What level of Japanese will Kotodama teach?
Kotodama is geared towards the complete Japanese novice.
The goal of Kotodama is to ground a player in the Japanese language.
After playing Kotodama, these are the learning goals we hope players
will achieve (in order of importance):
- Familiarity and confidence pronouncing words in the Japanese
language
- The ability to recognize and use the names of ~100 world objects*
- The ability to recognize and use a set of ~20 verbs*
- The ability to recognize and use simple sentence structures
(DO ->Particle ->V)
- The ability to distinguish spoken Japanese from other foreign
languages
- The ability to distinguish
written Japanese from other non-roman scripts
- Some limited cultural sensibilities such as greetings, clothing/architecture
styles, body language, aesthetics, accents, etc
*These numbers would vary based on actual length of complete game
It is important to note that although Kotodama uses actual Japanese
characters for all Japanese dialogue and words, it does not actually
"teach" reading of Japanese. Written characters are always accompanied
by audio cues and the primary focus of Kotodama is listening/speaking
skills.
Also important to note is that the language elements taught in
Kotodama must fit a balance between two factors: 1. practicality-
actual use in real life or in anime the player may be watching,
and 2. game use- how much it enables and enhances actual gameplay.
For example, the prototype first level of Kotodama teaches 2
primary verbs (open & pick up) and 2 secondary verbs (close &
put down). Why? Because in an RPG, players often have the opportunity
to open treasure boxes or doors, or pick up objects and drop
objects. Also these verbs are very physical and thus easy to
demonstrate and explain. These
also happen to be fairly practical verbs for real life. In later
levels, Kotodama would teach verbs like
burn, heal, destroy, & hit even
though these may not be among the first 20 verbs learned in a
traditional class because they are interesting to the player
demographic, often used in anime, and enable RPG style gameplay.
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