My Guide to Working with Japanese :: World of Warcraft

#1 Aug 26 2004 at 4:42 PM Rating: Excellent

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Admins, I was hoping you might sticky this, or at least throw it in the guides section. Thanks!
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A Guide to Partying with the Japanese

Sections:
I. Introduction and Goals
II. Getting Started
III. Getting Invited/Getting that LFP Japanese Player
IV. Japanese Courtesy – Interacting with Nihonjin, and not looking like an ****
V. Saying Goodbye
VI. Using and Understanding, In-Game Body Language: Speaking without Words
VII. Closing
VIII. Cultural, Language, and Cross-Cultural General Gaming Resources

I.

So, it’s happened to all of us. We’re LFP, and the only parties in the area are Japanese. I know this happens to me a lot, considering I can normally only play at relatively late NA hours (when the Japanese have started to play). Or, maybe it’s the other way around. Your party has everything you could possibly need, except a white mage. Then you see him, an uber-well equipped white mage who’s LFP, but has {Japanese} {Please} in his search info.

This guide is here to help you survive those situations. It’ll touch on some important aspects, like language (spoken and visual), acceptable and unacceptable behavior, some cultural differences, etc. It will probably not help you in every situation, but hopefully you’ll be a little more prepared.

Most importantly, I want to show you that the language/culture barrier is NOT insurmountable. SquareEnix made the difficult decision about making the servers unified because, as they put it “It would help to unify players by allowing them to experience the cultures and languages of places foreign to them, in game and out.” Why cut yourself off from that? To block yourself off from the majority of players on the server, you’re missing half of the game, and half of the fun.

II.

First things first: Language. You speak English, they speak Japanese. What are you ever to do!?
Simple, learn some Japanese.
Chances are the Japanese party, or Japanese player, has some experience with the English language, even if it is only from their middle school days. Now, I’m not expecting you to go out and become fluent. But I am expecting you to print out a hiragana chart, and a katakana chart, and maybe even memorize them if you so choose. There will be some links for these near the end of the guide. You will use these to decipher the kana you’ll see quite often in game and translate it over into Roman characters which will be easier for you to deal with. The more you do this, the quicker you’ll get used to them. Eventually you’ll begin to memorize them just from reading them so much and no translation will even be necessary!
Now some of you are probably asking, why should I learn their language? Simple, it’s called mutual respect.
The Japanese have to learn not only 2 written syllabaries (kana), they also have to learn Chinese characters (Kanji), and 'Romanji' or Romance characters. Sadly, in most countries that speak romance languages, people only ever learn the Romance character set. This is a bad thing. One of the first things you can do to help prepare yourself better for the game, as well as in every day life, is to learn the 2 basic kana sets, Hiragana and Katakana.

They’re normally the first characters taught to small children in Japan, in fact you can find children’s libraries written entirely in Hiragana and Katakana. When you look at the charts, you’re going to notice that they’re used to make the same sounds. So they must be interchangeable, right!?

Wrong!

Hiragana is used for native Japanese words. By that I mean words which are 100% Japanese in origin. Katakana is used for borrowed words. If you see something written in Katakana then your first thought should be to try sounding it out. Many times it will sound vaguely familiar.

Hiragana and Katakana are what are called "syllabaries." A syllabary is like an alphabet, but instead of each letter having its own independent sound, it's based on a few key syllables. In Japanese, those syllables would be "A" (like in car), "I" (like in eek), "U" (like in oooooooooh), "E" (like eh), and "O" (like oh). Now, the syllables are made by just popping a consonant in front of that. So the second part of the syllabary, the k column, would be "ka" "ki" "ku" "ke" and "ko". Respectively, other columns follow the same pattern with 1 or 2 exceptions.

Now is when you should go print out those hiragana and katakana charts!

Now, you may be wondering "Great, so now I understand what all those squiggles mean. It doesn't help me if I can sound them out but have no clue what it IS that I'm sounding out." This is where lists common phrases, dictionaries, etc come in. The more familiar you make yourself with Japanese, the more you’ll know, and the less you have to look up.

I’ve thrown in a few online guides to conversational Japanese, and some links to lists of common FFXI phrases. If you don’t understand what someone in your Japanese party says, more than likely you can choose to disregard it. Or you can make a note to try to figure it out later. That’s 100% up to you. Try to figure out what you can.

Once again, I’m not trying to say that you should become fluent in Japanese, I’m simply trying to say that you should become familiar with their kana, and be prepared to encounter it.

III.

So you want to join that Japanese party, or you want that LFP Japanese player to join yours. Time to make your introductions. If you’re just beginning, and don’t want to take a whack at using Romanji, you can simply say {Excuse me…} {Help!} {Do you need it?} {Invite to join party} {Thank you!}. The auto-translate function in the game is a million times more useful than many give it credit for. If you’re not used to using it, type in the first 1 or 2 letters of what you want to say and hit tab. This should bring up a listing of things which match up.

This alone will work on 90% of the parties out there. If not, you can choose to wait longer, or else actually use some Japanese. This is where your Useful phrases guide will come in very useful! The most important thing here is to communicate using every tool you have at your disposal. The more you use the tools, the better you’ll get with them. And the better you get with them, the more natural they’ll seem.

Be as respectful and polite as you possibly can. If the phrase guide you’re looking at has listings for formal and informal versions of things, use the formal versions. You’re obviously a foreigner who’s trying to speak to native speakers in their language, and the least you can do is be polite to them while doing it.

If it still doesn’t work out for you, you might want to move on. Its better not to pester, so cut your losses and wait for the next party to come along. This leads us to our next section: Japanese courtesy.

IV.

The Japanese are a very closed, private, respectful people. Despite coming a huge way into the modern world, and being a society at the head of the technological frontiers, they’re still heavily rooted in ages old tradition. This is both advantageous, and disadvantageous for you.

First, expect to be treated a little different. You’re a foreigner. Japanese as a closed people have never been huge fans of foreigners. They instinctively put other Japanese before foreigners. Its nothing personal, its thousands of years of culture showing themselves. Deal with it.

Secondly, don’t pester. The Japanese are shy and reserved normally. Don’t pester. The same goes with NA parties too. Pestering makes you look like a 2 year old.

Thirdly, be as polite as possible. Some things are commonly accepted informally, others aren’t.

Finally, don’t join a Japanese party and expect to leave 20 minutes later. The Japanese are extremely, extremely loyal. It used to be believed in Japan that when someone worked for a company, they were going to work there for life. If they were lucky enough, and had moved far enough up the ladder at their company, they could be buried in their company owned graveyard. They are loyal.

So what this should say to you is that you shouldn’t join a Japanese party expecting to fake a d/c, or to leave after a short period of time. It’s rude towards NA players, and the rudeness is amplified towards members of Asian cultures.

Don’t talk an over abundance. A lot of Asian gamers find that people who talk a lot are annoying, or at least disruptive. Not all, but a lot. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you decided to get fluent in Japanese.

Now you’re in the party and you have a rough idea how to behave, you might wonder how to actually do your job without being able to talk, or at least not being able to say much.

Simple… most jobs don’t require that much communication. A white mage knows their job. They do it without needing to be told how and when to do it. In fact the only job which really requires a decent amount of communication is thief. And that’s just to organize your SA+TA. 99.9% of conversation in a PT isn’t really necessary when you think about it.

V.

Now, you’ve enjoyed your party, and had a good time. But, it’s a few hours later and you really must be going. You do NOT want to leave unannounced. This is a universal rule also. Do not leave without letting the party know you’re leaving. And say it in downtime so battle spam doesn’t make it disappear before they get a chance to read it. I normally announce a half hour, 15 minutes, and 5 minutes before I have to go. It allows the leader to begin looking for someone to replace you.

Say your goodbyes, bow, and head on your way. You just survived your first party with the Japanese! Easy, wasn’t it?

VI.

One of the most common mistakes people make is saying something like “I can’t communicate with people who speak Japanese!” That’s a lie. Humans, as a species, more than likely didn’t have spoken languages until somewhere around 15000 BC, well after we grace the globe. If monkey-men could coordinate themselves well enough to bring down a mammoth, you can coordinate yourselves enough to play a video game together.

The key is body language. They have emotes in the game for a reason. Use them! A bow is universally understood as a sign of respect, and often gratitude. Crying means you’re sad or upset. Give a rose to someone as a playful fun gesture. Your imagination is the limit. As a side note I always carry around a stack of roses just to give them out to people.

VII.

I hope this guide helps you all out. Like I said, it won’t really make up for not being able to speak the language, but hopefully it points you in the right directions. Listed below are some links to help you. If you have any comments or CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, please feel free to let me know!

VIII.

Here are some links that will help you out:

Kids-Japan: A website made by some school students in Japan. It discusses learning Japanese, and has some very nice hiragana charts. It also has a primer on Japanese culture. It’s a great resource.

Japanese Kanji: Another awesome site. Here they have downloadable flashcards, as well as some lessons on conversational Japanese.

Shigemo: Nihongo Guide: This site provides excellent listings of common phrases specifically for FFXI in Japanese and English. Use it like your life depends on it!

Jenova Project Common japanese Listing: Another listing of useful Japanese words and phrases.

Japanese Dirty Words: It doesn't quite have what you may think. It contains a lot of Japanese slang that you might encounter. Just a note, on the more vulgar things listed.. don't trust them. Japanese as somewhat of a rule is a very clean language. Most of the insults are fairly subtle, and you probobly shouldn't be hurling them in game anyways.

Edited, Thu Aug 26 18:38:10 2004 by scubamage

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