Disco Elysium : Language Learning Guide

Some of you might know, while some of you might not, that Disco Elysium is a fantastic game for learning a foreign language. I’ve created this guide to show you my method of learning a foreign language in a guilt-free way, using Disco Elysium. I tested this method on myself while preparing for the TOEFL (an English exam), and I can assure you that once you apply my method, your perspective on language learning will change. It will become much more enjoyable, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how your language skills improve without even noticing it.

This guide is for:

• Students who want to ace their chosen target language exam, impress their friends with their vocabulary, or plan to go abroad (or all of the above).
  
• Escapists and procrastinators who want to feel less guilty about playing video games when they should be doing something productive.

Disclaimer 1: In this guide, I will use German as the language I am studying, and English as the language I know. You can choose any language pair you want as long as Disco Elysium supports it, but you need at least a basic knowledge of target language.

Disclaimer 2: In this guide, I will use a program called Lookupper. I am the creator of Lookupper - a tool designed primarily for this purpose: learning languages through games. Lookupper is free, but it has some paid features that are NOT required to follow this guide.

3 Reasons Why Disco Elysium is the Perfect Game for Language Learning

What makes Disco Elysium so special for language learning? Surprisingly, it wasn’t even designed as a language learning game. Here are the reasons:

1. On-the-fly language change by pressing Q or L in the game. This is the number one reason and a huge enhancement introduced by the developers.
   
2. Disco Elysium features a lot of high-quality text and has ideal gameplay for language learning: no rush, allowing you to take your time to read most of the dialogues.
   
3. Extensive language support. Disco Elysium is translated into 13 languages, making it easy to pick one you want to learn:
   • English
   • Russian
   • Simplified Chinese
   • Spanish (Spain)
   • Korean
   • Portuguese (Brazil)
   • French
   • German
   • Traditional Chinese
   • Polish
   • Japanese
   • Turkish
   • Arabic

All these reasons make it perfect for language learners. Even if you’re not specifically interested in learning a foreign language, you might pick up some new English words (like peripeteia and escapism).

Step 1: Set Up the Game

First, we want to enable German (or your chosen target language) to English switching in the game. To do this:
Go to the Main Menu -> OPTIONS. Set DEUTSCH as the switch language in-game as shown on screenshot:


You can test how it works by returning to the game, opening a dialogue with any character, and pressing Q (or L). The dialogue language should switch.

Step 2: Download Lookupper

While language switching with Q is a great setup to start learning, it isn’t enough to dive deep into learning. Ideally, we want to stay in the target language most of the time and avoid using our native language as much as possible. This is where Lookupper comes in. It is a free app that allows us to look up dictionary definitions of words and save the words we look up.

• Lookupper for Windows: Download on Microsoft Store[www.microsoft.com]
  
• Lookupper for Mac: Download on App Store[apps.apple.com]

After you download and run the app, you will see the onboarding process.

You need to go through the onboarding to initially configure Lookupper. To do this:

1. Select your target language (I want to learn…).
2. Select your native language.
3. Try to look up a word by hovering over the foreign word and pressing CTRL + D.

Once you’re done, follow the next step.

Step 3: Select the Right Dictionaries

To fetch dictionary entries in Lookupper, we first need to enable the right dictionaries.

Windows

Put the Lookupper Dictionary on top and disable the Translator, as shown in the screenshot. Set Lookupper Dictionary Translate to your native language (e.g., English).

The Lookupper Dictionary is a special AI dictionary designed for language learning through playing games. It provides the lemma (base form) of a word, high-quality audio pronunciations, and the definition of the word in the target language. It also features click-to-reveal translations. If you don’t understand the word’s meaning in its native language, you can reveal its translation. If that still doesn’t help, you can reveal the whole sentence translation.

Because we have this translation capability in the Lookupper Dictionary, we don’t need the Translator. Moreover, we can translate the text by pressing Q anytime, but this is not recommended because translating is not effective way to learn the language.

Optional: Install offline dictionaries
For those who are already proficient in the target language or prefer playing offline, I recommend installing offline dictionaries. It’s easy. Go to the Dictionaries tab and click Add Dictionaries. Then select the dictionaries you want to use (in this example, I use the Cambridge German-English Dictionary)

Mac

For Mac, while the lookup popup is open, click “Configure Dictionaries”. I recommend arranging the dictionaries as shown in the screenshot. In this case, the bilingual dictionary will be at the very end of the list, and you will refer to it last if you don’t understand what is said in the explanatory dictionary.

Step 4: Play as You Usually Do, but Using Lookupper

Every time you come across an unfamiliar word or expression in the game, point at the word and press the shortcut (CTRL + D) to look it up. This way, you will get the meaning of the word. Then, think about the word and the meaning of the whole sentence in your head and try to understand it.

Windows

Mac

Yes, it will be tough at first. You might even want to switch the game back to your native language. But that discomfort is the feeling of new neural connections forming in your brain. I assure you, sooner than you expect, you will understand almost everything automatically and look up words only occasionally.

Very important! Do not try to understand every sentence. Don’t torture yourself unnecessarily. Especially if you are a perfectionist and want to understand every line of dialogue. This way, you can get stuck for 20 minutes on a dialogue with each character, trying to understand every idiom in their speech. Don’t. Play, have fun—that’s the most important thing. Remember, neural connections are made without your conscious effort. In time, you will start to understand everything; just keep playing and look up unknown words.

And don’t overuse the translator. The final goal is to understand everything without ANY translations, naturally. So if you can play using just an explanatory dictionary (for example, just German, not German-English), you are on the most efficient path to language fluency.

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I put a lot of effort into creating the Lookupper and making this guide. Please share your feedback in the comments. I will also be happy to answer your questions.

[Mina Harker]

Please if you can bring this to Linux that would be wonderful

[Ca1_A_Gat0r]

Not the way I learned German from a video game, I used U-BOAT!

[creator]

Mimi, yes.

[miu miu]

Does this work with all versions of Spanish?

[EnderRen]

I actually fixed the problem I just did not install the correct part of the language on my machine I appreciate the response

[creator]

EnderRen, could you please send a screenshot to [e-mail]?

[EnderRen]

I want to use lookupper, but it is not recognizing spanish on my machine. What version of spanish should I install?

[mousewife]

I've been using Lookupper with World of Warcraft in Spanish and its been a blast ty for making this

[creator]

Sorry, Lithuanian is not a priority right now. I’m planning to add better support for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Right now, I’m not satisfied with how Lookupper works with these languages. After that, I may extend support for additional languages, but I can’t promise anything.

[Testicular Distortion]

I would ask if you have any plans of adding more languages to Lookupper, but the amount of games I could translate with the language I'm learning (Lithuanian) is already laughably small as is