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INTEREST: Square Enix Offers iOS Game to Teach English Dialogue


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prime_pm



Joined: 06 Feb 2004
Posts: 2372
Location: Your Mother's Bedroom
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:50 pm Reply with quote
If I had an iPhone or that ignorant enough to need one...
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:54 pm Reply with quote
No bloody way she's 26....
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5590
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 2:08 pm Reply with quote
egoist wrote:
No bloody way she's 26....
she's from Yokohama...so she's Japanese...which means she's Asian. US asians don't age. Trust me. My mom is like 46 and all my friends think she's in her early 30s.
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Mune



Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 383
Location: Minnesota
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 2:20 pm Reply with quote
This is a really good idea.
Now, if everyone could learn other languages like this, it would be fun.
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MIX303



Joined: 03 Apr 2008
Posts: 66
Location: Alberta Canada
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 3:00 pm Reply with quote
Smart idea for Square Enix to offer a iOS to teach English Smile.
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Cloud668



Joined: 04 Sep 2008
Posts: 95
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 3:02 pm Reply with quote
Judging by the screenshot, I really doubt you can learn English with a translation this different from the original line.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14889
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 3:13 pm Reply with quote
Otaku: "College age............ do not want!" Laughing


egoist wrote:
No bloody way she's 26....


And a teacher in college? A grad student or associate prof maybe....
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Echo_City



Joined: 03 Apr 2011
Posts: 1236
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:52 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Otaku: "College age............ do not want!"
Too true. In anime, a character being in her 20s makes her "middle aged".

No way those people are Americans--all female Americans have huge busts, are voluptuous, have blonde hair and blue eyes, and tower over their Asiatic counterparts. This is what anime has taught me, they can't go back on that now Wink
Quote:
she's from Yokohama...so she's Japanese...which means she's Asian. US asians don't age.
The character in the "game" has brown hair, which means she has a significant amount of non-Asiatic genetics in the gene pool. That should cancel out your mythical "Asians don't age" abilities. From what I've seen, Asians that are "pure blooded" or close to it go downhill fast after 25. Even the Japanese themselves acknowledge this with the "Christmas Cake" pariahs.

If this game truly requires proper pronunciation, it will have the least-completed game in Japan. I'd like to say that this game could help get the Japanese as a whole to truly be able to speak English, but I know that will never happen. To elaborate, on the Le Chevalier D'Eon dvds, the director & seiyuu for D'Eon said that they kept repeating lines until all the "hard foreign words & weird place names" were pronounced properly, and that they would continue to do so for all volumes of the show. If you've listened to Le Chevalier D'Eon's Japanese dub, you know that they should STILL be working on that venture. (ie their pronunciation of English names and places is horrible, to say nothing of the French/German/Russian names & places. This from a work which promised excellence in this aspect.)
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firedragon54738



Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 3113
Location: wisconsin
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:14 pm Reply with quote
Why cant the do that backwards and teach Japanese for English speaking people
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jmaeshawn



Joined: 08 Feb 2011
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 8:41 pm Reply with quote
Cloud668 wrote:
Judging by the screenshot, I really doubt you can learn English with a translation this different from the original line.


"Yosh! Saa, dondon yaku yo!"
"Finally! Okay, I'm firing up the grill!"

What's wrong with that?

"Yosh" is just an exclamation that shows excitement, and "saa" means all right, okay, etc. "dondon" means to get fired up about something and "yaku" means to bake, roast, or grill.

Looks fine to me Smile
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charpkun



Joined: 22 Sep 2009
Posts: 13
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:59 pm Reply with quote
jmaeshawn wrote:
Cloud668 wrote:
Judging by the screenshot, I really doubt you can learn English with a translation this different from the original line.


"Yosh! Saa, dondon yaku yo!"
"Finally! Okay, I'm firing up the grill!"

What's wrong with that?

"Yosh" is just an exclamation that shows excitement, and "saa" means all right, okay, etc. "dondon" means to get fired up about something and "yaku" means to bake, roast, or grill.

Looks fine to me Smile


Can't complain about the translation. In fact, since the app claims that it's geared towards realistic, conversational English, such liberal/colloquial translation is perfect. As opposed to the stiff, academic translations that Japanese learning English are used to.

If anything, I question the legitimacy of the app just from the perspective that it is a negative incentive for Japanese to converse with REAL exchange students, which no piece of language learning software can replace.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3827
PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 1:17 am Reply with quote
Now if only that kanji was spelled out in hiragana this app might be useful for learning some more japanese.
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Danette-Anime-Otaku



Joined: 09 Feb 2011
Posts: 115
PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 2:53 am Reply with quote
Now Square make a game to help Americans learn Japanese! I need the hirigana to help with the kanji!
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 4:26 am Reply with quote
egoist wrote:
No bloody way she's 26....


Echo_City wrote:
Quote:
she's from Yokohama...so she's Japanese...which means she's Asian. US asians don't age.
The character in the "game" has brown hair, which means she has a significant amount of non-Asiatic genetics in the gene pool.

*A lot* of Asian women dye their hair with reddish or brownish tint or more brunette.

Quote:

That should cancel out your mythical "Asians don't age" abilities. From what I've seen, Asians that are "pure blooded" or close to it go downhill fast after 25. Even the Japanese themselves acknowledge this with the "Christmas Cake" pariahs.

Then you haven't seen that many Asians. At all. Of course some don't age well, but for the most part if they take care of their health, they can look much younger than their non-Asian peer especially as they age. Literally every single Asian woman I know is like this. It's funny because I spent some time a while back traveling around Asia (Japan, China, Thailand, etc) for a few weeks. When I came back, I was kind of surprised at how much older some of the girls here in the US looked. I mean high school girls here look like they are in their mid-20's.

see Xia Da



She's 28 in these pics (turning 30 now)

Some guys are like this as well (... if they don't smoke, which is rare, lol)

left: Yodogawa Yoshihiro from the band Question, and is 27 here (2010) and right: Masahiko Kondo from Matchy is 45 here (2009)
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kakoishii



Joined: 16 Jul 2008
Posts: 741
PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2011 12:07 am Reply with quote
configspace wrote:

When I came back, I was kind of surprised at how much older some of the girls here in the US looked. I mean high school girls here look like they are in their mid-20's.

I really would like to know what high schools you've been prowling around because imho high school aged kids look far younger than they used to and I'm not even that old being only 23. Honestly, I just think US people tend to look older typically because of the perceptions of beauty that has been perpetuated in our culture. Not that it's completely unique to the US but it is I feel very heavily focused on here. It's rare to find a woman who isn't caked in makeup, a teenager who doesn't try and dress like they're in their twenties, girls who spend hrs and tons of money on baking themselves at tanning salons. These things add on the years really fast, you'd be surprised how much younger a girl can look when she simply cleans off her face. It's not just the cosmetics either, people in the US are also known for their poor eating habits and carrying on extra weight can make you look older too. Genetics can aide in how well you age, but I do feel it's a little ridiculous to state an entire race has a one up on everyone else. It's all about how you take care of yourself, anyone can stay that fresh if they treat their bodies right.
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