Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Cobalt Okay, I'm going to cut you off here since you are going on a tangent on English being your second language and all.

English is my second language. Heck, I can even argue it's my third, my first is Indonesia, then hokkien, then I even have some smatters of Chinese.

Do I complain that English is my second language if they told me that the way I spoke is wrong?? No, I accept the criticism and try to fix it.

That's my problem with you! You use the fact that English is your second language to NOT fix things!

LIke even my above sentences have wrong grammar usage at some places I'm sure, for example. But I took great care to make it feel like I try to not offend others. Problem is, you hide in the fact that this language is second to yours, and didn't try to make it so the words aren't as sharp, or to be more exact, instead of sharp, you tend to make your words as offensive as possible.

It's like when you can spend a few extra minutes that your words are okay, you just... don't.

@darkfenrir I think English is my third also, my family's from Sicily and Greece, then I came to U.S., as a 5 year old, so yah, I feel ya bro

@jhewitt3476 yeah... like, I understand first few times, because that's hard. But as time goes on, it's like... why does it not going better? It's weird.

@darkfenrir
I realized early that it's not the language itself that is the problem, you (like me) were raised with "sentence structure" also, so even though you learn the words of a new language, your native sentence structure has been so ingrained into your life, it is a b**ch of a habbit to break, so yah, to others, Yoda we sound like, frustrating it is, but eventually, come it will.

@jhewitt3476 Yeah, and then when you try learning new language it doesn't help at all... I'm trying to learn German and wew, the grammars make it harder from English to German. Although I kinda can read some basic ones now, I just need to read a lot more German works I feel.

Tried learning Japanese so I could understand and play Monster Hunter XX before we knew it was being localized, and wow. Verbs at the end of the sentence, direct objects in questionable places, possessives and the whole ga or ka thing...

It's confusing. It made sense in it's own way, but it was just so different to what I've spoken all my life, it was just going against everything I've ever known. Hard to break lifelong habits.

I'm really impressed with anyone who can become fluent in a foreign language. I studied Japanese for years, and I'm BARELY conversational. There's so much to learn, and so much of it goes against the grain of what I intuitively know to do in English.

@darkfenrir I'd never have guessed you were a non-native speaker, either.

I'm actually surprised that people don't realize I'm non-native since I always thought my writing wasn't really good (Although if I speak that's really obvious of course, my pronunciation sucks).

And Japanese is really hard o)--< I gave up on learning it but I should try again, there's a lot of things I wanted to read that is Japanese only, and the price to have them translated is too high.

@darkfenrir Your written English (on these forums, anyway) is great. Maybe not perfect, but better than what many native English speakers can muster, for sure.

I'm going to try a new language acquisition method with Japanese that involves drilling the kanji with an SRS, using mnemonic devices to quickly understand the gist of what they mean, while immersing myself in the language in written and spoken form. The idea is to simulate learning the language like a native speaker would instead of learning to mentally translate everything you hear into thoughts in your native language.

I went for a test run with this earlier in the year and I very quickly internalized the meaning of 100+ kanji. It's an effective method, except it requires CONSTANT maintenance. Even taking a day off from practicing with this method is disastrous.

Of course, I won't be able to completely seal myself off from all language apart from Japanese, so it won't be quite as effective as going full immersion, but it seems like I should be able to approximate something similar if I'm diligent in how I manage my free time.

@Ralizah wew, thanks for that.

And good luck on your Japanese learning, new language is not easy, and since you aren't as young as when you usually first started learning language... that usually make things harder.

@FaeKnight That is not true. I have bought many games at cheaper prices, and Nintendo has the red-label that comes at a cheaper price later on. Plus...aftermarket.

@jhewitt3476 It's just not my cup of tea. I gave it a few hours and I REALLY did not like it. I like structure, and a consistent art style in a Mario game. I hate how everything looks realistic except Mario, it doesn't play. And I hate even small things like the odd way Mario runs in this one, looks like he's just walking fast. And those moons....there is just no structure and there are too many of them. And there is an aimlessness to the game. Sunshine was such a great game, they could have done something with that type of structure while making the worlds bigger and the hub too. I like the "episodes" idea of 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy, where the world changes each time you come back to accommodate an episode.

On a more happy note, I've been playing BOTW more, and am starting to enjoy it more. It still has a lot of things that bug me, like weapons breaking and the wonky controls, but it's cool.

Maybe in a few years when you grow up you'll understand that some 'truths' are subjective. And in fact are more opinions then "truth". If you've literally only played your switch for 10 days in the last 10 months and think as poorly about it as you appear to, then it just may be that the system isn't for you. This doesn't mean "Zomygod the Switch is a bad system", it just means that you personally don't like the Switch for whatever reason.

Please, note the vast amounts of sarcasm in the above paragraph.

For example Digital Foundry, who you cite as proof that your views are an objective truth all must acknowledge, go into great depths about how XC2 has dips down as low as 22 fps at times and the resolution dropping low as well while in portable mode. What they fail to mention is that the game still plays so smoothly you're probably not going to realize the frame rate dropped at all. It's not a fast paced shooter so dips in frame rate of 2-8 aren't going to impact gameplay much. And the game still looks great in portable mode. The average person isn't likely to even notice any resolution drops. And in fact they are only really noticeable if you are putting the gameplay of portable mode on a large computer monitor.

Or in other words Digital Foundry gets so caught up on the technical aspects they forget about the practical aspects. Are you going to even notice Zelda dropping down to 25 fps? and lowering screen resolution at times in portable mode? Probably not.

@jhewitt3476
Oh sure, but I enjoyed the set up from the get go. I understand the majority expects big sprawling stories, but it made Octopath more personal which I really dig. Still need to complete my first chapter 4. Boss kicked my butt.

Funny to see this discussion about English, grammar and the like. I always try to be as clear as possible. It makes things easier that English and its rules are easier to grasp than Dutch. (Believe me, Dutch can be sucky, even as Dutchman myself)

@Ralizah You could try using sticky notes. With the kanji/kana name of the object in question. To an outsider you'd probably look like a lunatic, but it can help you memorise the words for everyday objects.

Personally speaking I find that it becomes easier to learn languages the more languages you are already familiar with. I'm not sure that would work for Japanese, since there's no language that's really close to it. Even the Chinese languages are completely different, despite some overlap in kanji/hanzi. It works for most European languages though. If you know Latin and French, Italian is relatively easy to pick up for example.

The more you know, the more you can learn.

And now we're sounding like a PSA education message on TV.

@Octane
Chinese use Simplified Han Zi, contrary with Taiwan and Japan (Full Chinese letter).
So, All the Japanese Kanji letters are the FULL version of Chinese Han Zi.
For Kanji letters, you must recognize the Kunyomi (Japanese spelling) & Onyomi (Chinese spelling).
Example, a Chinese letter of Horse is Ma, in Japanese by Kunyomi it spelled uma , by Onyomi it spelled Ba.
And the other Kanji letters do the same thing.

@darkfenrir

Who said that English is my second language ?
I never learnt English at school, I just tried to learn by myself around my 30's. I started with some translations that I wanted to do from a bunch of songs that I liked (liking a song for the music it's great but it's even better if you can understand the lyrics ^^).
Then I started to watch series and movies with subtitles to get the point because I had no clue at all about what these were talking about.
And step by step, I started to get some stuffs, to hear the difference between English, American, Australian, Irish etc... Maybe it sounds ridiculous for a native but trust me, for me everything sounded the same... LOL

And to conclude, now I can talk with a pretty neutral accent (I mean, a strange mix of several ones but not the typical French accent in English " ZIS DAYYE IZ BYOUTIFOULE ".
So you see, I don't have the chance to live in a country where I have to speak English, to be immersed by the language, to have to practice in my everyday life but at least I try to communicate with a language that I learnt without any teacher, just me, my music, my movies and my books.