2011-04-21

Japanese 8-bit games: Are they suitable for learners of the Japanese language?

As you can see from my profile icon, I like video games. And the icon also shows that I'm the kind of person who cannot follow the latest trends of video games.

Well, there seem to be many people studying Japanese on Lang-8. However, the Japanese language is not easy to learn, I guess. Normal Japanese sentences consist of hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters without breaking spaces. I think that such Japanese sentences are not easy to read for beginners of Japanese.

Meanwhile, most Japanese 8-bit games didn't use kanji on screen because of the limitation of performance. They displayed messages in hiragana and katakana without kanji. And they left a space between words in the sentence for readability.

A screenshot of DRAGON QUEST II

  • 「まさおは わたすふりをしたが けっきょく じぶんで もった。」(original)
  • 「まさおは渡すふりをしたが、結局自分で持った。」(normal Japanese)
  • "Masao pretended to hand in an item, but took it back after all." (English translation by me)

Such Japanese sentences seem to be understandable for learners of Japanese. What do you think?

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