Shashingo: Learn Japanese with Photography - FLUENCY SPEEDRUN LET'S GO
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- The world needs more games like this one.
Here's the link to that Japanese learning app I mentioned: www.renshuu.org/
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Edited by Carrie Floyd
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#PlayFrame #Shashingo #japanese
Consistent phonetics really is the saving grace in Japanese. Learn the alphabet and you can read any word in hiragana or katakana on sight without hesitation.
Ooh I saw this game on Twitter and was already considering buying for the Switch. Now I get to see more before I buy! :D
19:31 brb giggling at Carrie choosing to put “keyboard” in Japanese for the banner lmao. 🤭
For folks who don't want to rush to learn kana in order to do the flashcards - romaji is an option! Dan is using the default (& recommended) furigana setting :D
Making maximum use of the irasutoya royalty free image library.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who clocked that. 💀 As soon as they popped up, I was like, ah yes, the true Japanese experience.
They just have so much personality, more people should use it!
This looks really good! :D
I'm thinking I'll pick it up for myself even though I already know a good bit of Japanese, I like the concept of walking around and looking at / photographing things
here are some sign translations for you:
11:17 注意(ちゅうい) 自動(じどう)ドア - "Caution: Automatic Door"
11:26 当店(とうてん)のパンは すべて 国産(こくさん)小麦(こむぎ)を １００％ 使用(しよう)しています
"This store's bread uses 100% domestic wheat" or "We bake our bread with 100% domestic wheat!"
My main tips for language study would be:
1) Set a goal with a definite deadline (e.g. a trip, a language proficiency exam) for long-term motivation
2) Listen to songs, watch shows, etc., because it is easier to remember phrases and iconic lines over singular words (though mnemonics like "potato is the apple of the earth" do help)
3) Comics are great
4) (Unless your target language is dead, like Latin:) Try to practice what you learn with other people as soon as possible (e.g. take an in-person class where you do conversation exercises) to get you not just memorizing but communicating
I would always recommend having your first conversations in your target language in a safe, learning-oriented environment like a class or a practice session with a trusted, more proficient friend. You are going to make mistakes, and it's better to get the ones that make you incomprehensible out of the way when there are no consequences. And when you do take that trip, sometimes you might need to resort to single words and lots of gestures, and that's also okay. If you approach others with respect and avoid the most tourist-infested cities and areas, people can be surprisingly patient and kind
I think as a casual learner of Japanese getting caught up in individual kanji readings is an exercise in frustration. For essential kanji i found it much easier to memorize each kanji combination as its own unique kanji with its own unique pronunciation instead of looking at each kanji of a word individually. Start with the English word that the kanji as a whole represents then memorize how to pronounce that English word in Japanese. This kanji means traffic congestion and i know traffic congestion is pronounced like this. My kanji understanding went up tenfold once i gave up trying to memorize each kanji and their 10 different readings.
This seems like an absolutely wonderful idea to learn about any culture and their language. I wish I could have this experience for every other culture.
Also, the Genki books for learning Japanese were what we used in school and I've found those to be really solid, and good place to start & pair with this. A lot of what Dan was showing here like, "to sing" and "to go" were things those books go over, and they were remarkably cheap textbooks back in the day, like $40-60 usd a pop w/the workbook, so usually pretty affordable.
I'm with Dan near the end, I would love a dozen more of these kinds of games doing other languages. This is what I was saying when I saw the Chants of Senaar videos, I wish there was something like that for a real language and this is that!
9:22 The blue car turns into a red car
The maid cafe being one of the first things you see coming out of the subway is *chefs kiss* amazing 😂
Some of the word choices in this are interesting, and the connotations are not immediately clear from a single word translation. One in particular is "Slow". Yukuri is "to do something slowly" and carries a neutral connotation while Osoi is "to have been slow" or "to be late" and is negative. You drive slowly (yukuri) and you arrive late (osoi).
Also yeah, Japanese was way easier than I thought it would be to learn when I was studying. In a lot of ways it mirrors texting, a thing japan invented, and filling out a government form, in that it uses particles to mark what's happening in the sentence. It also helps that a lot of their most vigorous recent historical partners in cultural exchange were the US, Germany, and Portugal, so they have a lot of pickup words from those languages that are in common use. Like, convenience store is conbini, and department store is depato, just to name a few, so if you've grown up around American English, German, and maybe some Portuguese, like to text, and have filled out a form, it comes off much easier than you'd think.
It's also a language that likes to shorten words, so you don't end up with massive, multi syllable words kicking it around as much either XD.
Oh man, I would love something like this to re-learn Spanish and French!
Then again, I have wanted to learn some Japanese just for fun so I'll give it a go when I get the chance!
Earthlingo does some of these kinds of things and I think it is free! It has no grammar tips/references, it is just vocabulary you interact with in different ways in a 3d explorable set like this one. And it doesn't have the deep care Japanese was given here, as it does a bunch of languages which definitely included Spanish.
The easiest way to think of the difficulty of learning Hiragana & Katakana is that, there are basically the same number of them as their are letters & number digits in English once you include upper & lower case. That might seem weird, but there was a time for all of us when we didn't know A and a were the same thing. And all of this is before you talk about like Cursive, if you had to learn that in school XD.
Other upside is Hira & Kata are both phonetics, where they are symbols that represent sounds rather than whole words, so when stuff's written in either, you can sound it out.
Renshuu is great! Love to see you recommend it
The game series "Learn Japanese to Survive" is a bit more basic than this but is great for an introduction to the Japanese character sets. It's set up as a JRPG in the style of SNES era Final Fantasy. But you use hirigana (in the first one) to cast your spells, defend and attack. It's a neat concept and you end up grinding for review more than XP. Admittedly, I've only played an hour or so of the first game, but it was fun until my mental health interfered.
I literally just got back into learning some more Japanese so this is perfectly timed! Definitely gonna grab this game!
Here's a two step tip for learning Japanese from someone that has been at it for over a decade:
1. find media you love (manga/tv show/novels/movies/game)
2. mimic how the characters speak
Dialogue in media often are written in an exaggerated way but they still can be a great way to learn how to use the language beyond reading off the textbook and building that confidence/habit early helps out so so much with getting better down the line. Combining this with studying the language, you will start to understand how the dialogue in media are structured and why, which contributes to a deeper level of understanding and often confidence with the language.
Last of it, its always more fun learning through something you enjoy!
Beware of particular mannerisms that are peculiar to the media you love (Yelling in Japan like they do in anime is rare and the use of Temee is pretty extreme)
The art style is beautiful. Definitely getting this and it's on sale!
What a cute game! My recommendation for people trying to learn Japanese is Human Japanese, you can get it as a phone app or computer program. It's not gamified like this one is, but it has the most understandable explanations of Japanese grammar I've found so far.
Ohhh I LOVE this. I'm very much motivated by gamification - I'm a millennial, what can I say? I also love Japanese, I think it's a beautiful language and I'm fascinated by how very DIFFERENT the grammar is from English. Plus I very much appreciate the pronunciation being so much more consistent than English! I took Japanese back in middle school (over 20 years ago 😬) and unfortunately couldn't continue because my high school didn't offer it. And by the time I got into college, I decided I wanted to pursue archaeology, so I focused on dead languages. But I always wanted to learn more Japanese. We learned hiragana and katakana, but didn't get into kanji at all, which, like, missing a whole alphabet sure makes it difficult to read. But I'm very glad I took it in middle school because I got to learn pronunciation while I was young and it was easy to train my brain and vocal tract. Now I'm old enough that learning to pronounce a new language/sound is a lot tougher. I'm embarrassed by the fact that I became a Latin teacher and still cannot roll my "r"s... Anyway. This game looks so cool. It's pretty, engaging, and has LOTS of information. I already learned some stuff just watching this! This is definitely going on my wishlists. Thank you, Playframe, for always sharing such cool concepts. 😊
I don't speak/read Japanese, but I used Duolingo for a year or two a while back and I watch a lot of subtitled anime, the latter of which is _way_ better at helping you retain the language. (I also read a lot of trivia about the media I consume, which in anime's case often includes explanations for puns in character names and the like.) So I know just enough to add a few reasonably accurate bits of trivia to this comment section.
2:45: They're called furigana, and they're common in Japanese media for children young enough that they don't know all their kanji yet.
17:48: Pretty sure, yeah. The two katakana in the word are "shi" and "i," which means you're supposed to extend the "i" part of "shi".
2:38: This should amuse anyone in a specific band of Japanese fluency. "Urusai," the word for "noisy," is often pronounced "urusē" and used to mean "shut up". People in that specific band should realize that when the tough delinquent yells at someone to shut up, he's literally just calling them noisy.
5:40: I've heard that "sayonara," the Japanese word foreigners think means "goodbye," is an unusually dramatic(/formal?) way of saying "goodbye". Japanese people will know what you mean if you say it, of course. They're used to foreigners speaking like anime characters.
"sayounara", to my understanding, is closer to "farewell" than "goodbye". It has a vibe of not seeïng the person you're talking to again for a long time.
@@SAHansonI think it can also be used when you have no other farewell greeting you want to use with the person (or that is appropriate for your social proximity/relationship and the current situation) and you want to err on the side of formal/neutral/maybe somewhat socially distant; like if you aren’t using “お疲れ様でした”, “お先に失礼します” or “また明日ね”or something else. I worked in a Japanese high school for 5 years and definitely heard teachers and students use it with each other, knowing they’d absolutely be seeing each other the next day. I always got the vibe that they used that because students were expected to speak very formally to their teachers (and some teachers would mirror/match that in how they spoke to students, especially the Japanese language/国語 teachers). I hope that makes sense. I agree that among peers/friends/family, sayonara isn’t really used in the way we think of “goodbye” in English, but in certain formal contexts (like business/school), it’s not so rare/uncommon, at least in my experience.
I too picked up a lot by watching subbed anime and shows, and it really did help me, so the following is just a little pinch of salt for new learners to take with.
One key thing for learners to remember is that translation (professionally anyway) and teaching are two different jobs, with different goals. It's not a translator's duty to teach anyone anything about the language, nor should it be! They have to concern themselves with giving the audience some form of the experience that the original audience had, regardless of how much they understand of the original language/culture. That often means chopping, changing, and even adding, in ways that teachers wouldn't. (Also, before even that, they have to prioritise the clients' demands, which may be wildly incompatible with a learner-friendly translation.)
So while subs can help a lot with learning Japanese, it's helpful to know/remember that they're _not designed_ to help anyone learn. There will be times when they mislead or confuse you, because you think _wait but I know that word and that's not..._, but this is not a fault with the translation or the translator! You always need to supplement with other methods too!
Which is why games like this are a good starting point for picking up vocab in a more neutral way. Non-anime grammar has to come from somewhere else too, ideally a teacher, or a textbook.
Ultimately, you probably want to be reading to get to a good level of proficiency, but the ways in which you get up to the level where you're actually comfortable reading are up to you! And also, if reading isn't your goal, that's fine too!
@@cvgsunset5844agreed on さよなら being used in certain formal contexts, like schools. Even elementary school kids will use it with their teachers at the end of the day, but for their friends, it'll more likely be またね！
What a fascinating idea for a game. Thank you for bringing this to more people!!
19:28 Carrie I love your editing so much
This is so cool! I've been learning Spanish and I would love something like this to help develop my vocab. Love it!
a game i found that seems to do a good job of incorporating words and kanji with other words is "so to speak". it only has a demo right now, but i feel like it has done a good job of gamifying learning japanese and kanji pretty well
Oh yeah, I remember seeing this in a Direct a while ago and thing it was neat!
Japanese is low on my list of languages I'd like to learn, but "Wander around a virtual space and interact with objects to learn vocabulary" seems like a heck of a way to shore up what was always my biggest weakness learning languages in school (vocabulary was sadly always a struggle for me. Throw any weird grammar rule at me in high school spanish, and I grasped it like that, but if I had to remember a word beyond ones id learned in middle school Spanish, I was a lost cause. Sadly due to disuse, both angles probably have equally bleak outlooks for me now). I would like to see every language get a version of this game.
i think it would help me a lot personally if the game included romanji or otherwise helped visually connect the kanji/hiragana with certain phoenetic sounds that i already recognize or spaced apart the english translation and the japanese characters so they match in terms of syllables.
I love this so much. Thanks for sharing!
日本語お上手ですね
but seriously, cute game, and I appreciated your play through being chill while you still took it seriously
not so bad yourself! :)
one of the things I know about learning a language is the best way to learn it is experiencing it, being immersed in it. You learn the definitions of what you're hearing and reading through all the possible learning tactics. However, it does come at a financial and emotional cost - and sometimes you learn bad habits... and the discovery that there are some languages you just will never master. I can't roll my 'r's....
So, English spelling v pronunciation. Robwords here on TH-cam has a few nice digestible videos on parts of the problem. What it boils down to is use of a foreign alphabet to represent native sounds, calcification of spelling in dictionaries while accents were still shifting, and meddling from academics unnecessarily complicating things trying to make English more Latin, further complicated by borrowed vocabulary using entirely modern sound to character conventions making the older stuff look even more nonsensical.
I wonder if the game handles verb conjugation. Have you heard of “Learn Japanese to Survive! Hiragana Battle”? It does something similar but is more concerned with phonetical learning, at least to start.
Reminds me of the game Influent, but with a bit more UI polish and focus on the Japanese aspect. Influent has translations for many different languages to learn, but it's missing stuff like the grammar, alphabet and contextual explanations here.
I wonder how much content there is in this one, though. Influent is also limited to just one area (the creator's home), but that's still 420 words to learn.
For the Japanese alphabet, I have used the RPG-Maker games of the "Learn Japanese to Survive" series: "Hiragana Battle", "Katakana War" and "Kanji Combat". They were at least good to hammer in the initial understanding through lots of repetition, and at least some has stuck with me.
I want something like this for Spanish. If anyone has any favorite gamified Spanish learning tools, let me know!
Most important question though: Is this on Switch? I want this, but feel like it's better as something I can play on the go rather than something I can only play at my computer, where I am less likely to need the references.
I've "played" this some months ago.
The only Japanese word I knew before this video was neko since cats are an important part of the culture and are often seen in a lot of games.
Not sayonara? Manga? Domi arigato, mister roboto?
Because Dans voice is so different I keep forgetting he used to do Extra Credits/History
Every language is complicated in its own weird and specific ways. English is particularly weird and complicated because it's an awkward combination of many other languages that are, themselves, inherently complicated.
Plus the folks who standardized a lot of early spellings for written English intentionally made it complicated so that it would *look* more like French because they thought it would be fancier that way.
It probably doesn't help that English is spread across multiple continents, with speakers that did not have a unified government or particularly get along when standardized dictionaries and such started to be A Thing.
A bit weird that they didn't include romaji in flash cards.
True, but probably helpful with learning the kana by immersion. Also fun, the first phrase offered was English - "game center", pronounced geemu sentaa.
ローマ字 are like training wheels, but they obfuscate some words. E.g. is 今夜, "konya" 「こんや」 or 「こにゃ」? Also, "romaji" is even an incorrect romanization as it doesn't indicate that the first wovel sound is supposed to be elongated.
@@inf0phreak I knew about that. I even think that most language letters can't properly spell other language words, at least most of the the time.
But for the learning process, it helps.
@@inf0phreak こんや is romanized as "kon'ya" to account for that
apparently romaji is an option, Dan just went with the recommended furigana option.
5:50 Ohayo gozaimsu? Just guessing, I can't read anything Japanese. I'm in the "I took 8 years of German, got a minor... and have nobody to talk to, so it's rusting" camp.
5:56 Ayyy, I was right.
5:30 One thing I've noticed in passing about what Japanese-instruction stuff I've used that feels really important for Westerners: there are no spaces in Japanese, which might be why everything is so context-sensitive. Also, there's no upper/lowercase characters.
6:50 Ka-Ra-Ok-E (Ka-Ra-O-ke?), based on the image.
6:53 This makes me feel smart, even though I'm just guessing.
9:01 For once, I think if it was anything other than gacha I'd be upset.
9:55 The topic of gamification always reminds me of Spice and Wolf. It's not a game, but it makes economics interesting. I legit learned about how stocks work because of a show I watched because it had a cute wolf girl. (Also, she is scary at business. Like, legit scary.)
13:29 THIS!!! I love that hiragana and katakana are consistently phonetic. It's one of the reasons I took German. I hate guessing how to spell or say something in English. My native tongue is a mess.
20:09 Funny thing I noticed: the Romaji for うた (song) is "uta"... which just so happens to be the abbreviation used for the Utah Jazz, an NBA team. I found this deeply amusing, because a sports team named after music somehow ended up with an abbreviation that is the literal word "song" in another language.
25:50 Well, once I feel comfortable with my German again, I can add that to the list of tools... which is now 2 games, Duolingo, and renshuu.