Has reading foreign gaming websites improved your language skills?

Rahul

Member
I've been reading gamefront.de, squarenet.info, jeux-france.com and sengamer.nl (among others) for years since they (somehow) get certain news faster than your average NA publication. Not to mention other japanese and korean sites like 2ch, quiter, etc. that are fairly legible if you google/babelfish them up a bit. Much of the news posted here on GAF is in fact also sourced from a lot of these sites.

As a result I've noticed that my ability to read German and French has improved quite a bit and it's been a real help in keeping my skill with those languages at a decent level since high school years ago (too bad there are no websites in ancient Greek or Latin ...).

What about you? Also, list websites -- I'm curious what kind of foreign websites are out there reporting uptodate gaming news or other interesting content even though they aren't necessarily smack dab in the middle of the biggest parts (JP, US, UK) of the games industry.
 
Yes, it has. By reading us online sites like ign and gamespot, or by watching their video (p)reviews I improved my english skills considerably.
 
my lang. skilllllls are more l33t than jou!!!!!!!

teh intranet rulz.

If you think gaming sites are high level journalism that will improve your language skills, you need to pick up a reputable newspaper the next time you see sunlight.

Even if you are trying to learn another language, take a class. Trying to piece it together will only cause confusion when you try to create your own thoughts in that language.
 
I just come here and read it translated :D .I know a little German and French ( school ), and i can read the most words in English so that isn't a problem .

Edit : www.Xboxworld.nl has sometimes exclusives .
 
My Japanese has improved quite a bit while playing (and translating) all the games and reading the websites.

But other than Japanese (my second language English and my native language Chinese), I don't know any other language, ha ha !
 
Yeah, I read (and participate in) several different Japanese websites and (especially) forums for practice. I try to do that daily. It takes a bit longer to read up on the current news, but it's more rewarding in the end.
 
pxleyes said:
my lang. skilllllls are more l33t than jou!!!!!!!

teh intranet rulz.

If you think gaming sites are high level journalism that will improve your language skills, you need to pick up a reputable newspaper the next time you see sunlight.

Even if you are trying to learn another language, take a class.
Thankyou for this useless contribution to the thread that proves that not only are your language skills flawed at best, you can't even read the thread's first post.

Reading foreign gaming news sites is relevant:

1. It's not boring or depressing, like regular news generally tends to be
2. It works as a regular activity to keep your skill level up with languages you already know. I never claimed that reading foreign gaming news websites somehow teaches you new languages.

pxleyes said:
Trying to piece it together will only cause confusion when you try to create your own thoughts in that language.
This, however, is a useful sentence. I haven't actually caught myself thinking in French or German yet, but I frequently trip up over my thoughts in Dutch or English and as such garble my speech as a result. I can only imagine how much more complicated this would be if one's primary languages were, say, Korean and Spanish.
 
It certainly has helped me to improve my English, which still sucks but well...The Skype sessions with Panajev were the funniest thing though.
 
My foreign language skills are shit. Im very good at English but my french sucks more than jay leno.
 
johnjohnson said:
Yes, it has. By reading us online sites like ign and gamespot, or by watching their video (p)reviews I improved my english skills considerably.

Yeah, I also.
 
It sure did, but the other way around as my main language is french. Except on my site's forum I barely even read/write in french anymore, even my books are mostly in english. I know my english is far from good, but I'm still quite happy when I see that I can read/write/speak the language much better than most people here, without ever learning the language outside of school (and german was my main second language...)
 
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