WHEREAS A FILM WILL PLAY QUITE HAPPILY WHETHER YOU UNDERSTAND IT OR NOT, A GAME WILL CONSTANTLY TEST YOUR UNDERSTANDING.
Playing Final Fantasy may be better than studying GCSE German
September saw Final Fantasy IX re-released onto the PlayStation store. Now has never been a better time to replay the classic… and learn a new language. Any aspiring polyglot, myself included, will tell you how valuable books, films, and music are when you set your sights on a new target language but I’ve learnt, in my endless quest to brush up on my German, that games are especially effective tools.
It’s their essential interactivity that makes games so suited to language practice. When socio-cultural theorist Lev Vygotsky postulated interaction as a key part of language acquisition, I know this isn’t quite what he meant, but hear me out. Whereas a film will play quite happily whether you understand it or not, a game will constantly test your understanding and withhold content until you can interpret what to do in order to progress. For a number of reasons, the Final Fantasy series includes several prime candidates for language learning materials.
First, Square Enix seems content to continue re-releasing its back catalogue of mainline games digitally until the end of time, so playing a foreignlanguage version of Final Fantasy IX is as easy as downloading it and switching your console language. Second, the series tends to opt for classic, easy-to- follow, good-versus-evil narratives – think along the lines of ‘someone wants to do something bad with the crystals/the magic users/the soul of the Earth/time itself and it’s up to you to stop them, saving the world.’ Third, the text-only, turn-based nature of the pre-PlayStation 2 era is fantastic for practice as the dialogue progresses at a rate you dictate, allowing you time to double-check what the heck ‘schrieb’ means again. Post-PlayStation 2, games include voice acting in English with subtitles in a range of languages, and are particularly handy if you don’t have the most confident grasp of your target language, like I still don’t. One day I hope to move on to the big leagues of Final Fantasy XV, which is the first game in the series to receive a full text AND voice localisation into German.
TONGUE TWISTED
I first played Final Fantasy IX in German with my good friend Sarah, who has used games to learn English. She’s played X in both languages and noted one down side of learning via localisation: “I was once very confused by the English dub and the German subs because the content was sometimes very different,” explaining, “the German subs were closer to the Japanese… while the English one took its creative freedom sometimes.” In X, it’s the difference between Yuna saying ‘I love you’ and ‘thank you.’ On the other hand, I liked the German localisation of IX for its alternate take on Garnet’s name change; instead of just being an edgy teenager and naming herself after the first sharp object she sees, she calls herself Lilli after the flower on Zidane’s dagger, symbolising their bond. Differences like this initially tripped me up, but now I see them as offering a new angle on some fond favourites.
Sarah added she’d enjoyed what she’d seen of XV in German but prefers to play it in Japanese with subtitles as she prefers the voice performances. She also streams games in English with German commentary as Blanche Blue on YouTube… you know, just in case you wanted another way to practise. As for me, Ich brauche einige mehr Games spielen. Why not give it a go too?