I love both games and languages, I've often tried to bring the two together. When I was teaching English, I always ensured that my classes played as many games as possible. In this article, I'm going to talk about how games influenced how I planned my lessons and how Chinese poetry influenced these games.

Kishōtenketsu

Let's start with Kishōtenketsu. This is a type of narrative structure mainly used in Chinese poetry which includes four parts: Introduction (ki), development (shō), twist (ten), and conclusion (ketsu).

In the first part, you introduce the characters, setting, and any other important information. This information is developed in the second part without introducing any major changes. Something unexpected happens in the third part of the narrative before the conclusion wraps everything up with the ending or resolution to the story.

Super Mario 3D World

Super Mario 3D World | Nintendo

Kishōtenketsu's narrative structure was highly influential when it came to level design in Super Mario 3D Land, which was released in 2013 on the Wii U.

The game's director Koichi Hayashida stated how he'd used Kishōtenketsu to influence how levels were designed in the game. Every time a level included something a player had never seen before, they'd need to learn how the mechanic worked. However, Hayashida didn't want to explicitly tell the player what they needed to do with boring text boxes and tutorials, he wanted them to learn what to do. Games are supposed to be fun, after all.

In short, a level introduces a new mechanic to the player. The player then gets to play around with the mechanic in a risk-free environment. After all, you don't want to punish a player for doing something wrong when they don't yet know how to do it!

Once the player is familiar with the mechanic, they're given a chance to prove they understand it with a challenging twist before finally given a chance to reach the flag and generally show off their new skills.

If you'd like to see how this applied to the game, I'd recommend watching this video on it:

Language Lessons

When I heard this, I was inspired by the method they used to teach players and thought I could apply it to how I taught my classes. There were two main rules that I applied to the lessons based on this design philosophy: focus lessons on one concept and always follow the four steps.

The first rule ensures that students have a clear goal that they can be tested on at the end of the lesson. Never introduce multiple grammar points in a single lesson! You can still use grammar points and aspects from previous lessons, though.

The second rule means that students are introduced to a new concept, can then play around with it (without any risks), are tested on the concept, and then given an opportunity to show off what they've learnt before they go home.

Here's an example of how a lesson would go:

1: Introduction: Quickly establish what the focus of the lesson is going to be. While you can explicitly tell the students what it is, I preferred giving students an example and letting them identify the focus of the lesson themselves.

2: Development: This is when the students are given an activity to practice the new grammar point. I often enjoyed doing this with pair work where students are free to make mistakes in a safe environment and don't feel pressured about getting it wrong.

3: Twist: Now's the time to test the students. This doesn't mean that you actually have to give them a test, though. As I said earlier, I loved playing games in class which can be just as effective at challenging students to think about the objective as well as verifying whether or not they've assimilated the new knowledge.

4: Conclusion: As the class finished, things became more relaxed. This was our "flag" moment. I'd give the students opportunities to use what they'd learnt in the lesson just before they left the class. This was great because it would boost their confidence and have them leaving with the objective they'd just achieved fresh in their minds.

I guess all that time spent playing Mario wasn't completely wasted!

The Language of Pokémon

Pokémon has been dominating the news recently. Older readers probably remember the phenomenon surrounding the franchise in the late '90s with the TV show, trading card game, and first generation of video games that got tonnes of people obsessed with catching them all. Now, after years of steady global popularity, it looks like the franchise has struck gold with the "Pokémon GO" app.

Now I'd like to look at some of the interesting linguistic features of Pokémon. Firstly, the name:

Pokémon, portmanteau

For those not familiar with the franchise, it's Japanese. However, the name isn't really Japanese, it's a portmanteau of English words that Japanese borrowed. In Japanese, the franchise is called "Poketto Monsutā" from the English "Pocket Monster". The Japanese was then shortened and merged to make "Pokémon".

Taking Pokémon around the world

Aside from the stories, the battling, and trading, the fact that Pokémon went global gave rise to some very interesting translations. Today I'd like to look at some of the best Pokémon from the first generation (also featured in Pokémon GO), and some of the most interesting translations used.

Scyther

Scyther is a bug/flying type Pokémon, and looks like a praying mantis with scythe-like blades for arms. In Japanese it was called strike, but the French name is awesome! It combines the French for insect (insecte) and the gardening tool pruning shears (sécateur), to make "Insecateur".

Alakazam

Alakazam has an amazing name, since it's the third of three evolutions, the first and second being "Abra" and "Kadabra"... get it? Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam.

Gyarados

Almost everywhere in the world, this Pokémon is a portmanteau of two monsters from Japanese monster movies, Gyaos and Rodan. However, for the French translation, they decided to go with Léviator, from Leviathan. Pretty cool, right?

Arcanine

The fire-type dog is a portmanteau of arcane and canine in English. However, in Japanese it is actually called Windie, due to its speed. Clearly that wouldn't have sounded right and needed to be changed.

Gengar

The name of this ghost-type Pokémon in Japanese was taken from the German word doppelgänger. In most countries, it goes by Gengar. However, the French translation went above and beyond when they combined the words for ectoplasm and plasma to call it Ectoplasma.

Dragonite

The dragon-type Pokémon has a cool name in both French and German. In French, it combines the Latin word for "dragon" and the French for "colossal", giving the name Dracolosse. I reckon German wins this localisation battle with Dragoran, from the words for "dragon" and the verb "to riot", randalieren.

Blastoise

In English, this water-type Pokémon's name is a portmanteau of "blast" and "tortoise". Everywhere but France kept it the same, with France opting for a portmanteau of the French for "turtle" and "tank", to give Tortank.

Charizard

The most popular of the original 150 Pokémon. This dragon-like fire/flying-type Pokémon is not only awesome in appearance, but its name in most localised languages is awesome. Of course, English is a combination of "char" and "lizard". In French it's Dracofeu, from "dragon" in Latin and "fire" in French. German wins this round with a combination of "ember", "dragon", and "rocket", giving us Glurak. Regardless, you probably want this Pokémon in your team.

Now get out there and catch them all!

Using Digital Media to Learn a Language

Over the last few days we've been looking at the various ways you can use media to help you learn a language. As we've already covered print media and broadcast media, today we thought we'd finish off with the most modern media, digital media.

Video Games

The huge advantage of using video games to learn foreign languages is that when you play them, you are often far more engaged in them than when watching TV or a film. A TV show or a film will continue whether or not you understand what's happening. In video games, especially RPGs and story-driven games, if you don't understand what's being asked of you or what's happening, you won't be able to advance to the next part of the game.

The Internet

Everyone knows how fantastic the internet is! You can find whatever you want on the internet (as well as plenty of things you don't!), making it a great way to read material that you're interested in. The internet has evolved significantly since the old days when it was just text and a few low-resolution images. Today you can read articles, watch videos, TV shows, and movies, and even play games.

Social Media

The word "social" is key here. We can't stress enough that actually conversing and communicating in the language that you're trying to learn is arguably the best way to learn a language. You can use social media sites to find groups of people to learn with you, as well as language exchanges where you can learn a foreign language in return for helping a speaker of that language learn your language. Not only do you learn a language, but you can make new friends as well!

How do you like to learn a language? Do you have any clever tips or tricks on how to use media? Tell us about them in the comments below!

Localization and the Video Games Industry: Who Gets What?

Last weekend, Saturday to be precise, I was lucky enough to take a trip to London for this year's Eurogamer Expo, which now refers to itself as the cooler-sounding "EGX". As a self-confessed video game and language nerd, I am very interested in the translation and localization of video games and electronic entertainment.

When I was younger, I often didn't give a second thought to the fact that the video games I played were always either in English or provided an option to select English from a number of languages. As a kid I would often head into town to get a new game and immediately spend the entire trip home reading the blurb on the back and the instruction manual.

Growing up in the UK meant that the text on the box and in the instructions was either only in English or was in EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish), which are often deemed the "most important" languages in Europe. While some of the packaging featured other languages, the software often was only in English, with no other language options provided.

The discrepancy between the packaging and the software barely bothered me as a kid. However, as an adult I now realise that large corporations will only translate and localize games when there is a profitable market to be exploited. With all this in mind, I decided to quickly do some research into which languages and locales the video games industry favours.

Steam

Steam's search engine allows for the filtering of the online distribution service's catalogue by language. This past weekend there were 14,576 titles available on Steam, with around 90% of these available in English. Titles in the other EFIGS languages are widely available. 44% of titles are available in German and almost 42% are available in the French language. 37% and 35% of games are listed as being in Spanish and Italian respectively. 

These figures are hardly surprising if you just take a look at the usage notes for "EFIGS" on Wiktionary: "In software development, used to designate five widely used languages that software (notably video games) is often translated to."

It's very clear that games are not translated in the same proportions as there are speakers of a language. If this was the case, Simplified and Traditional Chinese combined would not account for only 4% of the games available through Steam. In fact, it's fairly obvious (and a little sad) that the proportions clearly line up with the relative size of the markets and their spoken languages.

Languages of Videogames on Steam | Create Infographics

Xbox Marketplace

It's not just the language you speak that may limit the number of games you can get. While I am lucky to speak English, I am also in the United Kingdom. However, that did little to console me when I found out that if you take a look through the Xbox 360 games available on the Xbox Marketplace, you are privy to a vastly different number of games depending on your locale.

The United States enjoyed the largest number of games available. At the time I checked, the UK's catalogue contained 76 fewer titles than the United States. That said, there were 1223 titles available in the US and the UK's catalogue contained 1147 games, making the difference minute.

While Steam showed a linguistic bias towards European languages, the Xbox Marketplace tends to favour markets in North America and Europe, where users have access to more titles than elsewhere in the world. For example, 1112 games were available in Spain while only 365 were available in Argentina, despite both countries being primarily Spanish-speaking. For some odd reason, Argentina also has half as many games available as other Spanish-speaking countries in South America, such as Chile (840), Colombia (861).

Much like on Steam, mainland China gets the short end of the stick, where a paltry 25 titles were available. However, 976 were available in Hong Kong. Undoubtedly this can partially be attributed to non-linguistic factors. In fact, the Hong Kong marketplace had more titles available than any other Asian locale.

Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia all have access to between 300 and 400 games while in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), over 500 titles were available. Does this increase have anything to do with the fact that the UAE is home to the highest net migration rate in the world?

Xbox Marketplace | Create Infographics

Is the difference between the number of games available in Europe and South America solely due to the size of their video game markets or are there political and economic reasons as well? Is the discrepancy just because some languages are easier to work with than others? If you happen to be an industry expert or deal with localization, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Our Favourite Terminology From Video Games

Today marks a huge date in the video gaming industry: it is the original release date of Donkey Kong, which featured the first ever appearance of Mario. The game's protagonist was initially called Jumpman, but was later renamed Mario before becoming Super Mario in 1985. While today isn't Mario's official birthday, we're still celebrating this important day in video gaming history with some of our favourite video gaming terminology.

Backwards Compatibility

This term is fairly self-explanatory. In order for a piece of software (the game) to work with the hardware (either a games console or computer), the two have to be compatible.

When it comes to video game consoles, it is often expected (and fervently demanded) that when a manufacturer creates a new console, the games for the previous console work with the newer console.

Beta

While beta is the second letter in the Greek alphabet that makes up the "bet" in "alphabet", in video gaming, beta refers to the second part of the testing phase when a game or piece of software is not ready for general release but all the features have been completed.

The term originated at IBM, who would conduct three test phases on their software, initially called A, B, and C. IBM actually dropped the terminology once it gained widespread usage. Though some readers may be familiar with the term beta test, IBM never used the term and instead called it a field test.

Boss

While the term "boss" comes from the Dutch term baas and first made its way into English in the 17th century, the use of the term in video gaming has a completely different meaning. Although bosses are usually in charge of their workers, bosses in video games are in fact difficult enemies that are usually stronger than the standard enemies faced.

Boss battles or boss fights often mark the end or completion of a particular section of a game and come in all shapes and sizes.

Two Commodore 64 cartridges

Cartridge

A casing, often made of plastic, that games were distributed on. Though now only used in portable gaming consoles, they were the staple of games during the 90s and would be inserted into a slot on a games console in order to be played.

Cutscene

Cutscenes in games are not scenes that were removed from the final version, but rather a scene in which the characters are animated, often to advance the plot, but cannot be controlled by the character.

Demo

Demo, which is derived from the term demonstration, is a sample version of a game. They are often made with the goal of encouraging players to purchase the full version of the game.

First-person

While language lovers will think of conjugating when they hear this term, first-person refers to the viewpoint of a game in which the player sees through the eyes of the character they are playing. First-person makes up the FP in FPS, with the S standing for "shooter".

Full Motion Video

Full motion videos, or FMVs, are pre-rendered videos that are played as a video file within the game. Much like cutscenes, full motion videos are often used to further the plot and the player cannot control them.

Joystick

A device used for controlling games that is almost identical to the device used to pilot aircraft. If you love games as much as I do, then you will understand how apt the name is. They may have fallen out of favour for most game consoles but they still have a special place in my heart.

Pixels

A pixel is the smallest complete element that makes up a digital display. The term comes from picture and element.

Sandbox

Sandbox refers to a style of play in video games. Rather than have the player complete linear objectives, they can often explore the game's environment without having to complete any objectives if they do not desire to do so.

Third-person

Much like first-person, third-person refers to the viewpoint. In third-person games, the player can see the character that they are controlling.

The Japanese Words that Shaped an English Subculture

Today is the last day of E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and I've been loving it. While there wasn't a huge amount of Japanese cultural export at this year's event, it would be silly to ignore the huge cultural and linguistic influence Japan has had on video games and other media. The Japanese language even has a name for the geek and nerd subculture. The term otaku refers to those who have an obsession with a particular interest or hobby, particularly Japanese anime and manga. The otaku subculture is even referenced in the video game Metal Gear Solid, by Dr. Hal Emmerich, who identifies as an otaku and gives himself the codename "Otacon" as a tribute to his nerdy fondness for Japanese culture.

Of course, it would be foolish to assume that everyone who likes anime and manga automatically loves video games. However, in the interest of being topical, it isn't foolish to realise there is a substantial overlap between those who enjoy anime and manga and those who enjoy video games.

During the '80s, those who made an unfortunate choice may have enjoyed watching recorded anime on Betamax. While the term Betamax is of Japanese origin, it is a proprietary name invented in the dark recesses of a marketing meeting.

The otaku movement is considered to have been born at the same time as the anime boom following the popularity of anime shows such as Mobile Suit Gundam, which features fine examples of mecha (メカ), an abbreviation of the word "mechanical". Technically, as an abbreviation of mechanical, the term mecha is an abbreviation of an English loanword which has its own roots in Greek and Latin.

Of course, Japan's history with martial arts means that the word dojo is known by most people who watch anime and read manga. They are fully aware that if you are in a dojo, you should get ready to practice some martial arts, particularly judo.

This exchange of nerdiness in Japanese culture obviously lends itself to the internet. The word emoji comes from the Japanese for "picture", e, and moji, meaning "letter" or "character". It does seem that this word is becoming more popular than the term "emoticon", from the English words "emotion" and "icon".

When you have this cross-pollination of anime, Japanese culture, and the internet, you inevitably get the type of content the internet is rife with, porn. The term hentai refers to pornographic anime and while we won't include pictures, if you are really interested in finding out what it is, a quick search will yield more results than you ever wanted to see.

A word we keep hearing more and more in spoken English is the word kawaii. The Japanese term for "cute" is often used to describe Japanese things that are cute, but is increasingly used by gaijin (the Japanese term for foreigners) for non-Japanese things that are also cute.

A Japanese word that hasn't quite made its way into popular use is hikikomori. However, the Japanese term for shut-in, recluse, or someone who will attempt to avoid any type of social contact, is growing in popularity as sadly, the issue is becoming more and more common in contemporary Japan.

However, while I have painted a picture of a one-directional linguistic relationship with Japan, this is barely the case. There are also otaku words of English origin that have made their way into Japanese, such as fan fiction (ファン フィクション) and fan service, (ファンサービス), to give a couple examples.

Why We Both Love and Hate Google's Spell Up

As most of my web browsing starts from searching for something on the internet, setting Google as my homepage seemed like an ingenious idea. However, with a lot of stuff on the internet being little more than an aid to procrastination, google.com has become a thorn in the side of my productivity.

This was particularly true yesterday, when I discovered Google Chrome's new experiment, Spell Up. Only after playing for thirty minutes did I see the promotional video explaining its purpose.

While not explicitly saying that the game is for those learning English as foreign language, it's quite clear that the benefits of playing this game will be clearer to somebody who does not speak English as their first language. Let's start with the reasons as to why we love the game:

The Good

More Language Video Games

I'm really fond of video games, in all shapes and forms, and while racing fast cars, killing terrorists, or embarking on a mystery quest are all my cup of tea, there are very few language games that I have actually enjoyed and wanted to continue playing.

A Focus on Spoken Language

The game's focus on speaking is an aspect that is often overlooked when learning to speak a language from a book, podcasts, CDs, or, if you can remember that far back, cassettes. Many language learning programs ignore this or add it as an afterthought in a way that means the learner never has their spoken language skills evaluated, and instead just speaks aloud to themselves in public like a lunatic.

A Sense of Achievement

Gameifying language learning is a fantastic way to encourage the continuation of your "quest" for a new tongue. With achievements, levels, power-ups, and bonuses, the player must actually do something. In a book, you can just keep reading whether you understand the concept or not.

The Bad

Understanding Native English Speakers

As a Geordie (a native of the northeastern English city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne), I certainly do not have the clearest and most easily-understood accent when speaking my mother tongue, and I can accept that. However, I do not accept when the phonemes I can pronounce well are misunderstood by a machine, forcing me to alter the way I speak just to play the game. This is even more annoying when you're spelling the last letter of discombobulate and the machine thinks I said "a" when I said "e" and have to go back to the start of the level.

Bugs

It's very unnatural to spell words as slowly as the program requires and when it finally catches up it throws up a suggestion of what it thinks the combination of the four letters it couldn't hear could be if they were just one letter.

Aside from the obvious linguistic issues I have with the program, it is still a video game at the end of the day and it will be faced with the same scrutiny as I would judge any other game. It doesn't run well! The frame-rate is poor and jumpy.

Put simply, Spell Up is a good idea, poorly executed.

Have you played Spell Up? If so, tell us about your experience with it in the comments below and whether or not you're a native English speaker. We can't wait to hear from you!

Conlangs: Skyrim's Dragon Language

If you are a fan of video games, and RPGs in particular, then you should be familiar with The Elder Scrolls series of video games. The series is celebrating twenty years since the release of its first installment, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, while its massively multiplayer online (MMO) installment, The Elder Scrolls Online will be released later this year.

Other than the ability to slay dragons and generally be a total badass in a fantasy world, the fictional language of the dragons featured in the fifth game, Skyrim, known as the Dragon Language, was of particular interest to me as a language and games enthusiast. For those who haven't played it, the player is found to be Dragonborn, destined to slay the dragons in Skyrim that are running amok and generally being nuisances.

The dragons in Skyrim are a lot more menacing than this one.

While this kind of story is commonplace in fantasy literature and media, the means by which the hero unlocks their power is through learning "shouts", all of which are various words in the Dragon Language. The shouts in the game consist of three-word groupings (when fully learned) and amount to more of a mantra than a sentence. For example, Unrelenting Force, one of first "shouts" that can be learned by the hero, is made of the words for Force, Balance, and Push, rendered as Fus Ro Dah. Though the language only comes into play during the game's main quests and fleetingly in a few side quests, there are extended moments of the language's use, including dialogue between dragons.

Whilst the language has a fairly key role in the main story of the game, its use is somewhat sporadic and inconsistent, especially when it comes to pronunciation. Perhaps I'm being overly critical here as for the most part, its native speakers (the dragons) are fairly consistent within their use of the language and the non-native characters seem to pronounce words from the language in their own accent.

The grammar almost mirrors that of English, in such a way that word-for-word translations will almost always provide perfect translations, meaning it really should be classified as either a cant or language game. If you happen to be a dragon it could even be used as a shibboleth to oust non-dragons.

The Cuneiform script which served as
the basis for the alphabet of the
Dragon Language.

The alphabet of The Dragon Language is made up of 34 characters, 25 of which correlate directly to the English alphabet with the exception of the letter "C" as the letters for "K" and "S" replace the phoneme it represents. The remaining 9 characters represents digraphs "aa", "ei", "ii', "ah", "uu", "ur", "ir", "oo" and "ey".

The design of the alphabet is also based on the Cuneiform script, one of the earliest writing systems discovered. Cuneiform was in use from the  3rd Century BC until the 1st Century AD and changed drastically during that time. The Dragon Language's alphabet resembles the latest variation in Cuneiform as it was used before its extinction.

Though based on Cuneiform, the alphabet is stylised to appear like the claw marks of dragons. Obviously since the dragons are the native speakers, it would make sense that they would also make use of the written form. As a result, none of the characters feature more than three scratches and a dot.

Whilst the Dragon Language does not have a lexicon as extensive as Tolkien's conlangs, particularly Elvish, or the ever-popular Klingon from Star Trek, the game features around 500 common words in the language. Fans of the series and the language have also documented the words used in the game and began adding their own in order to build up the lexicon at Thuum.org.

Given its somewhat limited lexicon, for nouns the Dragon Language also makes use of compounding, much like in German, meaning that newer longer words can be constructed in order to create words that do not currently exist in the language.

How Key Is Localisation For The Next-Gen Consoles?

The internet, social media, and seemingly the world appear to be ablaze with talk of the newest consoles. The Wii U has been on the market since last Christmas, and though February brought the PS4 announcement, fans weren't shown any noteworthy glimpses of the console until Sony's presentation at the start of E3 in Los Angeles this week.

Microsoft had already shown off the hardware for the new Xbox One, which is scheduled for release in November. The issue of digital rights management (DRM) and second-hand games had already been the main talking point between the PS4 and Xbox One, with Sony poking fun at their rivals with a "how-to" video on trading games.

Ignoring a typical fanboy argument, we'd like to look at how important localisation and translation will be as these two consoles square up against each other towards the end of the year. Be warned, if you have a fear of statistics the next few paragraphs have a lot of them!

We've seen this battle before...

Sony's current offering, the PS3, has sold over 13.5 million units in the US, 3 million in the UK and around 1.5 million in Canada. Japan accounts for over 6 million units, which, given that Sony is a Japanese company and has a good fanbase in Japan, is hardly surprising.

In total, the PS3 has sold around 77 million units as of January 2013, and at least 40 million of these surely must have gone to locations that are not English-speaking. This would make a majority of the unit sales neither English nor, more importantly, Japanese.

As for the Xbox 360, 25.4 million units were shifted in the US, beating the PS3, same goes for the UK with 8 million units, and 1 million were sold in Australia and New Zealand. The American company Microsoft certainly has it better when it comes to English-speaking territories.

With only around 1.5 million units sold in Japan and only 13.7 million sold across the whole of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, could it be said that Microsoft is relying too much on English-speaking markets? With 77.2 million units sold in total according to latest accounts, which is slightly better than the PS3, Xbox is in the lead. However, it should be noted that the Xbox 360 was released almost a year before the PS3.

With such a high number of units supposedly requiring localised content, it would be silly to assume that consoles can sell themselves solely on the hardware, the games and software are crucial to their success.

This is particularly relevant in Sony's case.

It's fair to say that the success hinges on more than just translation. Few gamers would be happy with subtitles when a story could be dubbed. This is perhaps the only time when we advocate the use of dubbing over good ol' subtitling.

We're by no means saying that either of these companies has forgotten about the importance of localisation. Rather, we're suggesting that given the weight of international markets, whoever gets their international marketing strategies and software localisation correct will probably be crowning themselves the King of Consoles by this time next year.