The Sims in Japanese! (And other videogames and manga without furigana)
Want to play The Sims in Japanese but don’t know enough kanjito play it? I recently discovered a way to do it! And it probably works in lots of other videogamesANDmangathat do not have furigana!
It’s not perfect, I admit. But it really helps. And it’s free, by the way.
You just have to press two keys of your keyboard and then select what you want to translate.
And here is how I use it:
I don’t know if there’s a way for the software to separate the words and to give me their pronunciation. But that’s easy to solve. I basically just copy the word/text from the software and paste it into Jisho (https://jisho.org/).
I do not know much about its settings either, but here are the main ones that I somehow changed:
Why did I start using this?
Because I would need to know thousands of kanji to play it in Japanese, so I could easily look up the words in the dictionary using their pronunciation. But I just know 400 kanji right now. I could wait until I know most of them, but I’m into language immersion (seriously, guys. It works.) and I really love The Sims 2, 3 & 4. So why wait? I will keep learning kanji, of course (it’s more important than I ever imagined when I began learning this language, because I thought learning vocab would be enough). But through this method, I can even improve my kanji knowledge. Reading immersion can improve our vocabulary, grammar AND kanji.
It’s easy to get the meaning of the individual words through an addon like Rikaichamp(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/rikaichamp/) and, if you still don’t understand the meaning of the sentence, just click “language switcher“ and it will give you the translation. I don’t recommend it though. As Matt from MIApproachsays, «Growing your capacity to tolerate ambiguity is essential to making rapid progress. Unfortunately, tolerating ambiguity often doesn’t come naturally. Most of us have grown up in a culture that places a lot of value on “understanding things.” Because of this, for most people, being able to tolerate ambiguity is a skill that must be actively cultivated over time.»
だんだん something increases slowly and constantly, little by little. This acutally uses kanji sometimes, 段々, and the kanji is for “stairs.” So if you know the kanji for this, you can remember that this is for graudual and consistant change like stairs!
だんだんと暖かくなってきた
だんだんこの人がいい人に思えてきた
日本語の勉強を続ければ、だんだん上手になる
どんどん something increases quickly and rapidly, has more of an aggressive connotation. A good way to remember this as being faster and bit more aggressive is to remember that ドンドン is the onamonapia for a loud sound or a knock on the door. Since they both are spelled the same, think of something knocking on the front door! It’s a bit aggressive, and usually fast.
Verbs in Japanese come in pairs: and transitive verbs, which take direct objects, and intransitive verbs, which do not. The difficulty in learning this is that in English, we usually use the same verb for both transitive and intransitive, for example:
Igrowbeans in my yard.
Beansgrow in my yard.
In Japanese, you simply have to memorize the pairs of verbs, for example:
庭に豆を生やす。Niwa ni mame wo hayasu.
I grow beans in my yard.
豆が庭に生える。Mame ga niwa ni haeru.
Beans grow in my yard.
While there is no definite rule to memorizing these, there are patterns.
All verbs ending in す are transitive. All verbs ending in ある (including other kana from the あ row) are intransitive.
Transitive verbs tend to end in -える with their intransitive counterpart ending in -あす (i.e. でる、だす).
Vocabulary(tra.、intran.)
生やす、生える - to grow, to (be) grown （はやす、はえる）
痛める、痛む - to hurt, to (be) hurt （いためる、いたむ）
見付ける、見付かる - to find, to be found （みつける、みつかる）
増やす、増える - to increase, to increase or be increased （ふやす、ふえる）増やす is also written 増す（ます）
燃やす、燃える to burn, to burn or be burned （もやす、もえる）
入る、入れる - to enter, to add （はいる、いれる）
暖める、暖まる - to warm, to warm up or be warmed （あたためる、あたたまる）
in japanese there is not one but two types of passive voice!
formation is quite simple, you have to add -れる to the informal negative form for verbs of I group and -られる to the stem for the verbs of II group.
exceptions change like this: 来る ー＞ こられる する ー＞ される
first one - similar to english, for example:
そのマンションは去年に建てられました。ー That apartment house was built last year.
私は猫に掻かれました。ー I was scratched by a cat.
For every passive sentence there is a corresponding active sentence.
猫は私に掻きました。ー A cat scratched me.
The other type of passive describes a situation when an action made by something/someone affected another person, who had no control over said situation.
So, if we use past tense, we simply state a fact.
姉は私のお菓子を食べました。ー Elder sister ate my sweets.
She did it, I know about it, but..uh, whatever. However, if we use passive voice the emphasis is that I’m very much pissedoff that my sister stole my food. (As in my samurai honor has been abused by that treacherous act).
私は姉にお菓子を食べられました。ー I was annoyed by elder sister eating my sweets.
Person who experienced some kind of impact - topic marked by the particle 「は」, agent, making said action, marked by 「に」.
Another (sad) example, if your favorite hamster dies you may say:
私はハムスターに死なれました。ー My hamster died (and I’m suffering).
Here are some words to use with passive voice (and to be unhappy with):
踏む「ふむ」ー to step on (foot) // наступить (на ногу)
殺す 「ころす」ー to kill // убивать
撃つ 「うつ」ー to shoot (at) // стрелять (в)
刺す 「さす」ー to stab // резать ножом
噛む 「かむ」ー to bite // кусать
轢く 「ひく」ー to run somebody over (with vehicle); to knock someone down // переехать
撥ねる 「はねる」ー to have a car hit someone // сбить машиной
衝突する 「しょうとつ」ー to collide // столкнуться
追突する 「ついとつ」ー to have a car hit from behind // врезаться сзади
盗む 「ぬすむ」ー to steal // украсть
誘拐する 「ゆうかい」ー to kidnap // похитить
ハイジャックする ー to hijack // захватить самолет
墜落する 「ついらく」ー to have plane crashed // упасть (самолету)
爆発する 「ばくはつ」ー to explode // взорвать
殺人者 「さつじんしゃ」ー murderer // убийца
殺し屋 「ころしや」ー professional killer, hit man // киллер
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