IF for foreign speakers; historical IF
Emily Short
of the requests I've gotten from teachers/professors using IF.
First: can anyone suggest games that are in easy enough language to be
used educationally by foreign speakers? (E.g., a game written in
accessible French?) (Games written explicitly to teach a given
language would, of course, also be very interesting, but I am guessing
there aren't many out there.)
Second, I'm also interested in historical and *historically accurate*
IF: stuff that simulates a particular event or period in fair detail,
with good research. That would obviously include 1893 (which is
already on the list); it would exclude stuff like Damnatio Memoriae
(which includes fantasy elements, distortions, and a handful of
anachronistic jokes).
Thoughts?
Victor Gijsbers
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I just played through a few screens of "Avontuur", the Dutch translation
of Adventure. It's vocabulary is not easy per se, but (this being a
translation of Adventure) the text it is neither very ornate nor very
long. So the grammar is easy, and you won't have to look up too many words.
You can decide for yourself, though: if you think Adventure is good for
people trying to learn English, then I suppose its translations will be
good for people trying to learn the respective languages they have been
translated into.
"De Baron" is not such a good idea for people trying to learn a foreign
language.
This concludes my survey of modern Dutch IF. ;)
Regards,
Victor
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Emily Short
Hm, that raises a good if secondary point; I've also gone and tagged
the games I know of that have translations on IFDB with "translation
available", which may be a useful back-up reference, even if I'd like
the site itself to have more carefully-culled recommendations.
Otto Grimwald
> used educationally by foreign speakers? (E.g., a game written in
> accessible French?) (Games written explicitly to teach a given
> language would, of course, also be very interesting, but I am guessing
> there aren't many out there.)
I'd suggest looking for some of Yoruk's games (a.k.a. Benjamin Roux),
which are generally written in accessible French, and quite shorts:
for example:
- L'île du Phare Abandonné http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=204
- Kheper http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=020
- Lavoir http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=201
Some other games by our other authors may use quite much of slang and
may be less accessible.
On this page we have sorted the games by size (long games, short games,
speedif):
http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeux
- Ascenseur by Samuel Verschelde is also using a quite normal level of
language (it's not too tough to understand it I think) :
http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=031
It's conversation oriented.
We have also a translation of "adventure", I think it's quite a long
game but it may worth trying it.
We'd also like to have your feedback if you've randomly played some of
our games!
Laela
> Second, I'm also interested in historical and *historically accurate*
> IF: stuff that simulates a particular event or period in fair detail,
> with good research. That would obviously include 1893 (which is
> already on the list); it would exclude stuff like Damnatio Memoriae
> (which includes fantasy elements, distortions, and a handful of
> anachronistic jokes).
So I guess Savoir-Faire is out then ...
What about Jigsaw? (Or is it already on your list? My apologies if it
is.) I believe it's fairly accurate in the historical sections.
Nothing else you haven't already mentioned comes to mind, however.
I hope this post wasn't completely useless ...
Laela