Games that built your Vocabulary

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

My younger brother is probably the least well-read person in our family, and thus tends to have a less diverse vocabulary than the rest of us.

Today, he mentioned to me how for a project of his, he was going back through the maps for Hexen, one of our old favourite games on the N64, and he learned that the names for a lot of its maps weren't just made up to sound cool as he originally thought them to be. Gibbet, Effluvium, Vividarium, Crucible and Hypostyle are among those he just looked up to learn the name of, and each map reflects the name well. I knew them already, but I thought that was kind of cool myself that even a 'medieval Doom' can teach you new words.

What about you? I generally look up any word I ever see that I don't recognize, but has a game ever taught you new words (besides profanity due to rage)?

 

[Sleepy Sol]

It's story time. A game has taught me profanity, but not due to rage.

Once, when I was very young, and my gaming experience was generally kinda limited, I played a game called Legend of Dragoon on the PS1. Part of the introductory sequence involves you saving your childhood friend from a prison. Game's rated T, so I pretty much was playing it at a rather inappropriate age, considering profanity was noticeably present in the game even if it wasn't a big part of the script.

Anyways, in this early sequence, I recall one of the Prison Wardens calling your main character a bastard. Or maybe it was the main character calling the Warden a bastard, not sure. But I legitimately had no idea what the word meant as a 6-7 year old. Naturally, when I went back to my parents' house (the PS1 was kept at my grandparents' house), that night I asked my mother what the word "bastard" meant. At a point when I was still afraid of sleeping in my own bed, and generally afraid of the dark (this was as we were going to sleep). I felt so bad after my mom explained to me what the word meant that I guess it left that memory in me.

I definitely got my foul-mouthed vocabulary started at an early age, in any case. Probably not much of an entertaining story, though.

 

[VoidOfOne]

Metal Gear Solid.

Learned that MAD meant Mutually Assured Destruction. I'm sure I heard that in class somewhere, but it didn't stick with me until that game.

"No wonder they called it MAD."

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I remember picking up a lot of sword names and synonyms from Diablo II (glaive, claymore, zweihander, etc).

I learned about "shimmy" from Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, and "strafe" and "hazard" from Half-Life.

Also "voucher", "magnitude" and "dire" from Pokemon.

And "blister" (as in lil' glass bottle) from Desperadoes: Wanted Dead or Alive.

 

[SoreWristed]

My grasp of the english language singlehandedly came from pokemon blue and gold as a kid. Which led me to be able to play any other english languaged games. Understanding the most basic terms and words came from the fact that when i was little, most children's and disney movies were not translated into dutch, so my mom would sit by and translate most of it. She stopped doing that once we corrected her on a translation on one point.

I find it horrible that almost all games aimed at children are translated to dutch here, it takes away from the entire learning experience that a game can be. Same with all movies.

I can go into a video store and get not just the dutch version, but often even the flemish (general term for the local dialect of the northern part of belgium) version of a movie. And when i showed my then 6 year old nephew a movie in english, he stopped watching because he didn't even want to try understanding english. His parents then got him the dvd in dutch. Lazy in my opinion.

The worst part was that i couldn't even get the english version of professor layton and the curious house in Belgium without having to get it imported from the UK.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Magic the Gathering is the one I remember the most, since I had to look up everything I didn't understand.
But there are many many others as well.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver games expanded my vocabulary a bit...I sure as Hell didn't know what an ediface was before playing SR2. Then there are games like Project Diva and my various other imports that haven't helped much in my becoming fluent in Japanese but I'm at least confident that I wouldn't be completely screwed if I somehow wound up lost in Japan somewhere.

 

[Guffe]

As someone who has English as his "third laguage" I learn new stuff from games all the time.
Especially as a young boy playing Mario N64 for example, the fact that I had to read it, adn then do it, made me connect words with things. So cloud would tell me "Run to the Peak of the Mountain". I steer Mario "Run" most likely has something to do with that and when I arrived at King Bob-Omb at the top of the mountain, my 8 year old brain connects peak as top and Mountain as the big rock = new words.
Pokemon was also a very big influence.
Even today I learn new words when playing games, but as a young kid it was a great way to learn, playing games that is. WarcraftIII is another one that increased my vocabulary quite a lot in my teenage years.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

The Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver games expanded my vocabulary a bit...I sure as Hell didn't know what an ediface was before playing SR2. Then there are games like Project Diva and my various other imports that haven't helped much in my becoming fluent in Japanese but I'm at least confident that I wouldn't be completely screwed if I somehow wound up lost in Japan somewhere.

Second the Legacy of Kain games. The characters in the game are mostly thousands of years old and have millennia of intelligence, and they talk like it too. If your brother is willing lool up words he doesn't know, he'll learn plenty from listening to the conversations between Raziel and Kain.

 

[Auron225]

Pokemon taught me what "Withdraw" and "Deposit" meant... I was 7, alright?

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Since english isn't my native language, practically every game back when i was a kid thaught me some vocabulary.

Honorary mention goes to Grim Fandango, because i've learned some spanish vocab from it as well and (Planescape)Torment, for teaching me handful of words that were made up for this game along with regular ones.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

My younger brother is probably the least well-read person in our family, and thus tends to have a less diverse vocabulary than the rest of us.

Today, he mentioned to me how for a project of his, he was going back through the maps for Hexen, one of our old favourite games on the N64, and he learned that the names for a lot of its maps weren't just made up to sound cool as he originally thought them to be. Gibbet, Effluvium, Vividarium, Crucible and Hypostyle are among those he just looked up to learn the name of, and each map reflects the name well. I knew them already, but I thought that was kind of cool myself that even a 'medieval Doom' can teach you new words.

Heh, that's how I learned those words too. I was 7 or 8 when my dad got Heretic and Hexen, and I'd never heard the word Citadel, or Cathedral, or Confluence, or Grotto. I learned a lot of archaic terms from video games set in the fantasy middle ages.

 

[sanamia]

Since English is my third language (fourth depending on how I count). I learned English exclusively through media consumption. The most helpful to expand my vocabulary where old adventure games, I talk about those where you had to type the commands. Not that modern point & click stuff.

I remember fondly the times I had a dictionary and tried to make out what the pixels on a screen represented to then find a English word the games recognized. Made even more difficult by not being sure if the pixels represented a ball or a bowl.

 

[Islandbuffilo]

I'd say 70% of my vocabulary was learnt from cartoons or video games, my ability to read came from the sole fact that it was a necessity to progress in video games.

 

[Zydrate]

Not games, but the internet.
Once upon a time I was part of a forum of meme-quoting 'net dwellers. I was young, and all my earliest posts were ridden with typos and general childish opinions. This forum mercilessly made fun of it, but I stuck with them (I suspect because it's the only place I had moderately "real" friends). Over the course of a couple years and 4,000 posts (I've not yet broken that post record on any other forum, ever, though I've been a 'part' of some communities for longer), they helped me concentrate more on my typing and vocabulary.

They were all pricks but they did that one good thing for me. They forced me to pay attention to my typing.