Important words for Zelda tears of the kingdom

5 comments

1. Play the game and anki/look up words you don’t know

2. Immersion Kit has the [transcript and vocab decks for Breath of the Wild here](https://www.immersionkit.com/reader/games/Zelda:%20Breath%20of%20the%20Wild). I don’t know if they plan on doing the same for Tears of the Kingdom as well, but maybe reading through BotW will already help you with familiarizing yourself with the language used in these games.

3. I’m not very far in it myself… but the important words will become apparent as you go.

   Virtually all the dialogue is push-button advanced so just look up the words as you go. The important words will come up often enough that you’ll learn them.

   I’d have to advise against using a frequency list or a TOTK deck, as I tried something like that when I was trying to read through Harry Potter in Japanese and it didn’t help me AT ALL. ;-;

   Also the words change sectionally so like… at the beginning beginning you need to know words like:

   遺跡: いせき：Archeological remains, ruins, artifacts

   古代文明：こだいぶんめい：Ancient civilization

   禁忌：きんき：Taboo

   壁画：へきが：Mural

   The obvious, like:

   操作：そうさ：Controls

   And then after the first part you need like NONE OF THOSE WORDS! 😀

   So it’s constantly going to be changing, location by location, chapter by chapter, task by task, situation by situation.

   If you already have a foundation in Japanese, then looking up words as you go isn’t going to be too bad. I’ve been able to easily keep up with my husband (who only plays in our Native English) despite having to look up words every few mins.

   I don’t write them down, just look them up and keep going. 🙂

4. 大妖精 – Great fairy (だいようせい)
   神殿 – Temple (しんでん)

5. jdpb.io makes word lists for video games that you can practice.