So, you tried learning a language through all the conventional methods-- you got your flash card
apps, you got your textbooks, everything. Have you ever considered learning a language through a
game? I'm not talking drops-- drops is NOT a video game. i'm DEFINITELY not talking duolingo.
Even though it has characters, it is not a video game i'm talking more something like... THIS. it's
called Lingo Legend, it is a brand-spanking-new video game out on iOS. it's a quest game,
which is very fitting because language learning is like a journey.. right? and Lingo Legend and
i partnered up to make a video about it. i tried it out for three days and compiled
all my first impressions. spoiler... i really like it. so without further ado,
i will hand the mic to my good sis Past Elysse, and she will show you what the game is all about.
so when you open Lingo Legend, it's not just like the game starts up immediately when you're on it.
it has like tabs. so there's the game, there's a language tab, i think this is just-- oh,
this is showing you the words that they're having you practice right now. and then you can change
the difficulty level, and there's challenges. So there I was, grooming Hamilton's luxurious mane,
practicing my greetings when all of a sudden, a nearby tree trunk sprang to life and started
flailing around! my dearest animals fled in a panic-- oh, they must have been so scared. okay,
so you choose a hero, Aila or Hamish. they said GENDER ROLES. you're a boy or you're a girl. you
know what? just to spice things up, i think we're gonna pick Hamish. more than a week passed since
our animals fled we followed their tracks into the wandering woods-- those creatures were everywhere!
i'm starting to wonder, are Aila and Hamish, like.. is that... are we supposed to ship?
Twisted trees and hulking spiders. the further we went, the more dangerous they became. we had
to retreat. but the ruggedly handsome Hamish had a brilliant idea for their weapons, so powerful
that the monsters would cower in fear. inspiring. um, i guess we're supposed to go adventure now.
all right we're doing a battle with these words. Bargeld, meine Brille. okay, so each turn you will
draw cards from your deck and use them to defeat your opponent. so it's like yu-gi-oh? this topic
is full of vocabulary concerning essential items you may need at home or when traveling abroad. you
also introduced the german possessive adjectives mein/meine and dein/deine to speak about my and
your items. i could do this sh*t eeeaaasy. so are we really about to let a clown looking like
this... kill us? i don't think so. okay let's do... i love a good bash. Bargeld is cash. YOOMP!
you just got yoomped. i'm just in love with this animation, like.. it's very well done. honestly, i
didn't expect this game to be this well done. and that's not even saying anything bad, it's just in
the language community we don't really have like.. games, you know? we have study apps. this guy
better not beat my ass. oh, i blocked it! he's gonna make me go back to freaking bashing.
oh sh*t! that was a mistake. can this dude die already? i'm getting impatient. you see i thought
i was gonna be physically fighting, like, this is a game where you fight through moves and cards.
but oh my god, i thought i was gonna have to be like, strategizing. yeah, i'm gonna headbutt this
mf. see, what's cool is that they have different ways that you can give the answer. so this one is
like a typing one, there's ones where it gives you the definition and says "is this true or false?"
yeah, they have the ones where they just make you pick out the word, stuff like that.
what's this cobra strike talking about? i didn't mean to do that, i'm just doing this
so fast. okay, focus Elysse. Schmerzmittel.. "pain medium".. is it like ibuprofen i think
Schmerzmittel is pain reliever. cash? that is false. all right, let's see what he's got...
why is he charging? see, what is this? okay, damage and debuff. the enemy will deal 24 damage
and give you a negative status effect. all right, we're gonna do a headbutt, and then shell shield.
this guy just will not die. thank you! his name was infantry.. the infantry, like in an army, but
with a tree. it's pretty damn good. i'm wondering how high up the vocabulary goes, because if we're
just talking about like, Reisepässe and, you know, Taschen and things like that, i know those words.
i guess it's good to review, but you know. i'm feeling like a gamer, honestly. i think i'm gonna
leave off there. so, first impressions... i think that they could definitely incorporate a lot more
C-level material or even B-level like it went... i was surprised to see that the levels went
from Beginner to Elementary. so it was beginner, novice, elementary. and i thought, well, you know,
this will be good for review, but i don't know if i'll get as much out of it. because the basic
concept is vocabulary, and you know vocabulary can be applied to any level. it's not just a beginner
thing. i'm not sure if maybe i'm seeing it wrong, maybe it will like progress to that in the future,
but i just i saw from the start i wasn't able to pick my correct level. but i love it. i'm so,
so impressed with the graphics of it, i just have never seen something like this in, you know,
the language learning app community. i find it really exciting. it's kind of like a sign to
me that language learning is kind of becoming a mainstream hobby. for me, when i was 14, that was
not the case. it's very interactive and it's easy. hello again! so this is my second day using Lingo
Legend and i gotta say, they're pretty creative with the way that they will get you to come back
to this app. other study apps have always been like "hey, um.. you know, it's been it's been a
while since you studied.. you might want to come back and, you know, work on your language skills?"
Lingo Legend is like, "hey, there's some type of creature going through your bag. you want
to come check this out?" i'm like well shit, when you put it like that... i gotta admit,
i'm a little bit confused about the progression of stuff, but i'm having a lot of fun doing
battles. so there are different topics and focuses that you can talk about, or i guess learn about in
the game. and right now i think i have essential items. i really don't care about this, and that
was just like the default that i landed in because i put myself at like the highest level that they
have, so i skipped a couple of levels. i'm gonna deactivate essential items because that's like..
credit card, pants, suitcase.. stuff like that. and the good thing is they're not locked, like,
you don't have to earn your passage into that chapter, right? you could learn about
something advanced WHILE you learn about something simplistic, whereas, like, i don't know... if you
guys know in Duolingo, you have to test into it, or it's all like a progression. you can't
access a certain level until you've completed the one before it. what else do i want...
emotions! i have a lot of emotions. something's bothering you.. shit do be bothering me. i think
i'm gonna pick that one. okay so my current focuses.. foci? my current foci are now emotions
and something's bothering me. i don't know if it allows you to take focuses from different chapters
at the same time, i tried it, it did not work. okay so the emotions we got wütend, glucklich..
angry. i want a new stick. this guy has a stick, but like, you know, i think you can upgrade him.
then... oh no, he's gonna pummel me. that hurt, owie. i'm gonna deal some damage. oh,
so i thought that once you picked new foci, you wouldn't see words from the other foci
again. but Ausweis means ID and that's from the essential items chapter that
i just deactivated. so i guess they're still there. so that's cool, you know,
if you study terms from a certain chapter and then you deactivate it i guess you'll still get those.
so bottom line i just f*cked this guy up. i'm trying to see if i can get a new stick, man.
crafting... i need materials, bro. did i not just win a bunch of wood? i don't know, man. oh wait,
check this out! what is that? i have this tea stick. looks pretty badass. okay,
so who's this raccoon? i don't have any apples for this raccoon, man. i mean, what is the raccoon
actually doing for me? oh, he finds treasure. i mean, why would i trust a raccoon, though,
right? i would describe this app, this game, as a vocabulary game. you know, and when we talk about
vocabulary learning apps, like for example Anki or Quizlet, Duolingo, Memrise, they all give you the
material, but they do not give you the motivation. which is why i feel like people hate vocabulary
in the first place. i would say that's one of my most asked questions. people are like, "how do you
learn vocabulary other than flashcards?" and it's like, well, a lot of the time, i don't have
another answer for them. because that's like THE way, right? but the cool thing about the
app is that it gives you the motivation AND the material. i don't know, i mean, it could change
the way that we do vocab in general. i mean, is this going to be the new standard instead of
flashcard apps? is it going to be games? i don't know, i don't know. anyways it is now day three
of testing out Lingo Legend... if it would show up on the screen... wait just a second... there
we go! so i'm going to try to change the language today, because a lot of us are multilingual. a lot
of us like to practice different languages. you know what? let's spice it up, let's do korean.
in early 2019, i studied korean for a whole.. month before i gave up. i remember a bit of it,
and i was told that Lingo Legend does offer character writing exercises for Japanese
and Korean, so i thought maybe we could explore what that's like. i know that this is primarily
a video about German, but i just want to show you guys..you know, the full scope of what the app can
offer. something i probably should have wondered before i changed the language was if i can change
it back and still have my progress.. i guess we'll see! i want to go straight to adventure,
because i'm an aries and i love to adventure. let's put the music on, the app has music.
wait.. this low key goes kinda hard!! what the f**k.. it's giving, like,
primitive Skyrim kind of vibes. okay, so we have... i don't know why i'm showing
you the screen if it's right there. but we have simple vowels we're gonna go over.
let's start the battle, man. oh there's my little teapot stick from yesterday!
Hangeul is the written Korean alphabet. it's fairly simple to learn with only 40.. only
40 distinct characters. you know, coming from a person, who uses the Latin writing system, it has,
well-- in English, 26 letters, 40 is a lot. so.. only 40? i don't know about that. oh, so you can--
okay, we're tracing the character. did i do that wrong? i don't know if my directions were right,
usually i go left to right on character writing, right? i think i remember that from Chinese.
period. so yeah, if you're learning a language that has a different alphabet i think it's only
Japanese and Korean that they offer for that. but there are character drawing exercises,
how nifty is that? ah.. would this get repetitive though? i'm not sure. that's my question,
because you know, we do love variety. maybe if there was also some other ways
to incorporate character practice other than just tracing.. like, you know, you could show
the character and have people choose a vowel sound or something like that. okay,
quick attack. okay! so they DO have different exercises where you can just pick it. that's good.
am i fluent in Korean right now? i'm about to finish this clown with this three-stroke.
why did they accept that.. it literally looked so bad. i mean, i just draw the most raggedy-looking
characters, and they're like, good job! did he just devastate me? oh my god.. that's okay,
we can come back from that. i need to finish this guy, dude. okay, let me focus really quick.
oh we're done! [GASP] NOOO he brought his bestie!! why would you do 2v1? i should be allowed to bring
the other girl with me if they get to bring two people. see, that's the thing. there's
two characters in this game, Hamish and Aila, and you can play as one of them. but, like, wouldn't
it be cool if you could like tag-team a homie every once in a while? i don't know. that's "I"
oh, DAMN, DID Y'ALL SEE THAT TWIRL? what was that about? yeah sister, you're done. it would be
cool though, if they gave you a couple different characters to choose from and then you choose the
sound. you know, for example, i think it's easier to recall words when you think of it in English
first and then go to the language, versus if you see the language first and then go into English,
if that makes sense. you need to have fluency in both directions, you know? just my thought. i'm
getting sick of this fool, man. why won't he die? oh, turns out they do have that kind of exercise
as well! so as soon as i'm like, thinking of a different way they could do things, it literally
shows up, which is great. i'm having a hard time complaining. i'm trying to kill this dude,
but i've hit him like three times now and he's still at the same 28 health. what am i doing
wrong? we just need to give him one more turn so he can get a good punch out, and.. oh god
damn it.. and then we'll be done. he is about to be done for. ooo you're dead! you're so dead.
oh, he left an apple. that's so cool. so what do i get? we get loot, one apple. maybe i have
enough apples to feed that raccoon now. period! i do have enough apples, okay. so
if you give the raccoon apples, he will go treasure hunting in the bushes for you. so let's
see what the baby boy brings home. that's all i'm saying. see, yeah-- what's.. what's this queen
doing? huh? what's her job? if i'm not playing as Aila, what does she do? oh, okay. so i just
switched back to German and you CAN do multiple languages at a time, and it'll save your progress.
that is freaking dope. so i'm back in German, and something that i did not notice yesterday when i
was showing you guys the topics is that, when you go into a topic in the specific vocab sections
if you click on info, it gives you a bit of a grammar brief. so, for example, feelings with
haben. feelings of state are expressed using either haben or sein. this is different in
english, where only the verb "to be" is used. so that's super cool, because it's not just the same
material for every language. they do give specific grammar explanations based on the language,
and you know, in perspective of English. so, for example, "Ich habe hunger" like instead of "i'm
hungry"-- to be, in english, or "Sie haben Schmerzen" instead of "they are in pain",
like in english, so the grammar explanations do actually reflect what is in the chapter. so me
thinks it's time to give some final thoughts, don't you think? let me get more in the center.
i'm the main character now. i was not expecting to like this video game that much. i am not a gamer.
i'm very happy with the experience, i think that it's something new and refreshing in the language
community because we are always so restricted to, like... i don't know, studying and being
productive. and playing a game doesn't always really feel that way. but that's not a bad thing,
you know? being productive doesn't always have to be drilling flashcards or writing sentences
or doing exercises. it can be something fun and something constructive, and you know if
you've ever finished a video game or if you play video games you know the feeling of accomplishment
that you get when you beat the game or you get to a high level. and, you know, this kind of
combines that experience with the accomplishment and good feeling of learning a language. which
that's great! and even though Lingo Legend is sponsoring this video, i'm not shitting you guys.
i rarely do sponsorships, you guys know, and i only do sponsorships for things that i really
do believe in. and this is like a cutting-edge, cool thing for the language community, you know?
studying doesn't always have to be stiff. that's basically what i have learned from using this game
the past couple days. i'm very much the type of person to get into a rut with my studying,
so i feel like it's something that i could incorporate when i want to have a bit more fun
or when i want to study without sitting down and studying-- traditionally studying you know? so
those... are my final thoughts. the app is out now on iOS, it launched on the 15th of March and i'm
recording this video on the 20th. so i'm excited to see how other people will continue to receive
the game. anyways thank you so much for watching, and congratulations if you got this far into the
video! i will leave the links to download Lingo Legend on iOS in the description if you would like
to go test it out for yourself. stay fresh, cheesebags, have a good rest of your April!