What is the utility of learning new languages?

News & General Discussion
1

I mean languages as in Russian, Japanese, English, etc… Not programming languages. I mean also programming languages, totally also programming languages!!! plz don’t lock

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what language would be the most fun to learn and/or the most useful to learn. I’ve searched on youtube for an answer how long roughly it would take to learn Russian for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIqHwRYOOgA

And he said about 1100 hours to get to a level where you’re still far from perfect but have a good grasp of the language and can actually use it. At the 2 minute mark of the video he has a chart where different languages are grouped by how difficult they are. Those numbers sound somewhat optimistic to me or maybe they expect less proficiency from people to pass as “speaking a language” than I would. I’m probably close to the number of hours listed for French because I had to learn it in School for a few years but I certainly don’t feel capable of expressing myself with it or watching a movie in French without subtitles. And seeing German only in group 2 of that list with Russian in group 4 and Japanese in group 5 was really disheartening for me because I’m a native German speaker and I find English to be rather easy by comparison. I never liked French and found it “too hard”, but I also never had anything specific that was French and that I wanted to read or listen to in French (my apologies to the French), English had a ton of that for me. E.g. nowadays I’m watching 100% of stuff on Netflix in English and find it a lot more enjoyable than watching anything dubbed in German.
My personal opinion is, if your native language isn’t English, then learning it is hands down the best skill investment you can make. But what about those that already speak English? What is the next best language to learn? Or rather what language would open up a door to the most fun stuff that is currently inaccessible to us? I would like to hear from people who speak other languages than English or German what possibilities they think learning their language would open up to others. I’m also interested to hear thoughts on whether there’s any point in developing a predominantly passive understanding of a language, especially those that use different alphabets, because personally I have very little desire to travel and/or talk/write to people in other languages. But I could see watching movies or listening to podcasts in other languages be fun. I dunno… just curious to hear your thoughts on this. Top 3 languages I’d like to hear about are Swedish, Russian, and Japanese. But my intention is that this is a general thread not focused on my personal interests. If it inspires someone else to learn a new language that would be pretty cool!

Also what languages do you think it’s worth translating games into? I’ve read some stats where certain languages being added only gives spikes in piracy from those countries but barely in sales. Translating things to German or French probably is a good choice for many games. Iirc those where some of the strongest sales increases from the stats but I don’t remember the exact details.

1 Like
2

You also mean programming languages and game translations so this thread doesn’t get locked (we would have no choice) :wink:

6 Likes
3

I guess now I do…

2 Likes
4

Lots of time and effort. If I don’t have a specific, practical need, why bother?

Even if you do have a specific, practical need, its still an awful lot of trouble and few people have the discipline to just straight learn a language by studying.

Better to learn as a kid. Makes your brain smarter. But as an adult with many things to do, I just don’t see the benefit.

1 Like
5

I think it’d be nice in an abstract sense. I took German in school, as well as college, but didn’t keep up with it at all so I recall very little. And reading visual novels, I find myself wanting to learn Japanese a bit so I can understand what’s being said, and read the original text, without the veneer of an English localization over it (especially when I do hear a word or phrase I recognize, but it has a totally different translation in the text than what I’ve seen in other VNs).

And speaking of which, I actually have learned a few words and phrases here and there, simple things like “thank you” or “I’m sorry” or “thank goodness” or “I understand” and so on. Nothing significant, but enough that every few sentences I can pick up a phrase or two.

Edit: also, I read a couple VNs that showed both English and kana (sometimes kanji, mostly the kanas). My desktop background is basically all the hiragana, and I have two monitors, so by hearing the sounds and matching them to their location in the VN sentence and comparing to my reference I fairly quickly found myself identifying the sound of each kana. This is nothing special I know, but it’s a little gain for all but no effort.

Can’t really think of a real reason to learn any others, however, unless I were a travelling businessman, and I am not that. I may find a reason in the future, but I don’t see one now.

As far as programming languages are concerned, it’s probably a good idea to have a bit of working knowledge of a more normal C language like C++ in addition to C#. And probably others but I don’t really know anything else (except some Java which is basically C# (or is C# basically Java?) in my limited experience).

I recall seeing an article, I think on Gamasutra, that mentioned Chinese as a big one to localize for.

Additionally, I’ve noticed a growing number of visual novels on Steam in Chinese only, not even English.

Along similar lines, I know that China has become an enormous portion of Steam’s userbase.

1 Like
6

Yeah, I agree. However I’m curious if there are such needs that I just don’t know about yet.

At the moment I watch one episode of an anime show each day while excercising and I’ve started to experience the same where I recognize words that were translated differently elsewhere. But I wonder if I even would enjoy them more when I actually understand all they say. Until you can watch entirely without subtitles you’re probably going to be a whole lot more irritated by weird translations. We touched on the voiceover topic regarding MGS V and I think @chingwa said something about not understanding the language that helps make it not sound cheesy and overexaggerated in some cases of japanese dialog. I quite enjoy the japanese voiceovers with subtitles as it is already, I’m not 100% sure that experience is gonna be greatly enhanced by investing hundreds or thousands of hours into learning one of the harder languages. But at least that would be a specific goal.

Maybe @JoeStrout has some thoughts to share on this - if I remember correctly he was working on a Kanji learning game once.

Interesting! I wonder if the Chinese games industry has things to offer that would do well on western markets if they just were translated, and if so I wonder why they aren’t. With Japanese media I’m aware of quite a lot that is being translated for us but I’m not aware of any AAA games for example coming straight from China. Although there’s probably a considerable chunk of art assets for western AAA games being produced in China already, and Epic Games was bought by a Chinese Company if I recall correctly.

Edit: According to this article:
https://www.cryptoambit.com/blog/2018/1/21/south-korea-and-the-crypto-craze
South Korea seems to “spends the 3rd most of any country on purchases in the Google Play app store.”, so translating to Korean might be a good idea.

1 Like
7

If I were to pick one language to do game localization for it would be Mandarin Chinese, simply for the huge increased market potential. There are aspects of a game apart from translation that may need to be considered when doing localization though, such as changes to conform to local laws or even altering plot concepts to be more in tune with a foreign audience.

When speaking the other way around (Chinese games being localized for English) I think you see much less of this because the effort of doing so just does not seem worthwhile in most cases. They likely see the English language market for their games as being quite small and they are almost certainly correct. Despite the multi-culturalism of the U.S., It is quite a hard sell to get American audiences to pick up foreign games (speaking in a general sense of course). Their efforts are much better spent localizing for other Asian countries first to see how much life a game has, before bringing it to Western audiences.

As for language study, I do believe there is utility in setting and achieving difficult goals, quite apart from the actual usefulness of those goals. They can be stepping stones to accomplishing or discovering other things along the way. And besides, the utility of doing something isn’t always the overriding reason to choose to do something.

I took German in High School and felt it was far more difficult than English (of course being a native English speaker I would think that). I did not think about it much for a couple decades after, but recently traveled to Germany for the first time. While there was huge amounts that I did not understand, I did understand enough to get myself around, and enough that it enhanced the enjoyment of my travels. Apart from that, I’ve found it very interesting how similar English and German are to each other, and even how much German has infiltrated into daily English usage.

Now speaking of Japanese in particular, I do not really agree that it is a difficult language in general. The grammar and pronunciation rules are surprisingly consistent, and exceptions are pretty easy to remember. Once you get a handle on it I think it’s relatively easy compared to German. However, I do think it is a very difficult language for Westerners to learn, and this is mainly due to the impenetrability of the writing system. Unless you are actually surrounded by the Japanese language on a daily basis, you won’t get very far learning Japanese if you avoid kanji. Learning kanji, despite what anyone says, simply requires hours and hours and hours of memorization and practice and repetition. That is the hard truth. It is a hard thing to stay committed to if you’re doing it “just for kicks”.

Still there is much that you can enjoy from dipping your toes into Japanese. People’s commitment level varies, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Following your interests in life is something that should be highly encouraged, and I personally have found great reward and utility out of following my interests… that has led me down roads that I could not even see from the beginning when I started. So I would say if you are interested in Japanese, then don’t analyze too much, and just go for it. Put some effort into learning the basics and see how you like it. Even if you derive no utility from your efforts at all, there are still rewards to be had.

To quote the late great Alan Watts, the only true reason to do something is… “because I dig it.”

3 Likes
8

What a waste of time. All Russians, Japanese and even Chinese people are learning more and more english. As an ESL, I just need to improve my English and start communicate.

9

I would say most Russians are comfortable with Russian. English is sometimes useful but not needed.

How many people in Russia know English (Russian Census, 2010)

I’m also afraid that saying that you know English and be comfortable to play games in English are not the same thing. I don’t know anyone in person who would play a text-heavy game in English.

10

Something that I think holds true for almost all groups is that everyone wants to consume their own stuff, and this applies to everything from food, to entertainment, to firearms. Hollywood forcefully exports all it can to the rest of the world, but then the Japanese are amazed that anyone outside their prison island would be interested in their cartoons. French films meanwhile are never discussed much outside France or really hardcore film studies. Some of it is the language barrier, but a lot of it is cultural sensibilities. So when looking at the market potential of China, it’s easy to see a massive number that won’t even a percentage of what you really have.

1 Like
11

If you start Chinese (mandarin), expect spending some time just distinguishing the various sound, I have started and now I have made a conscious choice to stick to that level for the next 6 month until I can perfectly distinguish all of theml.

1 Like
12

There IS one Chinese series that is basically AAA, and does have at least one entry translated.

From what little I’ve heard, this series is China’s equivalent to Final Fantasy, so basically the largest JRPG (CRPG?) the country makes.

There haven’t been any more translations in the series however, at least that I know of. (Edit: Just checked the forums and apparently they’re releasing that game on the X1 soon globally, so maybe they’re still trying to make the series global)

It’s quite possible that there’s not a great market for Chinese experiences, but it would be foolish to just assume that it’s always going to be that way. The very fact that so many Japanese games are popular in the west, and even that some Eurojank games like those by Spiders (Mars War Logs, Bound By Flame, The Technomancer) or Mount and Blade and such can be popular in America would imply that there’s more overlap than we sometimes think.

Edit: and actually the fact that so many western games like esports type stuff or PUBG (I know it’s not made in the west, but it grew popular in the west and might be argued to have western sensibilities) are big in China implies that some stuff there could be big here.

1 Like
13

The language groupings are normally made by a native English speaker. So they won’t always reflect learning difficulty for others. A better system would be to set up a phylogeny chart. Languages far away would be difficult to jump between. Close languages would be easier to jump between.

A lot of this depends on geography. In the pacific, where I am based, Japanese is the best language to learn, followed closely by Mandarin. These are the two languages we do the most trade and tourism with. I’ve got to travel halfway around the world to meet a native French or Spanish speaker, so those languages are not super useful to me.

In the US, I would recommend Spanish. In Canada, French. In Europe, I would go with German and/or French. All for the same reason.

3 Likes
14

I’ve learned Spanish by accident :). The most fun part was the process of learning. The first day you know only “adiós” and “hasta la vista, baby”, the next day you know 20x more, in a week you know 200x more than in the first day, in a month the progress is enormous, like a snowball. It’s very encouraging when you can feel the progress. When the snowball starts to slow down, you already know enough to switch from learning to practicing.

At this point I realized that I can roughly understand texts in Portugese and get the general idea of texts in Italian and sometimes even French. Now when I google for something and get an answer in either of these languages, I no longer close the page immedietely.

Spanish is a very neat language that doesn’t hate its learners, and I think it’s a perfect bridge to other Romance languages. If I started with French with no real need to learn French, I would give up in a week.

1 Like
15

English is the most popular language, people can easily play with English, let’s try to use normal words, it is fine. Don’t waste your time with it :smile:.

16

Also a tips that was given to me by polyglot is to master 200 base words per languages, due to pareto law, it will allows to maintain casual discussion in most settings and improvise, yay for quantity vs quality, but very useful for traveling since you don’t need to have deep philosophical discussion most of the time. But it’s a nice tip if you want to have many languages in a practical fashion. Then you can deepen just a few to various degree of mastery.

1 Like
17

Now, how many Russians play games in Russia?

18

We can take SteamSpy statistics (total active users) as the lower bound:

3373886--264636--players.PNG

19

@Martin_H
I can say that I’m a bit lucky living in a SEA (South-east Asia) country. I’m Chinese. My family talk Cantonese and Chinese and some of my friends know Hokkien, Hakka and Hainanese (Dialect of Chinese) as well. We started learning Chinese, English and Malay since kindergarten to secondary high school (This is a must native language subjects) so we already have over 12 years experiences on talking, writing and speaking on these 3 languages when graduated from high school. In total, basically we know 4 languages.

So when I look that the difficulty chart on the video and see that Chinese is one of the hardest language. I’m a bit shocked. Really? Maybe because I already know Chinese since very young so I didn’t feel anything on it. And thanks for my main language so it brings a big help for learning Japanese later on since they are actually quite similar in writing and some verbal. Thanks for your video, I decided to make a Chinese learning games for mobile in future with my personal special teaching method to proof that Chinese is not the hardest language and is actually very fun to learn.

My Personal Chinese Teaching Method (Understanding Foundation in a Fun Way)


The Born of Chinese:
Chinese are come from the actual thing and slowly evolve into current words.

About parts: (Element)
Any words which have this「氵」part are mostly related to water element.

  • 海 (Sea), 海浪 (Sea waves), 淚 (Tears), 流 (Water flow), 潑 (Splash), 溢 (Spill), 河 (River) and so on.

Any words which have this「火」part are mostly related to fire element. (Hot)

  • 燒 (Burn), 燒烤 (Barbecue), 烤 (Grill), 烘 (Bake), 火 (Fire), 燴 (Braise), 烤爐 (Oven), 爐灶 (Stove) and so on.

Other elements including「金」gold (Metal), 「木」wood, 「刀」knife (Something sharp) and so on.

Different Languages:
Chinese and Japanese are actually very similar.
This word「櫻」means cherry blossom as well as Sakura in Japanese.
This is Chinese (Simplified) : 「樱」
This is Chinese (Traditional) : 「櫻」
This is Japanese : 「桜」

Same goals apply to my another secondary language - English. My English is not perfect but at least it completely deliver the message then is OK but I’m still keep learning it. I have Google Translate extension always installed in my Chrome and phone which I can easily highlight the words and learn new vocabulary anytime including internet language like IMHO, ASAP, LOL, TBH and so on.

One of the interesting thing in Japanese is that if you know all pronunciation of Katagana. Basically you can understand half of Japanese words already because they are just mimic the sounds of English words. For example: ゲーム / ゲー (Ge) ム (Mu) basically means “Game” in English. オプション / オ (O) プ (Pu) シ (Shi) ョン (On) basically means “Option” in English. You will see these Katagana a lots when you play Japanese games.

Alright, here is your main question: What is the utility (Purpose) of learning new languages. My answer is pretty straight forward: If you need to use it or just learn for fun, go ahead. It’s nothing wrong to learn anything new in your life. Most important thing is, you are actually not learning their languages but cultures. How it get started using by people. For Chinese as example, you just look at the image in the spoiler and you will understand. You can easily talk to more people if you know their language and they will feel more friendly with you. In my country, we always switch between the 3 languages anytime during conversation and we already get used to it without a problem. Also good for business, improving your brain’s memory skill and may found out some interesting ideas for game development too.

For game industry, I suggest to learn English, Chinese and Japanese since those countries hold the biggest games economy system. Unity Asset Store also provide these 3 languages plus Korean as the package meta hence you can feel how important it is. You can start from either Chinese or Japanese first. Once you get into one of them. You will realize learning the other one is actually easy because they share some similarity on pronunciation and writing hence you have a high chances guess it right what is that means.

For programming language. I prefer just stick to C# with understanding the OOP concept and using Visual Studio to code. Perfect for Unity game development.:smile:

Hope my words got inspired you something.:wink:

2 Likes
20

Learning a new language when you are a native English speaker is completely pointless unless you have a specific need, want or desire to engage in a particular culture.