Among Us For Language Learning?

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about language acquisition and games. Instead of making a game now, let's use an existing one. And what better game than the currently popular "Among Us"?

Other games do work as well, though. ("Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes")

Why Among Us?

Among Us Skeld Map With Translation
~ by GreenyNeko

So, why specifically Among Us? Despite its fantasy setting, some of the vocabularies are practical outside of the game as well. Compared to other games, players need to describe the situation as detailed as possible while the imposters try to manipulate information believably. On top of that, the game encourages communication, specifically via voice. The fun and popularity play a role in this choice too.

Language Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis

Summarizing the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, we learn a language through comprehensible input. In the game, intelligible communication is fundamental to win the game. Whether or not you're an imposter or crewmate. Being unable to get your point across is sus. In this scenario, language production goes hand in hand with comprehensible input. The talker is the teacher, and the listener is the student. The game's context helps to make messages intelligible. Even with limited language understanding, your game's knowledge helps comprehension expanding your proficiency by filling the gaps.^[1]

How To Get Started?

Technically you can jump right in and figure things out, but you might lose the first few rounds. Alternatively, you can acquire a language by watching other people play. Similar to how kids don't talk at first.

Among Us German Acquisition Comic
~ by GreenyNeko

Possible ways to learn the game's vocabulary would be

• listen to Youtubers play "Among Us" in the target tongue (preferably with subtitles)
• change the game's language to the target language (if applicable)
• translate the game and most relevant vocabulary
• lookup a list of the words

Now gather learners of the target language and a few natives. Among Us requires 4-10 players, but you know the saying the more, the merrier. Lastly, try to only speak in the target language, even if you only use single words. (report, blue imposter, etc.)

Off You Go!

Continuing to play this way will steadily improve your understanding through active listening and thinking. It isn't limited to this game but feels like it's a better one. Good luck with your language learning journey.

Have I mentioned this Among Us research I have going on?
It only takes 10-20 or 30-40 minutes!
>> Click to check it out!

^[1] www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug

Acquiring Languages and Games

Since I'm coming close to writing/performing the last exam of the semester, it's about time to continue learning Japanese. What I did not expect was the number of videos about language learning vs language acquisition, which ended up in my feed. Curious as I am, I watched them, of course. And here is what I've been thinking about it.

Language Learning VS Acquisition Summary

Firstly, what is language acquisition? The idea behind it is that you do not learn the rules (grammar), vocabulary, etc. of the language (language learning). Instead, you acquire it the same way children or babies do (language acquisition). But how do babies learn the language? By being immersed in it. We start not understanding a single word, but after some time, given their context, we can figure it out. The more words we acquire, the more we can derive through what we already know. Supposedly we do not obtain through repetition as many apps do it. (for example Duolingo) ^[1]

My Approach To Such An App

For maximum immersion, throwing the player into a fictional world instead of asking questions about language makes more sense. The goal is to create a virtual environment tailored to obtaining it similar to acquiring it by living abroad. This virtual world most likely needs the player to navigate it, which means we have to teach the user words that describe these actions. (right, left, up, down, north, east, west, south, jump, etc...)

Like in real life, the player can be asked to complete quests. Starting with simple ones such as: Bring this orange to the fruit store to the right or bring this sword to the northern guard. Whether the words "right" and "northern" are marked, is a question of difficulty I would say. The idea of these quests is to teach the user the meaning of those words. Important is ensuring that the possible mistakes the player makes are limited. They might not notice subtle hints, and we don't want them to get frustrated. Naming the store of the orange quest "store" is a positive example of this. On the other hand, the sword fetching quest is going to be frustrating, since the player might not know what north, sword or guard is.

From there on out, it pretty much builds on top of each other. Slowly teaching the player vocabulary and later on grammar through context. For example, let's assume the player learns German. They already know the word "springen" (engl.: jump). Putting NPCs that react to him with "Du springst" (engl.: "You jump"), then they get subtle clues to what "du" (engl.: you) could mean. If some children say: "Wir springen" (engl.: "We jump"), and they do it, we get more clues about pronouns. This may not even be the best approach, but you can see what I'm aiming at here.

Conclusion

So, as you can see, if this approach does indeed work, it might be possible to create a fully immersive game, which supports you on your way to acquire- instead of learning a language. Done through reading and hearing, and interacting with the world and its speech.

However, this is just my thoughts on it. Whether or not it works needs to be put to the test, and maybe this post sparks a conversation between people who develop language learning applications.

^[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illApgaLgGA

Representing the Leveling of Language Comprehension

Sometimes you have this idea of making a game where the player levels things by practicing it. Sometimes you have this idea of actually making the player learn a language. While letting my mind wander and discussions the idea of having a game where you have to practice stuff to improve your level in them and your stats but you lose levels and stats at a set time I came across this other topic.

When We Learn Language

The first thing we learn when getting to a new language is the first words and sentences. Basic words and basic sentences at that. But, we have to go back a step. It would be boring this way and we probably don't want out language from the game to share the same alphabet or symbols as the Latin ones. The Latin alphabet we use is basically just symbols that are given some meaning to. Basically, we assign them the information on how to pronounce them and in which order they come (A-Z). We can even give them a value like in the ASCII code. It's the same with the greek alphabet where we additionally have the meaning of "the end" given to Ω (Omega). Another interesting aspect is that the size of the symbols can matter too. In Japanese for example characters that are written half the size are pronounced differently. This means that different attributes of the symbols can create different meanings as well.

Learning a Foreign Writing

So, when we learn foreign writing we have to understand the difference between these symbols. To someone new, the symbols don't mean anything at all. They look different but in our minds, we see all those symbols as equal. This is often just the first impression but in the end, it could represent the first level: level 0.

Given a sentence, we could represent this as:

Level 0: ???? ????? ??? ????

Next up we start to realize they're different symbols. So let's represent them as they are written as a message in this foreign language:

Level 1: 3k?Q "$k3e )dk ยง%s1

If we continue reading we might make things out that represent punctuation. With this, we can split the text into sentences.

Level 2: 3k?, "$k3e )dk ยง%s.

In the next step, we understand how to pronounce these symbols. In the Japanese language, for example, this is where we understand there is a romaji for each symbol. We've now reached level 2 and we're able to read the text.

Level 3: frd, isrfp lor shubrong.

Next up we start to understand the mechanics that make equal symbols mean different things. Like how a "k3" is read as "aa" but a "3k" as an "ar". You can make up any rules you want for this. The more rules, the more difficult to understand. Some mechanics you can use here could be, different meaning at the beginning or end or when following a certain symbol, etc..

Level 4: ard, isaap lor shubrog.

Level 4 and we can already read it. Hooray! Now we need to be able to understand it. With this next step, there are multiple ways to do it. One way would be to use transliteration for the symbols. Another way is to translate word for word. Here the Zipf law should be used.

Translating Words...

Small Excourse Zipf Law:

To keep it short, Zipf Law says that the second most used words appear half as often as the most used word. The third most half as often as the second most etc.. This has been proven to work more or less well and hence you can use this here too.

This means now we can translate simple and often used words. You can use Wolfram Alpha to look this up for example. From here on out you can decide on how many steps you want to put in. With the slowest being one word per level. For an extra level, you can categorize words together. Like "why, how, where, when" could be the same as "why".

Level 5: they, isaap lor shubrog.

Level 6: they, isaap why shubrog.

Level 7: they, hello why shubrog.

Level 8: they, hello why is.

Transliteration of Symbols...

The other way would be via transliteration. If we say we now understand how to represent those foreign symbols with our symbols we can slowly get to the language we understand. This requires the foreign language to share traits though. In our example, both languages use consonants and vocals.

Level 5: tra, fanre bex paah.

Next up we have tried to scramble the consonants and vocals to fit it more. Let's say we fit a combination where the same character is the same.

Level 6: tra, barre xbz paah.

Now let's try around with consonants and vocals until we get something similar to a caesar shift. Similar because we stay in our groups when doing the shifting. That means the letter before a "j" is not an "i" but an "h". The letter before an "o" is not a "p" but an "i". A middle step could be for example:

• Shifted too low, correct, shifted too high, ...: rhi, gemko xgy caep.

Level 7: rga gakki vgx zaam.

Level 8: she, hello why been.

Grammar

Now we have a very similar message in both cases. I changed the meaning a little so it would better match the respective procedure. This is now a sentence out of familiar words. Now we need to make finding the correct meaning and apply grammar to it.

There are two ways to do this, either grammar first or correct words first. I do think applying grammar is a more natural way.

Grammar first:

Level 9: Hello, why she been?

Words first:

Level 9: you, hello how are.

Step 10, apply the other one.

Level 10: Hello, how are you?

Finish 'Em

Yeah and that concludes some ways to scale language understanding in levels from zero to ten. These are just a few ways to do it there are many more. Actually, if you're a game designer or writer go and do the following homework. Read up on different languages (No, you don't need to learn them) and learn what's unique about them. You wanna take a look at grammar, reading and/or writing and get inspired. It doesn't even have to be a real language.