My guild had loads of people for whom English was a second language, Denmark, Netherlands, Romania. Usually their English was better than most of my British friends. We are historically bad at being multi lingual. I myself only speak English and bad English.
I'm a farmer in the southern US and learned a significant amount of conversational Korean playing BDO on KR servers Easiest east Asian language to pick up for a native English speaker by far
Fun fact: I've learned english (italian here) mostly thanks to Morrowind, trying to understand what to do and where to go without mission markers. p.s. Nice sweater!
i improved my vocabulary back in the day playing Baldur's Gate 2. I knew like 300 words back in the day, then i found this amazing game and played with a Redhouse dictionary on one hand, trying to figure out wtf those NPCs were saying. I imagine it is similar for many of my generation.
All the boys at my school learned english through playing Yu-Gi-Oh. I didn't know what a cottage or a wheelbarrow was, but knew all about summoning from graveyards and sacrificing monsters to pay tribute to Egyptian gods.
I'm so happy your parents insisted on speaking Russian with you at home. It may seem cruel or inefficient for learning the local language, or people assume it somehow makes the local language harder to learn but it doesn't. As a speech therapist with a background in linguistics, it's a common misconception I've seen. It's also part of the reason Welsh almost died out in South Wales, because parents assumed that children would learn English better if they were never "confused" with Welsh. So all the multilinguals out there, I implore you to practice as many different languages as you can with your children. It will only help them! As Angelika said, it's so easy to forget a language, and it's much harder to pick it up later in life.
"It's easy to forget a language" This is a real phenomenon. Bilingual people who speak their second language more often than their native one often report forgetting words in their native language.
@@Leitis_Fella Unfortunately true, used to speak fluent Armenian but barely remember just a few words now, also because I don't speak Russian as much sometimes I need to think to find the right word or I just replace it with the word in another language like Hebrew or English but thankfully I can still speak, read and write Russian very well but not as well as in English or Hebrew.
I remember a story my mum told about how one of her friends didn't teach her kids to speak the language of the home country. When their relatives came to visit, one of the kids was crying his eyes out, because he couldn't speak with his relatives, and he wanted to tell them he loved them, but he didn't know how to. I've always remembered that.
I know a family where they speak Swedish, English and Japanese. The kids have absolutely no problems at all. They are as fluent as kids could be at that age in all three languages and they don't mix up grammar or words at all. On the other hand, I think it's better for immigrant parents to sometimes speak in the language of their current country for *them* to learn, not the kids.
I played for years with a woman whose native language was French, she always insisted that I use english, correct her grammar and explain slang. Her text english was good and got excellent over the 7 years we played together, except for one thing, she never understood where I wanted to map to, and often I was confused where she was telling me she was as well. Localization was the culprit, often quest names and outpost markers had such different names that did not translate. Finally I learned to switch to French localization to get the map and marker names and then switch back. It was fun.
Interestingly one of the things that drew me to your channel was your accent. You have a sort of whimsical cadence that literally reminds me of characters in fantasy games. This story puts so much into context and it makes so much sense haha
@@kekita1337 I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you. @DresGarB I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you. @Angelikatosh I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you.
ВАУ! Смотрю тебя с первого ролика и сразу заметила какой-то такой, ну вот прям родной-родной акцент. Но не предала сильного значения. А в итоге моя чуйка оказалась права ❤ влюблена в формат твоих роликов! Keep it up :)
Icelander here who also learned English through World of Warcraft. I remember my desire to learn started when I was like 7 or 8 years old when I got a Gameboy Color to play Pokémon gen 1 on and there was this NPC blocking my path and I couldn't understand how to get the NPC to move. I struggled through that game feeling blind and literally being blind in one dark cave in the game because I never learned how to use a move that would make the cave bright. I slowly build up a vocabulary through the years playing games like Morrowind, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Age of Empires 2, Pokémon and many other games, but the real thing that took my learning to another level was playing World of Warcraft and Oblivion in 2006 for all the reasons you mentioned. I think I learned more English in 2006 and 2007 than during all the rest of my life combined, before and after those years.
Yeah, you are not alone with this. It was very concerning for my primary school English teacher how all the words I knew were violent ones. "Kill," "Slay," "Backstab," "Destroy," etc.
Girl, this is insane. I thought you were from the USA. You sound neutral and fluent. In previous videos I figured out you were Russian but now you blew me away with your Spanish...y sí, no me lo esperaba 🥰. Greetings from Stuttgart, Germany.
I love your story. My son learned to read playing Zelda. At first, I would read the game out loud but this got old after a week or so. I told him if he wants to play the game, he needs to learn how to read. He was reading on his own within a month. We helped him get through sentences at first but he picked it up real quick.
You know, when I was in school I used to have a much more noticeable Irish accent, especially with specific words etc. , but since I left school and I was laid off from my job in January of this year, I’ve started losing it bit by bit!😅
I learned how to read English (uncultured American) from Diablo, Starcraft, and mostly my grandma reading the dialog in ocarina of time to me. She'd always sit in her rocking chair watching me play "ol' Zel" and cackle with glee when I'd do something cool or go ACH if something scary or gross was onscreen. One day when we were playing together I said "it's ok grandma, I can read the text on my own" and she was so proud 🥲
Lol that reminds me learning English with Oblivion back then. That's also the reason why Harvest Dawn plays in the background when I switch to English. I'm done talking to you.
This video is making me so nostalgic for old WoW. ;( Also, I'm now picturing you going to school as a little girl and not really knowing any English, but when called upon to answer a question you stand up and say "My son, the day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name Arthas."
My family and I moved to Northern Ireland when I was 13. I learned some basic English at school before we moved, but quickly realized that my knowledge couldn't really be applied to daily conversations and life at junior high school was very difficult. I played wow since I was around 9 or so, but we were on a Russian server so I didn't really need to learn English that way. What helped me the most was becoming friends with a local immigrant girl whose English was a bit better than mine, and we had to speak to each other in English since we're both from two different countries. It helped me immensely, as well as using Tumblr (of all places lol). I still make some grammatical mistakes, but I consider myself fluent in Eglish. However, my true "survivor mode" kicked in when I moved to Norway 3 years ago. Although I went to language school to learn basics, what really kick-started my skills in Norwegian was working at the local grocery store. Even though I was extremely embarrassed at first, I simply had no choice but to speak Norwegian with locals. 3 years later, I have B1, almost B2 level in Norwegian, and working in profession I am qualified for (child psychology).
Man, the memories... I'm was a brazilian immigrant, my mom and I moved to Spain when I was 6, and of course I didn't know the language... Neither did she. So a kinda had to learn spanish in order to help my mom with basic survival stuff and also legal documents. Average immigrant experience. I learned the language through playing Pokémon Silver and others RPGs, which in turn led me to Final Fantasy X-2, a game that I got for Christmas, but was in english... So in order to beat the game (I didn't had many games, so every one was played to exhaustion), I started playing with an spanish-english dictionary by my side, on top of having to kinda translate everything back to portuguese lol. I'm grateful for that though, now I speak 3 languages, which has lead me to so many places, gave so many opportunities and made me met so many people... Abraços do Brasil! 🇧🇷
Im from Brazil, never went to a english speaking country, but i can say that 80% of what i know of english came from games. The rest being movies/series and school.
Brazilian here, I've learned English through video games too. I had English classes at schools and went to a private language course for the language but it wasn't until I started playing Skyrim and Mass Effect 1 on my Xbox that my skills with English really improved. Back then games didn't always come with Portuguese translations, it was extremely rare to even have subtitles, and I wanted to understand the context behind the game's story and world so that "survival" instinct kicked in. I did play an MMO which helped improve my skills even further after I was already fluent decade, Star Wars: The Old Republic. From 2013 to 2023 I played that game and since there were very few Brazilians playing it (as the game has no localization or servers for Brazil), I had to rely on my English for all communication.
As a French Canadian, I learned English from watching Saturday morning cartoons back in the 80s (Im old!) And now, here I am pushing fifty, translating scripts for television from Japanese to English. I find your story amazing and very relatable. Really impressive how you mastered English through video games! By the way, my first experience playing an Elder Scrolls game was with Oblivion... in Japanese.
I also moved with my small kids (7y & 5y) to the new country, they don’t know local language. Your story is the huge inspiration for me. Спасибо что поделилась! Надеюсь мои дети тоже освоятся! ❤
French here, I learned English through goldeneye on the N64 (yep I'm old) the game was objective based and you couldn't finish a level without completing all the objectives. I remember one in particular the objective was "escape through the window" I didn't know what through meant nor Window which made it... complicated as I was looking for a door to go out. Further games started to be translated more often so I lost a bit of that English. Pronunciation only came when I had a permanent access to the internet, so as an adult and I watched a lot of youtube and later interacted with a lot of Brits and Americans on video game streams. Now I live in England, I'm about to marry a brit and I make sure that my daughter learns French by ONLY speaking to her in French.
Ma cousine m'a dit ça aussi, pour qu'un enfant apprenne une langue il faut que le parant lui parle avec une seul langue sinon il fait des mélange bizzare, mais je sais pas à quelle point c'est vrai. Pour moi dès que tu maitrise une langue tu commence à mixer des trucs that's why I sometime switch to english in my dream or use englishised words instead of the proper french and... ah crap, I did it again.
Someone else in the comments mentioned Final Fantasy 8 also! Its so interesting that games helped native English speakers with their reading and comprehension - parents that didn’t let their kids play games really had them miss out 🤣
As a Finnish guy my English language skills comes from adventure games of the 90s. Sierra and LucasArts had lots of awesome games and word dictionary was in active use. There was no spoken dialogs in games so written text was easy to look from those books. Good times! :)
That's so awesome to hear. I love those old Sierra games and now I make adventure games specifically designed to help people learn languages, eg "Pedro's Adventures in Spanish"
@@feorh1919 Yes later, but not on floppy disk era when I started gaming. First adventure game I remember had voiceover was Indy 4 Fate of Atlantis. I started with games like King's Quest 1-4, Monkey Island 1, Indy 3 etc ... those EGA graphic games :)
PC gaming taught me fast typing. Especially RTS games where you need to type fast and multi-task. It's also what started me on my technology skills and ultimately led to being an IT pro.
Second this, most fast paced multiplayer games really benefited from being able to type out something quickly in short bursts. WoW is another example, type between spell casts 🧙♂️
@@kjeksomanen When I had to write my thesis, the gf of a long-time friend, with whom I played a lot of wow, asked me if I could touch type. I said no, and she quickly asked how I think that I would be able to type that many pages without knowing it, he only smirked and said something like “trust me, he will be alright”.
I always gave my parents the excuse that I was learning English so I could play video games all day. And playing video games really did make me learn English (Brazilian here). Thank you Americans and British (or anyone who uses English, really), for creating so many cool games and making me learn English
You've actually described the exact same experience I had when I was eleven and me and my three friends started playing WoW (On two computers, so we had to fight for whoever got to play). None of us were English speakers and thankfully we played on a private server for our country, but the game was still in English. Figuring out what the spells do was always a trial of error, same with quest logs etc. So we would often come up together with a way to translate what we needed, usually by looking up the word in dictionairy. I eventually started playing some other singleplayer games that were just as wordy and it was definitiely an adventure, trying to catch on what was going on, because even when the games had subtitles, I understood only like a quarter of it. As such I didn't know what the hell was I doing in AC: Brotherhood nor Heroes. But I had fun and I also learned a lot. So much so that by the later years of high school I didn't really do anything in my English lessons, because I was a little bit too advanced :) But yes, everything you talked about and described hits very, very close to home.
I hope Ireland has been treating you well! I'm from the north but I work in the south. Goes without saying, your accent is far from neutral, it's class. Big fan 🙌
This is so relatable, I'm from Poland and I remember holding an english dictionary and trying to play diablo 1 on playstation 1 with my sister. We did not understand a fluff but somehow still had fun :D I learned english from games mostly as well and always had easier time in school because of it.
My native language is Spanish, I learned English mostly playing videogames like Resident evil, Silent hill and some couple of pc and ps1 games. I eventually started playing warcraft 3, age of empires, age of mythology, that's where I realised I need more background to understand the history, so I started searching every single word in a dictionary hha I actually enjoyed. When I started playing Wow was during final phase of tbc, it really improves more my English, although I still don't understand everything specially in common conversations with other people. I kept playing wow for 5 years and I eventually learned just by playing. I took an English course later on, which helps me just in grammar aspect and speaking. I may not have a perfect English but I can handle conversations and understand without subtitles, I also started reading Game of thrones, hopefully I'll be more fluent. I love your channel, you have an amazing content. Esa no me la esperaba amiga 😅❤
What you said about losing your language as an immigrant child is very true. My parents are from China, and when we moved to the US, they only spoke to me in English. As a result, my Chinese is terrible, and I can't communicate with my extended family in China.
Starting WoW at 6 blows my mind. Even when I started playing it at 12, I had a hard time getting to grips with the game due to English and lack of MMO experience.
learning a language through gaming is such an endearingly modern way to engage with the world! i’ve been trying to learn mandarin for a while now (i’m a chinese adoptee and have spoken english my whole life) and this makes me think maybe i should try infusing gaming into my learning!
It’s incredible to me how the accent didn’t exist until the moment she mentioned having an accent. Like I didn’t notice, but now I won’t be able to unhear it for a week.
Thanks for sharing! I am in a situation similar to yours but at different stages of life. I am an Australian studying for a university degree in Russia; I am studying linguistics. My entire curriculum is taught in Russian and my classmates are all Russian. I only had one year of Russian education before starting university here. Studies were difficult as I had to translate the words before I could even start learning the topic. However, my progress has improved since I started playing my computer games in Russian; for example, the Metro series; The ATOM series rpg, and many others. I hope to master Russian, the way you had mastered English.
Relatable. I come from Slovenia and learned english through video games like Diablo and Homm1-3. By the time I started WoW my english was ok already but I never played a game online before that. I remember making an Undead warlock as my first character and seeing a guy with an epic staff in Undercity. I said "cool staff", and he said "thx". And I responded with "np", just because I saw people using np as a response to thx all the time. It's still an inside joke between me and my brother to use "np" as awkwardly as possible. Oh and we learned german by watching german TV. Watching yugioh, dragonball, pokemon... Good times.
I also did! I'm French Canadian and all of my friends were playing on a North American server and there were plenty of other French Canadians on the server. We didn't like playing on the French EU servers because of the time zone difference. There was enough of us to form our own guilds and get by speaking only French to each other but eventually I had to engage with the English-speaking players when my English was almost non-exsitent and I learned fast because of it!
lol. I am also part French Canadian on my dad's side (though I lived my whole life in Ontario, south of Toronto). I thought you guys in Quebec were fluently bilingual. I heard there is a joke around there where you ask "What do you call someone that speaks two languages?" "Bilingual" "What do you call someone that speaks only one language?" "English".
I used to play the predecessor to MMORPGs back when I was younger; MUDs. They were entirely text based games with some ASCII art once in a while, with the controls also being your language. You typed in commands for your character. At the time I was pretty young and barely spoke any English, but it was enough to get started. I found it really interesting to read the room descriptions and enemy descriptions, so I kept exploring and reading. I also learned some peculiar words like quaff, which essentially means to heartily drink something. It's the command you used to drink a potion, where you'd also have to specify what to "quaff". It thankfully had short commands as well as aliases for various commands, so it was far from as tedious to play as it initially sounds to a lot of people. It honestly played mostly like a regular MMORPG once you set up all of the aliases, only difference being that you'd press Enter after each command/input.
I relate to this video so much! While I did of course mostly learn English through watching TV shows that aired in my country with subtitles, I would be a liar if I said that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft did not contribute to the active learning of the language. Making use of the language while playing the game was such a blessing in disguise for me.
Every person has an accent. Accents aren't a divergence from what's "normal". It's like the colour of your hair - everyone's hair has a particular colour. You can't have hair without a colour.
If we cannot place Angelika to a particular continent or country, and cannot tell English was not her first language, that's very "accentless" by what people understand the term to mean.
Afaik many countries apply a "general accent", but it's still a part of an accent. My German is decent, but I can't understand people around Essen/Düsseldorf, yet Cologne is no problem at all. While being not that far off. In Dutch, my native language, we have "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands(ABN)". (Common decent Dutch). It's more accentuated compared to flatter accents like fries or Limburgs. Usually used by national media.
@@uuamenator That's just not what an accent is. An accent is defined as "the way in which people in a particular area, country, or social group pronounce words"
I've honestly thought about doing this for the Finnish language. Also, maybe a silly video idea but I love your nerdy necklaces that you're always wearing. I'd love to see a jewelry tour!
I initially learned English by watching Star Trek TNG. We received an english TV channel via satellite back then in the early 90s. I guess, in school you learn things, because everyone expects you to learn, but if the thing you have to learn is tied to something you really like, learning becomes pretty easy. I also played WOW, but as an introvert, i never grouped with anyone (that was in WOW classic). After a few years, i learned by pure chance that a girl i knew from school did also play WOW. I found her somewhere in Stormwind and i immideately reckognized her by just seeing her Character... 😊
True story here. Back when I was 8, almost 9 years old, I got Pokemon Black & White 2, which is not only regarded as the hardest game in the franchise and the first turn-based RPG I ever layed hands upon, it was also in english. Although I had been studying the language for over a year at this point, I was still a boy and I was pretty green, which meant that there were several times in which I had no idea what the fuck was going on and had to figure out stuff on the fly in order to progress. I didn't think much of it back then, but to this day being able to pull through that odyssey remains one of my proudest gaming archievements. Not to mention I picked up a great amount of words as well. As always, great video. I really like hearing your voice ❤
I learned English in school (VERY basic english) here in Germany, later one of my uncles got me interested in programming in a language called "BlitzBasic". I was intrigued by the commands and their meaning and learned more english. What also helped in the beginning was watching favorite movies in english (although that is rather tricky....). In my opinion, Video Games (and Music, which was my first love) are a great way of learning english (or even programming). Cool Video and nice Story! And of course: Get well soon -or- Gute Besserung! 👍
“Esta no te la esperabas”, buena esa jaja. I learned A LOT of english playing FF XI and it was an amazing experience. Also suffered the abbreviation thingy haha.
I'm from Chile and I learned english by playing runescape, I didn't needed to but it was a nice complement to my english classes. I used to translate word by word the quests because I didn't knew there was guides on the internet, but I'm glad I did that way
I've been watching your videos for several months and never thought you have a particular accent. But the moment you said "Григорий" in the cleanest Russian possible in your HL2 video, everything came in it's place) BTW I've also learned English mostly thanks to Warcraft. Not with WOW though, but with Warcraft 3. Although we had a God-tier localisation for the vanilla campaigns(ПРОКЛЯТЬЕ, УТЕР!!!), I've plunged head-first into the whole another galaxy of custom campaign. And the absolute majority of them were in English and not voiced. So to understand what in heck is happening, I had to keep a brick-sized dictionary by my side and look for unfamiliar words. And in span of ~3 years I've acquired decent understanding of common speech! I've speedran my middle-high school English course, so in last 4 years I haven't learned almost anything I already knew 😁
For me, Runescape back in 2007 ish and WoW too has helped me quite a bit in terms of learning english. In fact, there was a time where by playing video games, I was a better english lesson than what I learned from my english teacher. I love your accent!
Runescape is where I learned to communicate in English back in the day, charming girls was a proper learning experience for a young teen who barely spoke English as it makes you WANT to learn how to speak with them. This is also where I was told that 'I' must always be in capital, and later I was told you may never start a letter/e-mail with 'I'. World of Warcraft is where I improved my English the most, and of course where I perfected my skill at ERP like proper teenage dirt bag. Couple of years later I fine-tuned my English in Star Wars: The Old Republic, as it was a honeypot of grammar nazi's and trolls, you learn to desensitize and how to talk shit to someone just enough to make your point and not get banned. Now fast-forward 15 years, here I am, no longer give a crap about ERP or online girls, I hit the gym 5 times a week, barely play online games anymore, still a dirt bag though 💪😎 EDIT: Oh right, I started playing ESO at launch, loved the game. Didn't learn all that much English though, but I did find a sense of community. Overall nice people and not something you'd expect from an MMO. Barely play it anymore lately, kinda got bored. Already got all the gear I need, just not all the gear I want.
I learned English in a similar way, only that it was years later and in (the German equivalent of) middle school (which is just the first four years of high school). I played a lot of English flash games starting around mid primary school but it took a lot longer for me to actually pick up the language since I not only didn't have that survival instinct you mentioned, since as child in Germany I didn't need to use it, but I also never really had the opportunity to. That led to a lack of confidence in my English speaking abilities which in retrospect makes it hard to tell at what time I became fluent, but after I went on a field trip to Hungary in 10th grade (That's how long it took!) I finally got that confidence as well.
My kids started playing SWTOR with me at around 4 and 6 years, they early became fluent in English, as it has full voiced dialogs, one of them became Professional Translator and now speaks 3 languages and plays with other 3 languages aiming to become fluent on them.
Same! Accidentally followed a bunch of RP'ers thinking it was related to a quest. Didn't understand much at the time but I slowly realized these were actual players and I was determined to figure out what was going on, so I kept practicing and learned through the quests and various websites over time. A very fun way to learn and master a language.
Being a native speaker of English from America, your English is very good and also having met people from your homeland. The Russians are amazing people.
No idea why this video showed up in my feed, but glad it did, and enjoyed your perspective on this topic. Happy to share my view. I'm a 42 year old dad from the Netherlands, and funnily enough, even though a generation apart, I too learned most of my English from computer games. Back then there was no internet (or at least, not for most). Everything in my world was Dutch: talk at home, friends and family, school, books, comics, most tv shows, but 95% of computer games were in English. Around 1990 it started with things like "push rock", "get keycard" from games like Sierra's Space Quest, and I actually had to use the library and real paper books to figure out how to write "rub berries on body" (that was something I needed in Space Quest 1, I saw another NPC do that and needed to mimic that, but no clue what to type at first). About 10 years later with internet becoming a thing, I used IRC, ICQ and in 2004 started World of Warcraft, talking a lot with random people and guild members I picked up more less game-related, more real life related English. I think my English improved by leaps and bounds by then. At this point I also started to code things, in QBasic, C, Java, etc. where most concepts are in English. Also for some reason many people back then in World of Warcraft wrote mostly proper English in full sentences, on my server anyway (Thunderhorn). Except for people from the United Kingdom funnily enough, they often used slang and broken or abbreviated English. We had no US people as I was on Europe servers. A while later voice chat became a thing, guild runs, and I finally learned how to actually pronounce things. And *shudder* I had to open my own mouth and try to pronounce things. Funnily enough, now the UK people were quite helpful as apparently speaking proper English was no problem, which was a great help learning how things should sound. Another 10 years later, after 2010 or so, things started changing. Everything was slang and shorthand and broken English online. Everyone learning English at this point was picking up bad habits from other people that picked up broken English. Not just in WoW but any game, forum, and social media platforms. These days I work as a developer with many international colleagues, and also friends. I am more comfortable typing in English than in Dutch, but talking is still easier in Dutch. Sometimes I know how to say things in English but struggle to put it into words in Dutch. Now I have a 3yo and 7yo son, and I love seeing them picking up English from games (and unfortunately TH-cam, which is often horrible). I see how my oldest has great motivation to pick things up, as he wants to play games that are slightly above his skills, but he is very motivated to learn to read and learn English, so he knows what to do. The first time he tried to explain to his granddad how he had to gather experience and collect materials so he could complete more things he wanted to, using long complicated words but perfectly pronounced them, even though he could barely talk or explain what he did at school, proud gamer dad moment :D I hope I didn't bore you, thought you might like to see my perspective. And I hope you don't get rusty in Russian. Hmm... rusty Russian rubles... say that three times fast... rusty Russian rubles, rusty Russian rubles, rusty Russian rubles. :D With the current trajectory, there won't be rubles for much longer sigh. Then it'll be yucky yellow yen, yucky yellow yen, yucky yellow yen :P
No, esa no me la esperaba, ha! And the first games I remember looking up in the dictionary to understand them better were Baldur's Gate, Age of Mythology, Starcraft, Diablo 2, in short: all the RPGs, builders, strategies of the late 90s, especially Heroes 3. Then Morrowind, and of course the online NWN in persistent worlds, and then became WoW! But since I had a bilingual education at school, maybe that helped more than what I can measure.
I too learned english with videogames, specifically Half-Life 2. I've never lived in an English speaking country so my curve was a lot longer. I spent 1 entire month playing through the game because I did not understand a thing of it (I had a pirated copy only in English), however the game was amazing to me and I couldn't help but playing and listen to npc's with subs on. Once I figured out the game I did a replay and context just taught me so much that I improved English scores at school like crazy.
I used to crush at my English and spelling tests at school from playing all these games with advanced affix names and medieval gear pieces. Although English is my first language, I can really appreciate the effort it takes to comprehend a completely new one just due to my poor attempts at trying to communicate to other people in Spanish. Thanks for sharing your story
The usefulness of any art form is always met with scrutiny, and it is funniest when snobs like Ebert (Mr. movie critic) claim vidyas aren't art while movies are. For movies, the challenge is as simple as two words: "Michael Bay".
I am from Russia too (St. Petersburg) and World of Warcraft not only taught me English that I am now absolutely fluent in, but what I consider most important is that it "domesticated" me, as like to call it. 😅 It helped me to get rid of the nasty Russian mentality. I got into a nice and friendly guild rather early in my days in WoW and they were nothing but patient, not only with my English but also with the way I treated people. I learned that while in Russia anyone could get rude to me for no reason and I better be same back at them - I had a choice to not react on my nastiest impulses. The most important lesson I've learned from my guild master was: "It is not what you say, it is HOW you say it". Needless to say that I moved out from Russia and now reside in Scandinavia for 15 years and could not be more happy. 😍
Delightful story, Angelikatosh! :) I went through a similar experience, where my English skills (despite living and growing up in a German speaking country) started to get propelled way ahead of class/age when I was about 7 years old. At that time (2000), the internet was far from being a perfectly localized (in the sense of translations), all-engulfing, mass consumed piece of tech. So whenever I got stuck in games or had to fix technical issues like crashes, I had to fight myself through vast amounts of English texts on web pages and forum entries on the internet, since there was often just no German alternative to be found. Sometimes spending hours of time trying to figure out single words or phrases from yet unexplored tech jargon in the right context just to get an idea how to solve a riddle or just make a game continue to run on my pc. Later, online communities like the one of WoW, such as you described, helped further solidify my tongue. Like any experience in life, games can be such great teachers!
I've learned a lot of Engilish playing the original Fallout. I literally had my mouse in one hand and dictionary in the other. Although I can sympathize with the feeling of figuring shit out without understanding anything, because I've been playing Diablo 2, and Heroes III before I could read at. I understood numbers, so in Diablo at least I could read the damage and deduce 'big number good' while in Heroes III I just recognized the names used for describing the size of enemy stack by their general shape. It was kinda wild.
What an incredible story. I think this really showcases the educational value of videogames even if they aren't designed to be learning tools for children.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall had one of the best game manuals which I read from cover to cover. A must-read if you enjoy a time when video games were an art form that developers strived to perfect and refine with passion and dedication, which extended down to the manuals and even the box itself. Incidentally, I picked up a lot of English words at the time growing up as a kid, and when I didn't understand something I would try to get a sense of its meaning from the context of the topic.
i'm brazillian so i basically learned how to read/speak english through the games i played in my childhood. I remember back when i was 7 or 8 years old and i asked my father to buy me an english dictionary, because i wanted to know what was happening in Metal Gear Solid 1 while i was playing it lol.
It's funny because I've seen many, many stories from people learning English like this, through videogames, or even "English just spawnned in my head". I'm Spanish and here in Spain we have a reputation of being BAD at English. I remember going to extracurricular classes, I learnt a lot, but the fluency just wasn't there. I'm convinced that the fact that my favourite singer has always been Michael Jackson played a key role, because I listened to his music a lot and that's constantly hearing English after all. Then I just started listening to music in English because my family did. I'm very grateful 😂
It always amazes me how some kids will just shrug and do what they have to do to get what they need, even when it's not expected or handed to them in a structured way. It's really cool that you were one of those kids. When I was in school, I used to look for kids like you, the ones who weren't content just to run around aimlessly during recess.
Bro, same story here my first language is also Russian and I moved to the UK 15 years ago when I was 13, my parents sent me to a language school but every one there was also Russian speaking so I didn't learn anything until I discovered an internet cafe near by where I would play TF2 with local gamers, they've eventually introduced me to 40k tabletop and within a few month my English was good enough to go to school. Same story with the accent as well, I thought I sound "neutral" but people keep noting that I have an accent, even though they can never guess where I am from, the usual guess is Sweden for some reason lol.
I had a similar experience. In Brazil, we had no games translated to portuguese, so if you want to play something, grab a dictionary, a notebook and there you go. Secret of Mana was the first RPG I finished with that method. Then came Diablo I and II, Phantasy Star 4, Ragnarok Online and WOW. I remember playing Final Fantasy Tactics in japanese and realising 回転 meant "spin" on that monk ability (unfotunately there was no such thing as a japanese-portuguese dictionary avaliable at the time). I have a friend that had piles of glossaries from the games he played. And that's how we learned english in Brazil in the 90's.
Hi Angelikatosh. I had very similar learning of English. Even though I didn't immigrate I learned English from video games mainly and one of my main games was Warcraft 3 and Dota after that :) I know what kind of emotions Warcraft and WoW build in child and those memories are just pure and so dear to me... I wish you all the best!
I also learned a lot of english as a kid through wow. I was very motivated to learn what the words on the screen meant because I wanted to understand this mystical world around me. When I'd frequently come across a new word I'd just pick up through context and trial and error what that word meant. I was very young when my dad first showed me his wow account. We're talking 4 years old, and by the time I was 5 I could speak basic english with my parents. I even remember questing in TBC once, and my dad's friends we're over and would stand behind me in awe and hype me up. Everyone around me spoke Swedish so I didn't really have a use for english outside of the internet, but that was intriguing enough to me to keep me motivated to learn the language very early on.
Super relatable video being french I learned English at a young age playing survival games on computer like don’t starve and whenever it be a British studio making the game lots of words were more advanced then traditional American English it did give me quite a boost in English class at school, awesome video.
As far as I can remember, I always played most games in english, mostly learning words here and there, in games like Heroes 2. But when I had no other choice but to adapt and truly learn was with Ultima Online. Especially since that MMO had a cooperative crafting system where doing stuff alone only brings you so far. From single word communication to full sentences, even if not perfect by then, was my experience back then. MMO truly were the best teachers.
That's a great story, my nephew is 7 and he watches me play wow and one day I let him make a character. He was struggling to play but also was struggling to read quests and things and it made him realize the importance of being able to read. I definitely think video games are good for kids in this way. He hated reading but he's gotten a lot better at it ever since playing wow.
I started World of Warcraft when I was 7 years old, and I am not kidding that I learned so many vocabulary words from playing this game. So I totally get this
Wow, same as me! Born in Lithuania, emigrated to Ireland at 7, learned to speak advanced English because of WoW. I remember being in primary school and already understanding words like "Accept", "Decline", "Advance", etc. while others in the class were just learning them. Now I'm using this to learn other languages.
Native English speaker here. I had a similar experience with Spanish in recent years. I studied it for years in highschool but couldn't really keep a conversation. Playing Tibia (an ancient MMO, IYKYK) improved my Spanish dramatically since you basically have to speak it if you want to really play the game. Interesting video!
Your language learning experiences and videogames parallel mine so much. Especially the speaking proper bit. And my, what subline taste! Hats off, madam!
That’s a whole new level of Nerd when you learn a language from gaming - aaaaand…I’m one of them. I lived in Japan for almost 15 years. I learned how to read and write Hiragana & Katakana from gaming and anime. During anime song intro/outros, they used to have English syllables in subtitles directly below hiragana/katakana/kanji lyrics - you pick up on sounds and symbols and eventually learn the words and their meanings. Took me about three years before I got good enough to get through games without help, but more importantly - gaming helped me really enjoy my time in Japan. 🇯🇵
Oh yes, videogames were part of my experience learning English. I'm Spanish, and took extra classes to learn English, but videogames helped me a lot, specially RPGs. I remember learning the future tense with Grandia. Nowadays I'm studying japanese and I managed to complete a few games, but it's really difficult
This was interesting, it's always cool to see how people learn english if it's not their first language and how that can drastically change what concepts of english they grasp first, like with you and your early understanding of armor due to WoW.
I'm Russian aswell (Привет!) I've learned English through videigames, animated shows, and TH-cam videos. My journey started almost a decade ago with Undertale, Storytime animation era (JaidenAnimation, TheOdd1sOut, LetMeExolain), Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball
World of Warcraft > Primary school
Priorities absolutely sorted!
My guild had loads of people for whom English was a second language, Denmark, Netherlands, Romania. Usually their English was better than most of my British friends. We are historically bad at being multi lingual. I myself only speak English and bad English.
I learnt english watching The Office 😂
NFKRZ, Gattsu, and now Angelikatosh. Learning English through video games club let's gooooo
Raids before grades
Angelikatosh: "How I Learned English in World of Warcraft".
Somewhere in America, "How I Learned Russian in Counter-Strike".
Also in literally all of Europe lol
I'm a farmer in the southern US and learned a significant amount of conversational Korean playing BDO on KR servers
Easiest east Asian language to pick up for a native English speaker by far
I mostly learned how to swear in Russian
RUSH B BLYAT
lmao this is so ffing ttrue 🤣
Fun fact: I've learned english (italian here) mostly thanks to Morrowind, trying to understand what to do and where to go without mission markers. p.s. Nice sweater!
Grazie! Green sweater enjoyers rise up 🫶
i improved my vocabulary back in the day playing Baldur's Gate 2. I knew like 300 words back in the day, then i found this amazing game and played with a Redhouse dictionary on one hand, trying to figure out wtf those NPCs were saying. I imagine it is similar for many of my generation.
Yeeeeah!!! It's my gaaame!!
the best time to wear a striped sweater is all the time
@@ZorroVulpes stripes makes right!
All the boys at my school learned english through playing Yu-Gi-Oh. I didn't know what a cottage or a wheelbarrow was, but knew all about summoning from graveyards and sacrificing monsters to pay tribute to Egyptian gods.
too real, that and pokemon for me
THIS! Yugioh taught me how to understand complex English, read tiny letters, and do mental math like a professional salesman
There was a story about a Russian man who learned English through Warhammer 40k. He called a radio a Vox Caster on a test.
English? Nah Low Gothic.
That's great.
18th century: people learn foreign languages by reading da Bible
21st century: Emprah!
I'm so happy your parents insisted on speaking Russian with you at home. It may seem cruel or inefficient for learning the local language, or people assume it somehow makes the local language harder to learn but it doesn't. As a speech therapist with a background in linguistics, it's a common misconception I've seen. It's also part of the reason Welsh almost died out in South Wales, because parents assumed that children would learn English better if they were never "confused" with Welsh.
So all the multilinguals out there, I implore you to practice as many different languages as you can with your children. It will only help them! As Angelika said, it's so easy to forget a language, and it's much harder to pick it up later in life.
"It's easy to forget a language"
This is a real phenomenon. Bilingual people who speak their second language more often than their native one often report forgetting words in their native language.
@@Leitis_Fella Unfortunately true, used to speak fluent Armenian but barely remember just a few words now, also because I don't speak Russian as much sometimes I need to think to find the right word or I just replace it with the word in another language like Hebrew or English but thankfully I can still speak, read and write Russian very well but not as well as in English or Hebrew.
I remember a story my mum told about how one of her friends didn't teach her kids to speak the language of the home country. When their relatives came to visit, one of the kids was crying his eyes out, because he couldn't speak with his relatives, and he wanted to tell them he loved them, but he didn't know how to. I've always remembered that.
I know a family where they speak Swedish, English and Japanese. The kids have absolutely no problems at all. They are as fluent as kids could be at that age in all three languages and they don't mix up grammar or words at all.
On the other hand, I think it's better for immigrant parents to sometimes speak in the language of their current country for *them* to learn, not the kids.
bro u're so sigma
I played for years with a woman whose native language was French, she always insisted that I use english, correct her grammar and explain slang. Her text english was good and got excellent over the 7 years we played together, except for one thing, she never understood where I wanted to map to, and often I was confused where she was telling me she was as well. Localization was the culprit, often quest names and outpost markers had such different names that did not translate. Finally I learned to switch to French localization to get the map and marker names and then switch back. It was fun.
Ridiculous. She should've switched to english localization if she was so eager to learn English.
Yey angelikatosh lore!!!
Interestingly one of the things that drew me to your channel was your accent. You have a sort of whimsical cadence that literally reminds me of characters in fantasy games. This story puts so much into context and it makes so much sense haha
I always wanted to speak like an Oblivion NPC
@@Angelikatosh I'm afraid your journey ends here, traveler.
@@DresGarBthere's no problem, is there?
@@kekita1337 I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you.
@DresGarB I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you.
@Angelikatosh I don't know you, and I don't _care_ to know you.
@@Angelikatosh your like the embodiment of those Oblivious NPCs in real life videos 😂
ВАУ! Смотрю тебя с первого ролика и сразу заметила какой-то такой, ну вот прям родной-родной акцент. Но не предала сильного значения. А в итоге моя чуйка оказалась права ❤ влюблена в формат твоих роликов! Keep it up :)
Спасибо большое! Очень приятный комментарий 🥰
Icelander here who also learned English through World of Warcraft. I remember my desire to learn started when I was like 7 or 8 years old when I got a Gameboy Color to play Pokémon gen 1 on and there was this NPC blocking my path and I couldn't understand how to get the NPC to move. I struggled through that game feeling blind and literally being blind in one dark cave in the game because I never learned how to use a move that would make the cave bright.
I slowly build up a vocabulary through the years playing games like Morrowind, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Age of Empires 2, Pokémon and many other games, but the real thing that took my learning to another level was playing World of Warcraft and Oblivion in 2006 for all the reasons you mentioned. I think I learned more English in 2006 and 2007 than during all the rest of my life combined, before and after those years.
Yeah, you are not alone with this. It was very concerning for my primary school English teacher how all the words I knew were violent ones. "Kill," "Slay," "Backstab," "Destroy," etc.
Girl, this is insane. I thought you were from the USA. You sound neutral and fluent. In previous videos I figured out you were Russian but now you blew me away with your Spanish...y sí, no me lo esperaba 🥰. Greetings from Stuttgart, Germany.
I love your story. My son learned to read playing Zelda. At first, I would read the game out loud but this got old after a week or so. I told him if he wants to play the game, he needs to learn how to read. He was reading on his own within a month. We helped him get through sentences at first but he picked it up real quick.
Zelda was brutal for a kid with no language skills, I was stuck for months sometimes.
I learned German on Neopets
What caught my attention wasn't so much that you had an accent but that you didn't have an Irish accent.
You know, when I was in school I used to have a much more noticeable Irish accent, especially with specific words etc. , but since I left school and I was laid off from my job in January of this year, I’ve started losing it bit by bit!😅
@@Angelikatosh Interesting, I wonder why. Hope you find work again soon, unless you're going full-time content creator.
@@Angelikatoshyou’re my best friend I really like you Angelika ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
@@Angelikatoshyou’re very pretty
Wonder if the Irish and the Russian cancel out a bit
I learned how to read English (uncultured American) from Diablo, Starcraft, and mostly my grandma reading the dialog in ocarina of time to me. She'd always sit in her rocking chair watching me play "ol' Zel" and cackle with glee when I'd do something cool or go ACH if something scary or gross was onscreen.
One day when we were playing together I said "it's ok grandma, I can read the text on my own" and she was so proud 🥲
Lol that reminds me learning English with Oblivion back then. That's also the reason why Harvest Dawn plays in the background when I switch to English. I'm done talking to you.
I also learned English with this videos, haha
"I saw a cat the other day, horrible creatures."
This video is making me so nostalgic for old WoW. ;(
Also, I'm now picturing you going to school as a little girl and not really knowing any English, but when called upon to answer a question you stand up and say "My son, the day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name Arthas."
Video games are a great way to learn while having fun :3
My family and I moved to Northern Ireland when I was 13. I learned some basic English at school before we moved, but quickly realized that my knowledge couldn't really be applied to daily conversations and life at junior high school was very difficult. I played wow since I was around 9 or so, but we were on a Russian server so I didn't really need to learn English that way. What helped me the most was becoming friends with a local immigrant girl whose English was a bit better than mine, and we had to speak to each other in English since we're both from two different countries. It helped me immensely, as well as using Tumblr (of all places lol). I still make some grammatical mistakes, but I consider myself fluent in Eglish.
However, my true "survivor mode" kicked in when I moved to Norway 3 years ago. Although I went to language school to learn basics, what really kick-started my skills in Norwegian was working at the local grocery store. Even though I was extremely embarrassed at first, I simply had no choice but to speak Norwegian with locals. 3 years later, I have B1, almost B2 level in Norwegian, and working in profession I am qualified for (child psychology).
Man, the memories... I'm was a brazilian immigrant, my mom and I moved to Spain when I was 6, and of course I didn't know the language... Neither did she. So a kinda had to learn spanish in order to help my mom with basic survival stuff and also legal documents. Average immigrant experience. I learned the language through playing Pokémon Silver and others RPGs, which in turn led me to Final Fantasy X-2, a game that I got for Christmas, but was in english... So in order to beat the game (I didn't had many games, so every one was played to exhaustion), I started playing with an spanish-english dictionary by my side, on top of having to kinda translate everything back to portuguese lol. I'm grateful for that though, now I speak 3 languages, which has lead me to so many places, gave so many opportunities and made me met so many people... Abraços do Brasil! 🇧🇷
Im from Brazil, never went to a english speaking country, but i can say that 80% of what i know of english came from games. The rest being movies/series and school.
Brazilian here, I've learned English through video games too. I had English classes at schools and went to a private language course for the language but it wasn't until I started playing Skyrim and Mass Effect 1 on my Xbox that my skills with English really improved. Back then games didn't always come with Portuguese translations, it was extremely rare to even have subtitles, and I wanted to understand the context behind the game's story and world so that "survival" instinct kicked in. I did play an MMO which helped improve my skills even further after I was already fluent decade, Star Wars: The Old Republic. From 2013 to 2023 I played that game and since there were very few Brazilians playing it (as the game has no localization or servers for Brazil), I had to rely on my English for all communication.
As a French Canadian, I learned English from watching Saturday morning cartoons back in the 80s (Im old!) And now, here I am pushing fifty, translating scripts for television from Japanese to English. I find your story amazing and very relatable. Really impressive how you mastered English through video games! By the way, my first experience playing an Elder Scrolls game was with Oblivion... in Japanese.
I also moved with my small kids (7y & 5y) to the new country, they don’t know local language. Your story is the huge inspiration for me.
Спасибо что поделилась! Надеюсь мои дети тоже освоятся! ❤
@@Kivrus главное побольше смотреть фильмов и стараться читать/писать на Русском - а всё остальное само уладится) удачи вам 🫶
Дети очень быстро учатся, дети коллег в Сербии ходят в обычную сербскую школу и замечательно разговаривают. Всё получится.
French here, I learned English through goldeneye on the N64 (yep I'm old) the game was objective based and you couldn't finish a level without completing all the objectives. I remember one in particular the objective was "escape through the window" I didn't know what through meant nor Window which made it... complicated as I was looking for a door to go out. Further games started to be translated more often so I lost a bit of that English. Pronunciation only came when I had a permanent access to the internet, so as an adult and I watched a lot of youtube and later interacted with a lot of Brits and Americans on video game streams. Now I live in England, I'm about to marry a brit and I make sure that my daughter learns French by ONLY speaking to her in French.
Ma cousine m'a dit ça aussi, pour qu'un enfant apprenne une langue il faut que le parant lui parle avec une seul langue sinon il fait des mélange bizzare, mais je sais pas à quelle point c'est vrai. Pour moi dès que tu maitrise une langue tu commence à mixer des trucs that's why I sometime switch to english in my dream or use englishised words instead of the proper french and... ah crap, I did it again.
That's amazing! I did wonder about your background & have to say... Final Fantasy 8's walls of text helped my reading proficiency immensely
Someone else in the comments mentioned Final Fantasy 8 also! Its so interesting that games helped native English speakers with their reading and comprehension - parents that didn’t let their kids play games really had them miss out 🤣
As a Finnish guy my English language skills comes from adventure games of the 90s. Sierra and LucasArts had lots of awesome games and word dictionary was in active use. There was no spoken dialogs in games so written text was easy to look from those books. Good times! :)
Same for me :)
Sierra and LucasArts? Don't tell me you play Homeworld and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds?
That's so awesome to hear. I love those old Sierra games and now I make adventure games specifically designed to help people learn languages, eg "Pedro's Adventures in Spanish"
Hey, many adventures had voiceover...
@@feorh1919 Yes later, but not on floppy disk era when I started gaming. First adventure game I remember had voiceover was Indy 4 Fate of Atlantis. I started with games like King's Quest 1-4, Monkey Island 1, Indy 3 etc ... those EGA graphic games :)
PC gaming taught me fast typing. Especially RTS games where you need to type fast and multi-task. It's also what started me on my technology skills and ultimately led to being an IT pro.
Second this, most fast paced multiplayer games really benefited from being able to type out something quickly in short bursts. WoW is another example, type between spell casts 🧙♂️
@@kjeksomanenor during mana breaks in dungeons xD, bursting out directions before markers were added for coordinating the party
@@kjeksomanen When I had to write my thesis, the gf of a long-time friend, with whom I played a lot of wow, asked me if I could touch type. I said no, and she quickly asked how I think that I would be able to type that many pages without knowing it, he only smirked and said something like “trust me, he will be alright”.
I always gave my parents the excuse that I was learning English so I could play video games all day. And playing video games really did make me learn English (Brazilian here). Thank you Americans and British (or anyone who uses English, really), for creating so many cool games and making me learn English
You've actually described the exact same experience I had when I was eleven and me and my three friends started playing WoW (On two computers, so we had to fight for whoever got to play). None of us were English speakers and thankfully we played on a private server for our country, but the game was still in English. Figuring out what the spells do was always a trial of error, same with quest logs etc. So we would often come up together with a way to translate what we needed, usually by looking up the word in dictionairy.
I eventually started playing some other singleplayer games that were just as wordy and it was definitiely an adventure, trying to catch on what was going on, because even when the games had subtitles, I understood only like a quarter of it. As such I didn't know what the hell was I doing in AC: Brotherhood nor Heroes. But I had fun and I also learned a lot. So much so that by the later years of high school I didn't really do anything in my English lessons, because I was a little bit too advanced :)
But yes, everything you talked about and described hits very, very close to home.
I hope Ireland has been treating you well! I'm from the north but I work in the south. Goes without saying, your accent is far from neutral, it's class. Big fan 🙌
I love Ireland ☺️🇮🇪💚
Her accent is very neutral until she says Ireland and you hear an Irish accent for that word 7:45
This is so relatable, I'm from Poland and I remember holding an english dictionary and trying to play diablo 1 on playstation 1 with my sister. We did not understand a fluff but somehow still had fun :D I learned english from games mostly as well and always had easier time in school because of it.
My native language is Spanish, I learned English mostly playing videogames like Resident evil, Silent hill and some couple of pc and ps1 games. I eventually started playing warcraft 3, age of empires, age of mythology, that's where I realised I need more background to understand the history, so I started searching every single word in a dictionary hha I actually enjoyed.
When I started playing Wow was during final phase of tbc, it really improves more my English, although I still don't understand everything specially in common conversations with other people. I kept playing wow for 5 years and I eventually learned just by playing. I took an English course later on, which helps me just in grammar aspect and speaking.
I may not have a perfect English but I can handle conversations and understand without subtitles, I also started reading Game of thrones, hopefully I'll be more fluent.
I love your channel, you have an amazing content. Esa no me la esperaba amiga 😅❤
TBH, you have better English than even a lot of Americans.
@@RandomFandomOfficial Thanks so much!! I always doubt my English level, I'll keep practicing.
What you said about losing your language as an immigrant child is very true. My parents are from China, and when we moved to the US, they only spoke to me in English. As a result, my Chinese is terrible, and I can't communicate with my extended family in China.
Starting WoW at 6 blows my mind. Even when I started playing it at 12, I had a hard time getting to grips with the game due to English and lack of MMO experience.
learning a language through gaming is such an endearingly modern way to engage with the world! i’ve been trying to learn mandarin for a while now (i’m a chinese adoptee and have spoken english my whole life) and this makes me think maybe i should try infusing gaming into my learning!
It’s incredible to me how the accent didn’t exist until the moment she mentioned having an accent.
Like I didn’t notice, but now I won’t be able to unhear it for a week.
Same lol
I learned English by watching Red vs Blue with fan made subtitles. It gave me a broad vocabulary when it comes to insulting people.
This clears up my questions. I couldn't tell if your slight accent was Russian or Spanish. Not surprised that you actually speak both. 😅
You learned English playing WoW.
I learned English playing Duke Nukem.
We are not the same, baby.
Groofy
Hail to the King, Baby!!!
Thanks for sharing! I am in a situation similar to yours but at different stages of life. I am an Australian studying for a university degree in Russia; I am studying linguistics. My entire curriculum is taught in Russian and my classmates are all Russian. I only had one year of Russian education before starting university here.
Studies were difficult as I had to translate the words before I could even start learning the topic.
However, my progress has improved since I started playing my computer games in Russian; for example, the Metro series; The ATOM series rpg, and many others.
I hope to master Russian, the way you had mastered English.
There is a ton of good Russian game reviewers on youtube. I can recommed some if you need some entertaining listening practice.
Relatable. I come from Slovenia and learned english through video games like Diablo and Homm1-3. By the time I started WoW my english was ok already but I never played a game online before that.
I remember making an Undead warlock as my first character and seeing a guy with an epic staff in Undercity. I said "cool staff", and he said "thx". And I responded with "np", just because I saw people using np as a response to thx all the time. It's still an inside joke between me and my brother to use "np" as awkwardly as possible.
Oh and we learned german by watching german TV. Watching yugioh, dragonball, pokemon... Good times.
I also did! I'm French Canadian and all of my friends were playing on a North American server and there were plenty of other French Canadians on the server. We didn't like playing on the French EU servers because of the time zone difference. There was enough of us to form our own guilds and get by speaking only French to each other but eventually I had to engage with the English-speaking players when my English was almost non-exsitent and I learned fast because of it!
lol. I am also part French Canadian on my dad's side (though I lived my whole life in Ontario, south of Toronto). I thought you guys in Quebec were fluently bilingual. I heard there is a joke around there where you ask "What do you call someone that speaks two languages?" "Bilingual" "What do you call someone that speaks only one language?" "English".
I used to play the predecessor to MMORPGs back when I was younger; MUDs. They were entirely text based games with some ASCII art once in a while, with the controls also being your language. You typed in commands for your character.
At the time I was pretty young and barely spoke any English, but it was enough to get started. I found it really interesting to read the room descriptions and enemy descriptions, so I kept exploring and reading. I also learned some peculiar words like quaff, which essentially means to heartily drink something. It's the command you used to drink a potion, where you'd also have to specify what to "quaff".
It thankfully had short commands as well as aliases for various commands, so it was far from as tedious to play as it initially sounds to a lot of people. It honestly played mostly like a regular MMORPG once you set up all of the aliases, only difference being that you'd press Enter after each command/input.
I wasn’t aware of the fact that English wasn’t your first language, dope!
I relate to this video so much! While I did of course mostly learn English through watching TV shows that aired in my country with subtitles, I would be a liar if I said that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft did not contribute to the active learning of the language. Making use of the language while playing the game was such a blessing in disguise for me.
Every person has an accent. Accents aren't a divergence from what's "normal". It's like the colour of your hair - everyone's hair has a particular colour. You can't have hair without a colour.
I hear that even people who use sign language have an accent.
If we cannot place Angelika to a particular continent or country, and cannot tell English was not her first language, that's very "accentless" by what people understand the term to mean.
@@garrick3727Bro she definitely has a foreign accent lol
Afaik many countries apply a "general accent", but it's still a part of an accent. My German is decent, but I can't understand people around Essen/Düsseldorf, yet Cologne is no problem at all. While being not that far off.
In Dutch, my native language, we have "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands(ABN)". (Common decent Dutch). It's more accentuated compared to flatter accents like fries or Limburgs.
Usually used by national media.
@@uuamenator That's just not what an accent is. An accent is defined as "the way in which people in a particular area, country, or social group pronounce words"
I've honestly thought about doing this for the Finnish language. Also, maybe a silly video idea but I love your nerdy necklaces that you're always wearing. I'd love to see a jewelry tour!
I initially learned English by watching Star Trek TNG. We received an english TV channel via satellite back then in the early 90s.
I guess, in school you learn things, because everyone expects you to learn, but if the thing you have to learn is tied to something you really like, learning becomes pretty easy.
I also played WOW, but as an introvert, i never grouped with anyone (that was in WOW classic). After a few years, i learned by pure chance that a girl i knew from school did also play WOW. I found her somewhere in Stormwind and i immideately reckognized her by just seeing her Character... 😊
angelika you are amazing so far!! i love to see your videos
True story here.
Back when I was 8, almost 9 years old, I got Pokemon Black & White 2, which is not only regarded as the hardest game in the franchise and the first turn-based RPG I ever layed hands upon, it was also in english. Although I had been studying the language for over a year at this point, I was still a boy and I was pretty green, which meant that there were several times in which I had no idea what the fuck was going on and had to figure out stuff on the fly in order to progress.
I didn't think much of it back then, but to this day being able to pull through that odyssey remains one of my proudest gaming archievements. Not to mention I picked up a great amount of words as well.
As always, great video. I really like hearing your voice ❤
I learned English in school (VERY basic english) here in Germany, later one of my uncles got me interested in programming in a language called "BlitzBasic".
I was intrigued by the commands and their meaning and learned more english. What also helped in the beginning was watching favorite movies in english (although that is rather tricky....).
In my opinion, Video Games (and Music, which was my first love) are a great way of learning english (or even programming).
Cool Video and nice Story! And of course: Get well soon -or- Gute Besserung! 👍
“Esta no te la esperabas”, buena esa jaja. I learned A LOT of english playing FF XI and it was an amazing experience. Also suffered the abbreviation thingy haha.
I'm from Chile and I learned english by playing runescape, I didn't needed to but it was a nice complement to my english classes. I used to translate word by word the quests because I didn't knew there was guides on the internet, but I'm glad I did that way
I've been watching your videos for several months and never thought you have a particular accent. But the moment you said "Григорий" in the cleanest Russian possible in your HL2 video, everything came in it's place)
BTW I've also learned English mostly thanks to Warcraft. Not with WOW though, but with Warcraft 3. Although we had a God-tier localisation for the vanilla campaigns(ПРОКЛЯТЬЕ, УТЕР!!!), I've plunged head-first into the whole another galaxy of custom campaign. And the absolute majority of them were in English and not voiced. So to understand what in heck is happening, I had to keep a brick-sized dictionary by my side and look for unfamiliar words. And in span of ~3 years I've acquired decent understanding of common speech! I've speedran my middle-high school English course, so in last 4 years I haven't learned almost anything I already knew 😁
For me, Runescape back in 2007 ish and WoW too has helped me quite a bit in terms of learning english. In fact, there was a time where by playing video games, I was a better english lesson than what I learned from my english teacher. I love your accent!
Runescape is where I learned to communicate in English back in the day, charming girls was a proper learning experience for a young teen who barely spoke English as it makes you WANT to learn how to speak with them. This is also where I was told that 'I' must always be in capital, and later I was told you may never start a letter/e-mail with 'I'. World of Warcraft is where I improved my English the most, and of course where I perfected my skill at ERP like proper teenage dirt bag. Couple of years later I fine-tuned my English in Star Wars: The Old Republic, as it was a honeypot of grammar nazi's and trolls, you learn to desensitize and how to talk shit to someone just enough to make your point and not get banned. Now fast-forward 15 years, here I am, no longer give a crap about ERP or online girls, I hit the gym 5 times a week, barely play online games anymore, still a dirt bag though 💪😎
EDIT: Oh right, I started playing ESO at launch, loved the game. Didn't learn all that much English though, but I did find a sense of community. Overall nice people and not something you'd expect from an MMO. Barely play it anymore lately, kinda got bored. Already got all the gear I need, just not all the gear I want.
I learned English in a similar way, only that it was years later and in (the German equivalent of) middle school (which is just the first four years of high school). I played a lot of English flash games starting around mid primary school but it took a lot longer for me to actually pick up the language since I not only didn't have that survival instinct you mentioned, since as child in Germany I didn't need to use it, but I also never really had the opportunity to. That led to a lack of confidence in my English speaking abilities which in retrospect makes it hard to tell at what time I became fluent, but after I went on a field trip to Hungary in 10th grade (That's how long it took!) I finally got that confidence as well.
Based linguistic studies
My kids started playing SWTOR with me at around 4 and 6 years, they early became fluent in English, as it has full voiced dialogs, one of them became Professional Translator and now speaks 3 languages and plays with other 3 languages aiming to become fluent on them.
How I learned English:
10% Middle school
20% Internet
70% Google translating Morrowind dialogues 🙃
Same! Accidentally followed a bunch of RP'ers thinking it was related to a quest. Didn't understand much at the time but I slowly realized these were actual players and I was determined to figure out what was going on, so I kept practicing and learned through the quests and various websites over time. A very fun way to learn and master a language.
Being a native speaker of English from America, your English is very good and also having met people from your homeland. The Russians are amazing people.
Here in the states there are a LOT of Russians in physics. So many Russian physics professors at my school and elsewhere
No idea why this video showed up in my feed, but glad it did, and enjoyed your perspective on this topic. Happy to share my view.
I'm a 42 year old dad from the Netherlands, and funnily enough, even though a generation apart, I too learned most of my English from computer games.
Back then there was no internet (or at least, not for most). Everything in my world was Dutch: talk at home, friends and family, school, books, comics, most tv shows, but 95% of computer games were in English. Around 1990 it started with things like "push rock", "get keycard" from games like Sierra's Space Quest, and I actually had to use the library and real paper books to figure out how to write "rub berries on body" (that was something I needed in Space Quest 1, I saw another NPC do that and needed to mimic that, but no clue what to type at first).
About 10 years later with internet becoming a thing, I used IRC, ICQ and in 2004 started World of Warcraft, talking a lot with random people and guild members I picked up more less game-related, more real life related English. I think my English improved by leaps and bounds by then. At this point I also started to code things, in QBasic, C, Java, etc. where most concepts are in English. Also for some reason many people back then in World of Warcraft wrote mostly proper English in full sentences, on my server anyway (Thunderhorn). Except for people from the United Kingdom funnily enough, they often used slang and broken or abbreviated English. We had no US people as I was on Europe servers. A while later voice chat became a thing, guild runs, and I finally learned how to actually pronounce things. And *shudder* I had to open my own mouth and try to pronounce things. Funnily enough, now the UK people were quite helpful as apparently speaking proper English was no problem, which was a great help learning how things should sound.
Another 10 years later, after 2010 or so, things started changing. Everything was slang and shorthand and broken English online. Everyone learning English at this point was picking up bad habits from other people that picked up broken English. Not just in WoW but any game, forum, and social media platforms.
These days I work as a developer with many international colleagues, and also friends. I am more comfortable typing in English than in Dutch, but talking is still easier in Dutch. Sometimes I know how to say things in English but struggle to put it into words in Dutch.
Now I have a 3yo and 7yo son, and I love seeing them picking up English from games (and unfortunately TH-cam, which is often horrible). I see how my oldest has great motivation to pick things up, as he wants to play games that are slightly above his skills, but he is very motivated to learn to read and learn English, so he knows what to do. The first time he tried to explain to his granddad how he had to gather experience and collect materials so he could complete more things he wanted to, using long complicated words but perfectly pronounced them, even though he could barely talk or explain what he did at school, proud gamer dad moment :D
I hope I didn't bore you, thought you might like to see my perspective.
And I hope you don't get rusty in Russian.
Hmm... rusty Russian rubles... say that three times fast... rusty Russian rubles, rusty Russian rubles, rusty Russian rubles. :D
With the current trajectory, there won't be rubles for much longer sigh. Then it'll be yucky yellow yen, yucky yellow yen, yucky yellow yen :P
No, esa no me la esperaba, ha!
And the first games I remember looking up in the dictionary to understand them better were Baldur's Gate, Age of Mythology, Starcraft, Diablo 2, in short: all the RPGs, builders, strategies of the late 90s, especially Heroes 3. Then Morrowind, and of course the online NWN in persistent worlds, and then became WoW! But since I had a bilingual education at school, maybe that helped more than what I can measure.
I love this, very wholesome. Thanks for sharing!
I hope your cold goes fast!
Thank you, I’m so over it 🤧
I too learned english with videogames, specifically Half-Life 2. I've never lived in an English speaking country so my curve was a lot longer. I spent 1 entire month playing through the game because I did not understand a thing of it (I had a pirated copy only in English), however the game was amazing to me and I couldn't help but playing and listen to npc's with subs on. Once I figured out the game I did a replay and context just taught me so much that I improved English scores at school like crazy.
I just found your channel today and I’m loving your videos! This makes me want to learn a new language using your method
I arrived from Russia to another european country at 6. Your parents were right to make you speak Russian at home. Now my russian is pretty much dead.
I used to crush at my English and spelling tests at school from playing all these games with advanced affix names and medieval gear pieces. Although English is my first language, I can really appreciate the effort it takes to comprehend a completely new one just due to my poor attempts at trying to communicate to other people in Spanish. Thanks for sharing your story
And they said that video games were useless. 😆
Look mom, video games are useful 😈
The usefulness of any art form is always met with scrutiny, and it is funniest when snobs like Ebert (Mr. movie critic) claim vidyas aren't art while movies are. For movies, the challenge is as simple as two words: "Michael Bay".
I am from Russia too (St. Petersburg) and World of Warcraft not only taught me English that I am now absolutely fluent in, but what I consider most important is that it "domesticated" me, as like to call it. 😅 It helped me to get rid of the nasty Russian mentality. I got into a nice and friendly guild rather early in my days in WoW and they were nothing but patient, not only with my English but also with the way I treated people. I learned that while in Russia anyone could get rude to me for no reason and I better be same back at them - I had a choice to not react on my nastiest impulses. The most important lesson I've learned from my guild master was: "It is not what you say, it is HOW you say it".
Needless to say that I moved out from Russia and now reside in Scandinavia for 15 years and could not be more happy. 😍
Delightful story, Angelikatosh! :) I went through a similar experience, where my English skills (despite living and growing up in a German speaking country) started to get propelled way ahead of class/age when I was about 7 years old. At that time (2000), the internet was far from being a perfectly localized (in the sense of translations), all-engulfing, mass consumed piece of tech. So whenever I got stuck in games or had to fix technical issues like crashes, I had to fight myself through vast amounts of English texts on web pages and forum entries on the internet, since there was often just no German alternative to be found. Sometimes spending hours of time trying to figure out single words or phrases from yet unexplored tech jargon in the right context just to get an idea how to solve a riddle or just make a game continue to run on my pc. Later, online communities like the one of WoW, such as you described, helped further solidify my tongue. Like any experience in life, games can be such great teachers!
First! Where's my price?
how much do you cost?
Meridia’s Beacon, enjoy
Just so you learn the proper word... it's prize, not price (based on the context of your post.)
I've learned a lot of Engilish playing the original Fallout. I literally had my mouse in one hand and dictionary in the other. Although I can sympathize with the feeling of figuring shit out without understanding anything, because I've been playing Diablo 2, and Heroes III before I could read at. I understood numbers, so in Diablo at least I could read the damage and deduce 'big number good' while in Heroes III I just recognized the names used for describing the size of enemy stack by their general shape. It was kinda wild.
What an incredible story. I think this really showcases the educational value of videogames even if they aren't designed to be learning tools for children.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall had one of the best game manuals which I read from cover to cover. A must-read if you enjoy a time when video games were an art form that developers strived to perfect and refine with passion and dedication, which extended down to the manuals and even the box itself.
Incidentally, I picked up a lot of English words at the time growing up as a kid, and when I didn't understand something I would try to get a sense of its meaning from the context of the topic.
i'm brazillian so i basically learned how to read/speak english through the games i played in my childhood. I remember back when i was 7 or 8 years old and i asked my father to buy me an english dictionary, because i wanted to know what was happening in Metal Gear Solid 1 while i was playing it lol.
It's funny because I've seen many, many stories from people learning English like this, through videogames, or even "English just spawnned in my head". I'm Spanish and here in Spain we have a reputation of being BAD at English. I remember going to extracurricular classes, I learnt a lot, but the fluency just wasn't there. I'm convinced that the fact that my favourite singer has always been Michael Jackson played a key role, because I listened to his music a lot and that's constantly hearing English after all. Then I just started listening to music in English because my family did. I'm very grateful 😂
It always amazes me how some kids will just shrug and do what they have to do to get what they need, even when it's not expected or handed to them in a structured way. It's really cool that you were one of those kids. When I was in school, I used to look for kids like you, the ones who weren't content just to run around aimlessly during recess.
Bro, same story here my first language is also Russian and I moved to the UK 15 years ago when I was 13, my parents sent me to a language school but every one there was also Russian speaking so I didn't learn anything until I discovered an internet cafe near by where I would play TF2 with local gamers, they've eventually introduced me to 40k tabletop and within a few month my English was good enough to go to school. Same story with the accent as well, I thought I sound "neutral" but people keep noting that I have an accent, even though they can never guess where I am from, the usual guess is Sweden for some reason lol.
I had a similar experience. In Brazil, we had no games translated to portuguese, so if you want to play something, grab a dictionary, a notebook and there you go. Secret of Mana was the first RPG I finished with that method. Then came Diablo I and II, Phantasy Star 4, Ragnarok Online and WOW. I remember playing Final Fantasy Tactics in japanese and realising 回転 meant "spin" on that monk ability (unfotunately there was no such thing as a japanese-portuguese dictionary avaliable at the time). I have a friend that had piles of glossaries from the games he played. And that's how we learned english in Brazil in the 90's.
I grew up in the Netherlands and moved back to Ireland as a 10 year old and I forgot the language, so you are 100% correct on that point.
Hi Angelikatosh. I had very similar learning of English. Even though I didn't immigrate I learned English from video games mainly and one of my main games was Warcraft 3 and Dota after that :) I know what kind of emotions Warcraft and WoW build in child and those memories are just pure and so dear to me... I wish you all the best!
I also learned a lot of english as a kid through wow. I was very motivated to learn what the words on the screen meant because I wanted to understand this mystical world around me. When I'd frequently come across a new word I'd just pick up through context and trial and error what that word meant. I was very young when my dad first showed me his wow account. We're talking 4 years old, and by the time I was 5 I could speak basic english with my parents. I even remember questing in TBC once, and my dad's friends we're over and would stand behind me in awe and hype me up. Everyone around me spoke Swedish so I didn't really have a use for english outside of the internet, but that was intriguing enough to me to keep me motivated to learn the language very early on.
Super relatable video being french I learned English at a young age playing survival games on computer like don’t starve and whenever it be a British studio making the game lots of words were more advanced then traditional American English it did give me quite a boost in English class at school, awesome video.
Thanks for sharing. I just found your channel tonight and have subscribed.
As far as I can remember, I always played most games in english, mostly learning words here and there, in games like Heroes 2. But when I had no other choice but to adapt and truly learn was with Ultima Online. Especially since that MMO had a cooperative crafting system where doing stuff alone only brings you so far. From single word communication to full sentences, even if not perfect by then, was my experience back then.
MMO truly were the best teachers.
That's a great story, my nephew is 7 and he watches me play wow and one day I let him make a character. He was struggling to play but also was struggling to read quests and things and it made him realize the importance of being able to read. I definitely think video games are good for kids in this way. He hated reading but he's gotten a lot better at it ever since playing wow.
I started World of Warcraft when I was 7 years old, and I am not kidding that I learned so many vocabulary words from playing this game. So I totally get this
Wow, same as me! Born in Lithuania, emigrated to Ireland at 7, learned to speak advanced English because of WoW. I remember being in primary school and already understanding words like "Accept", "Decline", "Advance", etc. while others in the class were just learning them. Now I'm using this to learn other languages.
Native English speaker here. I had a similar experience with Spanish in recent years. I studied it for years in highschool but couldn't really keep a conversation. Playing Tibia (an ancient MMO, IYKYK) improved my Spanish dramatically since you basically have to speak it if you want to really play the game. Interesting video!
Your language learning experiences and videogames parallel mine so much. Especially the speaking proper bit. And my, what subline taste! Hats off, madam!
That’s a whole new level of Nerd when you learn a language from gaming - aaaaand…I’m one of them.
I lived in Japan for almost 15 years. I learned how to read and write Hiragana & Katakana from gaming and anime. During anime song intro/outros, they used to have English syllables in subtitles directly below hiragana/katakana/kanji lyrics - you pick up on sounds and symbols and eventually learn the words and their meanings. Took me about three years before I got good enough to get through games without help, but more importantly - gaming helped me really enjoy my time in Japan. 🇯🇵
Oh yes, videogames were part of my experience learning English. I'm Spanish, and took extra classes to learn English, but videogames helped me a lot, specially RPGs. I remember learning the future tense with Grandia. Nowadays I'm studying japanese and I managed to complete a few games, but it's really difficult
This was interesting, it's always cool to see how people learn english if it's not their first language and how that can drastically change what concepts of english they grasp first, like with you and your early understanding of armor due to WoW.
I'm Russian aswell (Привет!) I've learned English through videigames, animated shows, and TH-cam videos.
My journey started almost a decade ago with Undertale, Storytime animation era (JaidenAnimation, TheOdd1sOut, LetMeExolain), Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball