4 Simple and Fun Methods to Improve Your Language Playing Genshin Impact

Or how to get an infinite well of captivating content to learn from

Learning languages through playing video games is the best way to improve quickly and without stress.

What is there not to like?

Video games provide loads of situations filled with new words and grammar patterns all used in context and for a purpose (moving forward in the story for example). All these are repeated throughout the game which helps with strengthening the memory.

And you don’t have to be worried you’ll “fail” or “look stupid” because it’s a game.

Among all the types of video games, my favorite for learning languages is the Role-Playing-Game (RPG) style. It’s immersive enough to get a whole lot of context but also has enough action to not be overwhelmed with constant texts to read as it can happen with visual novels.

And within the RPG styles, I love Action RPGs because they get you involved. Once you learn the basics of how to fight, you don’t have to worry about it ever.

For this reason, and the ones I’ll share below, Genshin Impact is my favorite video game to learn languages.

And, as if it wasn’t enough, it’s all free!

Here are the languages of the game.

Text languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Russian.
Audio languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese

If you don’t learn one of those, you can also move on to another piece to read😉

But enough about this, let’s dive into practical reasons for how and why you can improve your language with Genshin.

The obvious, ever-developing, storyline

RPGs are famous for their convoluted stories. Genshin is no exception.

I’d even go as far as saying it’s even more so than any other RPG out there (except maybe the recent game Tower of Fantasy, and the other game by Hoyoverse, Honkai Impact 3rd). Genshin Impact gets an update every month which makes the main story move forward a bit.

In short, you get more of the game every month. More stories. More items. More characters. More lines of text to listen to.

More everything.

Each new step of the story is a combination of discussions to have with characters, items to go pick up, and fights. Even during discussions, you regularly get a choice of responses to pick from. You’re active throughout the story which makes it easier to remember what you encounter.

If you’ve never played Genshin, however, the start may be quite overwhelming. There’s a lot to take in. You’re learning about the world of Genshin Impact after all. Don’t give up though. Focus on getting the gist.

Details can come later.

The whole point of learning a language through an RPG is to learn as the story develops. Even though the story itself gets more complicated, it gets easier to understand as you proceed with the story.

That’s the beauty of learning through context.

As an added bonus, Genshin’s main story always has voiced lines in the 4 languages available, which makes it even better if you’re learning one of those!

It can be great to set the audio language to English if you’re a beginner in another language. This helps you listen whenever there’s voiced content but leaves you on your own when there is not. I used that system a bit for Tower of Fantasy (played in German with the audio in Japanese since I speak Japanese).

You can even follow streamers or watch videos of people who have played the game so you can review the story after playing it (or beforehand). Here’s one channel I watch for the story in Korean.

Hangouts

Genshin Impact has a type of mission I don’t remember seeing in any other RPG I ever played before (let me know if you know any other! It’d be a great addition to my collection!): Hangouts.

Hangout quests are a special type of sub-quests in Genshin for which there are up to 6 different possible endings. Each choice you make impacts the ending you will get.

If those were long missions, it would make each a nightmare, but these only have up to 3 different choices that’ll impact the ending to make.

This creates what I call a sandbox situation.

A sandbox situation begins and ends within certain confinements. You don’t need to know anything outside of the sandbox to enjoy it in its entirety and create different situations.

Simple and efficient.

Hangouts are a great way to learn a language in a vacuum full of context. Even if you’re feeling lost with the storyline, these small-size sidequests allow you to start from “scratch” for a moment.

Tree of possibilities for one of Noelle’s hangout quests.

Digging into the lore

I’ve played Genshin Impact for more than 2 years and am still amazed by how incredible the world Hoyoverse has build and keeps developing. For those who don’t know much about Genshin, the world’s size reminds me of Game of Thrones. Maybe even larger.

On top of this, as the main story quest progresses each month, the lore and theories evolve all the time.

Digging into these can be extremely satisfying and a great way to develop your target language.

From reading the different books spread out around the world of Teyvat (the name of the planet in Genshin), to reading character storylines or information about areas you’ve visited, the in-game content feels endless.

Books found in the game, in French (left) and part one of Kazuha’s storyline for the character Kazuha (right).

On top of this, you can add theory videos published on YouTube and long blog posts on theories about future updates, all of which is actually endless.

The size of these vary drastically, from a few lines for location explanations to hours worth of reading for the books, so you can alternate between extensive reading to get the gist and intensive reading to push your capacities to the next level.

If you feel like it, you can even join in conversations on forums and Discord servers like this official one in Japanese.

Shadowing with characters and story

One incredible addition to Genshin is the existence of a document with all the lines spoken as part of the story quest within the game. Each comes with a button to play the audio version of said line. These have even been put online on this website where you can switch audio and text languages depending on your level and energy in the moment.

On top of this, each character in the game has a bunch of short lines (I’d say about 30–40) they’ll say in specific situations:

When morning comes in the game
When they arrive in front of a building important to them
When they stay idle for a while,
Etc.

Each can be found in the character information and listened to over and over again as you read the written version.

Ayaka’s “morning salutations” in Korean.

I’ve found this a great way to practice my pronunciation in Korean as I practiced reading along. Each character has a widely different flow of speech from the others, which makes it a nice resource full of variety.

Final tips

Genshin is a treasure trove of content for gamers and language learners alike. The story is interesting and the gameplay fun. What better could you wish to improve your target language while having fun?

While I see it as the perfect video game to improve English, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), it’s still pretty good for anybody learning one of the other languages that don’t have audio.

If you don’t want to be disturbed, you can even set the audio to a language you don’t understand so you focus on trying to understand the text!

There’s a lot more content than what I said too!

Want to learn food-related vocabulary? There are recipes to dive into. Want to learn more architecture-related words? There’s a place where you can create your own island with the buildings and decorations you want inside and out. Want to develop your understanding of magic and fantasy-related topics? The artifacts and many side quests got you covered too.

Take notes of what you want and let go of what you don’t. It’s a game so have fun with it!

Don’t overthink it too much though.

Dive in, experiment the world, and within moments your confidence in your target language skills will skyrocket.