FFXIV to learn a language

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Originally Posted by Averax

The english dialogue is a horrible tool to teach english with. In limsa i just smile and nod, and english is my mother tongue.

"Anyroad, we must needs traverse several malms 'fore we arrive at the nearest aetheryte crystal. Mayhap the sojourn ought to be more prompt on chocobo-back."

These are things native english speakers just do not say.

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"Oi, wha' 'ar's aboot ya'r gills n' skeens! YARHARHAR!"

fml

Haha and I thought my english sucks which is why I have a hard time making sense of ARRian. Urianger is killing me so much.
I think the community itself is most often a much better way to learn and improve your english skills. I went into online gaming with extremely basic english (re-reading past posts is just awkward now because I see I did so many grammar mistakes) but after some time you just learn without really realizing that you do. After some time I started watching movies in english, trying to understand. Now I'm mostly watching in english and only have a hard time if the speaker has a strong accent. (Like Bruce waynes Butler, Alfred in the series "Gotham" bloody hell).

So my suggestion is, as long as you have basic english skills, you'll generally get to talk with good english speakers and eventually, pretty much like a baby, you'll learn from them.

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Originally Posted by Elim

The nearly intelligible FAKE old english that the orginal FFXIV:ARR has(or had, if they fixed it) would NOT be helpful for your friend to read. The expansion dialogue is fine.

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Most of the ARR dialogue is hardly unintelligible for native English speakers (intelligible means it's able to be understood) outside of the more extreme versions spoken by characters like Ramuh, Urianger, and Jacke of the Rogue's Guild (which, like other Limsa NPCs, is meant to model an accent) unless - and I don't mean this as an insult, but it is true - you have a somewhat limited vocabulary, or your only exposure to literature is solely modern works.

Also, to be pedantic, it's not "Old English" at all (which might look something like this "Is hēr ǣnig þe Englisce spricþ?")...it's not even Shakespearean English (which might look a bit like this "To the king god hath his offyce lent / of dread of Iustyce, power and Comaund / hath bid him rule, and willd you to obay,"). You have to get all the way to around the era of Tolkien and CS Lewis (so the 1940s and 50s for the most part) to find English that more closely matches what you see in this game, and even then it is modernized.

Just throwing in a "Mayhap" here and there, the occasional "eth" (for Ramuh) and using an older and more formal sentence structure (again, outside of extremes like Jacke's dialect) should hardly make it hard to read for native English speakers, and certainly doesn't turn it into a nearly unintelligible mess.

I was wondering when someone like you would pop up. :) Ahh... flashback to the 2.0 forum days.

Also, thanks for pointing out my typo. I tend to make a lot of typos, grammar mistakes, etc. I am a French Canadian.

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Originally Posted by Elim

Also, thanks for pointing out my typo. I tend to make a lot of typos, grammar mistakes, etc. I am a French Canadian.

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Then your trouble with the dialogue is understandable...though outside of encountering less NPCs from La Noscea and a lack of Ramuh, the dialogue in Heavensward differs little from the dialogue found in ARR, so I find it odd that you found ARR to be so tough and Heavensward to give you no trouble (also possible that you just got better at it, so it feeling like it's easier to understand due them changing things isn't accurate, and instead the positive change was actually something related to you).

And it's also why I noted that finding it unintelligible shouldn't be the case for those whose native language is English (unless they've been exposed to very little beyond purely modern day to day use, and even then most dialogue is fairly modern, typically using a more formal sentence structure and occasionally switching out less frequently used but hardly rare words), as most of it is already close to modern day proper English.

Games, in general, are pretty good in making you better at a certain language. For example, when I played the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time, it was hard to understand everything, and in my second time, my english was much better. The social interaction of FFXIV is really interesting and also a poweful tool. When learning another language, even if you study hard, you simply won't get it without trying to practice with other people. :) I'm now using my english to learn german, so I'm playing FFXIV with german dub and english sub. It has been quite helpful.

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Originally Posted by Elim

The nearly intelligible FAKE old english that the orginal FFXIV:ARR has(or had, if they fixed it) would NOT be helpful for your friend to read. The expansion dialogue is fine.

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Read my mind. If your friend started talking like this outside of 14 even English teachers will cringe. I think maybe Wakfu, Elsword, NeverWinter or any game with modern basic lingo will help more. Though you could translate the game as your friend plays, but thats up to you. :/

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Originally Posted by Berethos

Then your trouble with the dialogue is understandable...though outside of encountering less NPCs from La Noscea and a lack of Ramuh, the dialogue in Heavensward differs little from the dialogue found in ARR, so I find it odd that you found ARR to be so tough and Heavensward to give you no trouble (also possible that you just got better at it, so it feeling like it's easier to understand due them changing things isn't accurate, and instead the positive change was actually something related to you).

And it's also why I noted that finding it unintelligible shouldn't be the case for those whose native language is English (unless they've been exposed to very little beyond purely modern day to day use, and even then most dialogue is fairly modern, typically using a more formal sentence structure and occasionally switching out less frequently used but hardly rare words), as most of it is already close to modern day proper English.

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They still use outdated words and some less used in modern day terms regardless of native tongue (like french accents). ARR was completely riddled with old time English and as much as I love Y'shtola, that scene where they were making fun of Thancred was completely ruined just for her taking so damn long to finish the punchline, it was no longer funny after that. Heavensward was a bit easier to read because the script seemed to be focused on setting points and reasons more quicker other than giving the characters a sense of intellect that we already know they have.

I'm actually glad we don't hear that elf's (the one in Waking Sands) haiku's as much because he was annoying to follow, but he serves as the only one (other than Y'shtola at times) to still talk in old English.

Game dialogue aside, I think the combination of English speaking players and auto-translate is a great tool for learning English, and if they get a group of friends (FC) that understand their limitations, it can help immensely. Communication is a very big part of this game.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Game dialogue aside, I think the combination of English speaking players and auto-translate is a great tool for learning English, and if they get a group of friends (FC) that understand their limitations, it can help immensely. Communication is a very big part of this game.

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I don't know. The auto-translate only use select phrases, I wouldn't say thats helpful, especially when it comes to in game dialogue, but I think so yeah, other than that she may have ease learning English through it even though it'd mostly be MMO lingo.