Learning a new language is big hurdle much more if the pronunciation is totally different from writing as with Japanese, Chinese and Korean. And also there is Arabic and much more. So when My Japanese coach was released for the Nintendo DS Lite, I tried this game to check if I can learn Japanese the fun way.
The game basically is broken into “lessons” and the first section is lessons 1-29. But before you could even start, you will be bombarded with a quiz. Yes, a quiz. The quiz is to check your prior knowledge of the language. The lowest level is baby. I got this classification. My friend who has been watching Anime or Japanese animation, got a rating of a toddler.
For the next hour or so my friend and I were consumed by the games and lessons and moved ahead 3 or so lessons. My reaction at this point that it is hard to learn Japanese :) Since it has E in the cover, I was expecting it to be easy. Like E equals easy, I was wrong. But, a big but, I was sucked into fun games, lessons, and training and really started to get into it. At the higher level it goes into verbs, adjectives, and the different writing styles (katakana, hiragana, and some Kanji).
Okay, the game is just not about conversational Japanese. There was writing challenges too. The writing system goes slow where you trace the characters with the stylus and after you trace it a few times it fades away and you have to write it without help. As for my friend who studied a little Japanse, even though she know all of the basic characters it really was nice to be able to practice writing in a controlled manner. Then there are games to backup your writing with recognition games and speed.
I was only playing the game for few hours and I am only 10% in, it looks like the difficultly slowly raises, but it is a fun and an interactive way to memorize and retain the language. If you have kids or your want to study a language this is a great way to start the adventure. This got me hooked, I am going to try other languages. I heard there are Chinese and Spanish and even French.
If you interested with other Nintendo DS games for download, you may start here
For the next hour or so my friend and I were consumed by the games and lessons and moved ahead 3 or so lessons. My reaction at this point that it is hard to learn Japanese :) Since it has E in the cover, I was expecting it to be easy. Like E equals easy, I was wrong. But, a big but, I was sucked into fun games, lessons, and training and really started to get into it. At the higher level it goes into verbs, adjectives, and the different writing styles (katakana, hiragana, and some Kanji).
Okay, the game is just not about conversational Japanese. There was writing challenges too. The writing system goes slow where you trace the characters with the stylus and after you trace it a few times it fades away and you have to write it without help. As for my friend who studied a little Japanse, even though she know all of the basic characters it really was nice to be able to practice writing in a controlled manner. Then there are games to backup your writing with recognition games and speed.
I was only playing the game for few hours and I am only 10% in, it looks like the difficultly slowly raises, but it is a fun and an interactive way to memorize and retain the language. If you have kids or your want to study a language this is a great way to start the adventure. This got me hooked, I am going to try other languages. I heard there are Chinese and Spanish and even French.
If you interested with other Nintendo DS games for download, you may start here
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