Casual Friday: Games and Bad Language Lessons
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Tongue Twisted
Olaf Kopetsch, who lives in Germany,
You see, like a movie's audio track, the game can switch between German and English on the fly. "Sometimes it's so funny, how they translate English curses into German. Sometimes it really makes sense, because some puns are not directly translatable," Kopetsch says.
What is he learning, exactly? "Well, Kane & Lynch won't fully help to learn a language--unless you intend to have a conversation where every second thing is the f-word," he jokes. If anything, it teaches him game-centric slang such as "health pack"--as well as
Near as I can figure, Street Fighter Ryu's "Hadoken!" means "Hi, I've just launched a fireball of chi at your head. Do you have the time?" Try saying that the next time you order sushi, and see what happens.
Toggle on the subtitles, and you get the added bonus of being able to decipher what the heck L'il Jacob is saying in Jamaican (kinda). So go on, try to pick up some key phrases and use them on
Kopetsch is quick to add, though, that "the most important thing for a nonnative speaker is to differentiate between slang and elaborated speech. I don't want to greet an American colleague of mine by saying 'What's up, motherf***?'" Amen to that.
The Real Lessons
Oh, sure, I could sit here and wax poetic about how some educational games will teach you foreign languages in as little as 20 minutes a day. (Disclaimer: Your results may vary depending on how much attention you're paying.) Is your Spanish no muy bien? Need to brush up on your French tongue? Ubisoft has released a series of fantastic tools for the Nintendo DS, the My Coach "games."
Hasta semana proxima...
Senior Writer Darren Gladstone geeks out over gadgets, games, and odd uses for humdrum tech. In other words, he's a nerd--and he's okay with that.
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