Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#61

Post by avadodin » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

thierrydamiba wrote: post #29

simonjgreen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly AI editorialised. I wonder if this is because English isn’t their first language, and they are confidence compensating. I’ve worked with a lot of folks also from Philippines and the Tagalog/English mix leads to some confidence challenges sometimes.

Recommend everyone take this test: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/09/business/ai-w... You might be surprised…or you might not. I’ve found it’s a good barometer for whether you actually don’t like AI writing or you just don’t like bad AI writing.

All of the fragments read like bad slop.

I successfully chose the least democratically awful slop if that's an indication of anything.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#62

Post by deaux » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

thierrydamiba wrote: post #29

simonjgreen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly AI editorialised. I wonder if this is because English isn’t their first language, and they are confidence compensating. I’ve worked with a lot of folks also from Philippines and the Tagalog/English mix leads to some confidence challenges sometimes.

Recommend everyone take this test: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/09/business/ai-w... You might be surprised…or you might not. I’ve found it’s a good barometer for whether you actually don’t like AI writing or you just don’t like bad AI writing.

1. This test has really zero to do with what we're talking about. Stylized fiction is a completely separate domain from non-fiction writing of personal anecdotes. There's effectively zero relation between them.

2. Picked the human 5 out of 5. Since it's pointless to take as a judge of preference due to 1), I took it as a test of "spot the AI", and clearly it was obvious to me in every instance.

3. Of course we just "don't like bad AI writing". "Good AI writing" would be unnoticeable. This is incredibly rare in the domain we're talking about.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#63

Post by littlecranky67 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

autumnstwilight wrote: post #47

The general principle here is that engaging with your hobbies and interests in the second language is a good way to increase exposure (and also more fun). For me, it was translating lyrics and interviews of Japanese musicians.

While any form of learning engagement will benefit your language proficiency, I think song lyrics should be considered carefully. Just like poetry, they play on words and meaning, and oftentimes express something in a way that no other native speaker would have done just for the sake of rhythm or metafores. On the other hand, if you are at almost native level, getting and research these kind of ambigouity probably helps crossing that tiny narrow gap to native even further.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#64

Post by posh_somme » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:38 AM UTC

psidebot wrote: post #27

This account could be an interesting case study for the comprehensible input hypothesis of language acquisition. Narrowing the language domain and pre-studying vocabulary may have helped the effectiveness of the study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

The Japanese learning community has wholesale adopted the Krashen school of thought, tons of us learn almost exclusively by comprehensible input, myself included. I spent about 50 or so hours on grammar at the start, a list of 1,500 words and the rest has been purely reading and watching what I want and playing video games. At about 1000 hours total since last June I'm able to read a lot of everyday Japanese without much difficulty. I plan on taking N2 at the end of the year.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#65

Post by InsideOutSanta » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 11:04 AM UTC

Monkey Island taught me English. I can't tell you how confusing insult sword fighting was initially. I had to create long tables with the correct answers because I didn't get most of the puns, and then I had to start from scratch when I had to fight Carla.

Anyway, thanks, Ron Gilbert.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#66

Post by cannonpr » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 11:10 AM UTC

Wanting to play Leisure suit Larry and space text adventure games properly was when I finally “cracked” English, after that I become rapidly fluent. However I feel like it didn’t do my sense of humour any favours.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#67

Post by DanielHB » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 11:45 AM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #65

Monkey Island taught me English. I can't tell you how confusing insult sword fighting was initially. I had to create long tables with the correct answers because I didn't get most of the puns, and then I had to start from scratch when I had to fight Carla. Anyway, thanks, Ron Gilbert.

A pirate I was meant to be, trim the sail and roam the sea

Monkey Island 3 taught me a good deal of english too. I was lucky to get a text-translated version with english voiceover.

We all would avoid scurvy if we eat an orange...

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#68

Post by GuB-42 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 11:56 AM UTC

nadermx wrote: post #3

Can't imagine using MTG to learn a language. But it does seem intuitive in hindsight. Back when I played in the junior super series and nationals I could recall almost every card and what it did. So I can see how that leap would be tantermount. Kudos.

It is more like: I love MTG, how to learn a language through this hobby?

As far as games go, tabletop RPGs are probably better than MTG because they are all about talking. But nothing beats doing what you enjoy doing, and if what you enjoy is MTG, then MTG is the best.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#69

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

TonyStr wrote: post #59

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldnt tell the difference between a LinkedIn writer and a up and AI, they are both comparably generic.

At this point, I assume most LinkedIn users use AI to assist in generating posts anyway, so the distinction kinda becomes pointless. Nobody likes reading AI generated posts, and nobody ever really liked reading LinkedIn posts either.

At least you aren’t wasting time writing something that people don’t like reading by hand. I just assumed that AI is trained on executive communication which is why they sound like a CEO.

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#70

Post by dirteater_ » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

This is awesome. I'm doing something very similar with Chinese and Yu-Gi-Oh right now. So many language courses seem to cater to certain topics like interviewing for a job, getting through college, traveling, home life. But I want to engage and connect with people who share similar interests.

Not to mention trading card games are pretty complex themselves and using them as a learning tool forces you to think in the language.