In a recent survey we’ve conducted, we’ve verified that the overwhelming majority of users on these forums do not speak English as their mother tongue, only speaking it as a secondary language, thus unifying at least a semblance of a language barrier we all share. So a lot of us will be on the same page here.
The data is quite interesting, as the number of native English users hardly scratches the two digits, however don’t misunderstand this being evidence that you won’t find people who have English as their native tongue. Not only did we get a submission from hilarious forum regular, @Boo Man , an NZ resident, but other famous and renowned forum regulars such as @Gorse and @Octopus both speak it natively as they hail from the land of the funny leaf.
Now there’s nothing wrong a lack of fluency, as this author is not shy to display their terrible Spanish. But It’s quite tricky to break down this language barrier a lot of us share, including the author of this piece, as there’s a lot of nuances to it that go beyond simple language differences.
For example, countries like India, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia do have English as a spoken language, I’m even friends with a few monolingual English speakers from India (though they do have some fluency in Hindi), but often these places have a more unique English that’s harder to find in the big boy English speaking regions like USA, Canada, Britain and the funny bandicoot country.
English is a bizarre language…
A lot of us also do learn English in school, albeit it’s somewhat rudimentary English. You might be familiar with the two famous memes from Azumanga Daioh and Sakigake Otokojuku. “Hello everynyan” rings a bell? While it’s easy to misinterpret these jokes as funny random engrish, there’s a somewhat deeper context behind them. These are actually some of the phrases taught to us in school. Not verbatim, but super close. Now, the absurdity did make the jokes go over my head but once it clicked, it really clicked.Now, where does all of this lead us? It seemed like a lot of us had it rough, but how did we get to the point where we’re conversing on this very platform? To answer this, now would be a great time for this writer to drop the formalities and explain my tragic anime backstory.
Middle school was rough. Yes, middle school. As laughable as that sentence may sound, getting held-back in public Kuwaiti middle schools was a real fear for a lot of us silly country bumpkins who were only interested in cars, football and whether or not Undertaker or Triple H would win at Wrestlemania XXVII and XXVIII. They were simpler times. But a lot of us really hated math and English. Not me, I loved math! I vaguely still do, but English was my nightmare when I was 11. Never was able to utter so much as a basic sentence like “I like playing football”, to me, that was peak writing.
MBC Was King!
But naturally every obstacle can be overcome. It’s a matter of will. In summer after 6th grade, I made it my mission to actually learn English. One problem though… where the heck do I even start?
Luckily, this wasn’t an impossible answer. Here in the gulf, we’ve had a network of tv channels called “MBC”. Stands for Middle-east Broadcasting Channel… probably. It was a series of channels. “MBC2” was the “first ‘foreign movie channel’”, only American movies. There were also a different foreign movie channel for Bollywood films called “MBC Bollywood”, yeah… we’re not really creative with our names. But that wasn’t necessary. What’s helpful is that I’ve had means to actually be exposed to the language.
Some native English speakers might hear this and be wary, as “movie” speech isn’t exactly “natural” speech but rest assured, I wasn’t going around the streets saying “wassup, mother******!!” or anything psychotic like that. I did actually recognize certain phrases as being local. What I really needed was vocab. Lots, and lots of vocab! Context is how you learn languages, not grammar. Context is really hard to verbalize. It’s “experienced” not “taught”. Movies exposed me to an insane number of contexts and that’s what I needed most.
In a speeding 4 months, movies got me to where I am today. But where do games fit in here, I hear you ask! Oh, we’re getting there alright…
I introduce you to… my “follow the damn train”, but for non-English speakers.
You really thought the big smoke mission and plane missions were hard? That’s adorable, because at least you could play those.
Woozie, the prick!
If this image does not send chills down your spine, you and I are not the same.
Woozie, my absolute beloathed at the time was solely responsible for implanting this tinfoiled theory in my head that English devs were “out to get us”. I refuse to believe this wasn’t some elaborate troll to trick non English players. Like, at one point do you go “hmmm, today I’ll increase my lung capacity!”, if that is a real thought you have while playing a game, you deserve a medal. Not sure which medal, but probably with something a nerd emoji on it.
This is all hyperbolic of course, but after rewatching the same cutscene over and over, a cutscene which I’m sure some people never even encountered in their lives (I would know, I somehow didn’t trigger it on my replays. Guess I got wiser), you start getting a little schizo.
To my 12 years old, this was my Bible.
By the time I was 12 however, this was well behind me. Not just that, but I uncovered the glorious world of cheat codes too.Now it may seem as if this story was even before it even begun but let me reassure you, this was barely the start. Movies and Pro-Wrestling are where I got my feet wet, but games are where I truly begun swimming like a butterfly! Or, some other American idiom, I dunno. (Unrelated, but did you know “Supercalifragalisticexpealidocous” is a real word? What a funky language!)
Throughout the years, my knowledge only kept piling up. We all know language proficiency has levels. Now am I claiming GTA will take your language proficiency from A0 to D1? Maybe, but it is worth highlighting this ten year timeline. Yes, ten years.
Being a total gta nutjob meant that, of course, got gta v on release. Now the timeline here adds up. I got it after I had good English, not before. Yet… something was missing. What the heck were they all talking about???
GTA V: The Final Frontier… kinda
In a bizarre twist of circumstances, I had this absolute horror I may have gone back to step 0. Make no mistake, I understood what they said on a moment-to-moment basis, but if you ask me to relay them back to you, I’d be at a loss of words. It’s actually the gaming of equivalent of a friend discussing a topic you know nothing about and you being able to do nothing except nod along. Not because you didn’t care, but because you couldn’t. Everything felt foreign.Because see, it WAS foreign. In a strange turn of events, the brainiac writers at Rockstar had this genius to make the most hotly anticipated piece of media of all time (no hyperbole, by the by) to have a story where the context of events is extremely context-sensitive and tied solely to a single city during a single period. In other words, if you have no prior knowledge of what 2013 LA was like, and I do mean SPECIFICALLY 2013 LA, you were likely alienated.
This video is… kinda terrible, actually. The guy is too loud. But it’s what we’re stuck with when it comes to journalistic needs.
Now this was both stressful and exciting. The next big step in my English journey, region specific context! Being a language freak will by default make you a culture freak. Language is culture, after all. This was exciting as much as it was intimidating. But I wasn’t afraid, I had to keep strutting along.
This next step into both my gta and English was quite a meaningful one. GTA V is… a complicated game to discuss. Which may sound weird if you like it and that’s great! If you don’t, my words make more sense. However I’ll be very unvague and say I love it to death. Picking between gta games is like picking between my children. You just can’t make me choose. So what’s odd about 5 in particular? Well, let’s just say this journey wasn’t the simplest one.
One might say a story shouldn’t be the sole defining factor of your enjoyment. And this statement should ring true here because we’re not talking about a good or bad story, we’re talking about a story you can understand at all. This is a unique situation that’s extremely tough to replicate naturally. I know I don’t have to LIKE the story to like the game, but I needed an answer. What’s actually going on in GTA V?
Is GTA V even good at all?
I was absolutely blessed by this gem of a video to pop into my YT recs back in ‘21. I could not be more relieved. A native English relaying the story in layman terms was precisely what I wanted. It didn’t help that this trend of “location-specific” storytelling became more common and more alienating. It actually explains why Japanese games are so popular, they remove themselves from real world context sensitivity.
But to further elaborate on this video’s strengths (and also save you a watch-time), he likes GTA V, but what’s bigger is that he had a history with it that’s near identical to yours truly in how he didn’t really understand the plot at first. And he’s a native English speaker. He’s ahead of me, but had the same struggles! It was quite illuminating finding this particular kinship. I was also happy to not only leave the video with a truer appreciation of gta v, but an opinion that’s much easier to navigate.
One mission left… play the game!
So naturally after all this, a GTA V replay was clearly in order. So I booted up my Xbox, sat down, sunk in the time and 49 hours later, viola! GTA V solidified its state as one of my favorite games of all time. I understood the entire story for the first and it really did for making me further love the game. A similar thing happened with GTA 4, a game I already held close to my heart but after my replay it became my favorite game… ever!
I have this shirt for real. And I’m willing to reinstall 98 worth of GTA V gigabytes just to prove I do.
Now I’m curious, how was your journey with learning English through games? Got any tales? Comment below!
Lastly, some housekeeping…
Hi there! Did you enjoy this article? Would you like something similarly culture-driven and about personal history? Why not head over to my friend @Waffles piece about Road Rash? Might be up your alley if you enjoy highly-detailed retrospective pieces like this! In other news, how’s everyone this evening? Enjoying some warm tea? @Jusaiki messaged me this afternoon and we’re both ok-ish but we’ll recover soon, hopefully. That’s all for today. Later.
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