LLTVG:Assumed knowledge of Japanese
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All games assume a knowledge of hiragana and katakana. Very short games might assume no knowledge of Japanese beyond this.
Upper beginner to intermediate[edit]
Most games with more than a tiny amount of text will assume you have reached at least the upper beginner stage. The following will usually not be annotated:
- Basic particles such as は, が, を, に, へ, の
- だ/です, ある, いる
- はい and いいえ
- Basic sentence-enders such as よ and か
- The pronouns わたし and あなた
- The demonstratives これ, それ, あれ, その, この, あの
- Basic interrogatives such as 何, だれ, どこ
- Past tense conjugation
- Negative conjugation
- Plain vs. polite speech (honorifics and humble forms should still be annotated)
- Conditional forms (食べれば, 食べたら)
- ~さん, ~さま, ~くん, ~ちゃん — except when the usage is unusual
- Plurals formed using ~たち
Note that annotations might still be provided when the word is in kanji rather than kana.
Advanced[edit]
Games with large amounts of text such as most RPGs are considered "advanced". The following will usually not be annotated:
- [verb]こと and [verb]の
- Desiderative form (食べたい, 食べたがる)
- Causative form (食べさせる)
- Passive form (読まれる)
- Potential form (話せる)
- Volitional form (食べよう)
- ~てあげる, ~てくれる, and ~てもらう
- The contraction ~てる from ~ている (for really advanced texts, contractions like 分かんない and 任せとけ might go unannotated as well, but when in doubt, add the annotation)
- The contraction んだ / んです as well as basic usage of "explanatory の" itself.
In addition, readings will not be provided for extremely common kanji such as 見る, 聞く, etc.