Figure out what Attila is speaking

Greetings, guys! I feel I must make some clarifications.
1. The language indeed is at least intended to be Chuvash. Some phrases can be heared and understood pretty clear, like the greeting "эсӗ халĕ Аттила умĕнче" (esӗ halĕ Attila umĕnče) - "you are before Attila now", lit. "you now Attila-before"). On the other hand, all Chuvash native speakers I have asked refuse to recognize it as Chuvash, calling it rather a "parody of Chuvash". I must admit, the intonations and pauses in Attila's speach seem really unnatural even to me (and it's difficult to call me an expert on Chuvash language).
2. It cannot be any other Turkic language, for sure. It has features specific for Chuvash only (which is a pretty... specific language itself, among other Turkic languages. It's probably enough to say that it isn't mutually comprehensible with all other Turkic languages, and it's rather unusual, since the most are, more or less).
3. Some theories made above are rather funny, but no, I don't blame anybody.
4. Maybe it was a Chuvash text read by somebody who doesn't speak Chuvash at all. Some phrases are well understandable, again. If I'll get to know something more on the subject, I'll post it here.

5.
P.s.: And no, it is NOT proto-Turkic. The most Civ5 leaders speak modern languages (even Ramesses with his Egyptian Arabic!), and Attila is not an exception. It is the somehow distorted Chuvash language, and not something else.

Reading that post has a nice, satisfying feeling, the type you get after finishing a good epic fantasy saga. Glad to finally find out what language he is butchering.

I think they mostly payed attention to making it sound cool instead of being historically accurate in atilla's case. Probably because firaxis doesn't expect a huge civ community that speaks that language.
As far as I speak the other languages I found them to be pretty accurate although most of them seem to be a little to slow to be natural.

My guess was right then. I knew it

Khagan1 said:

I guess, Attila speaks Chuvash or more to the Southern Siberia, Tuva or Hakas dialects which are very hard to understand for me as they are Northern dialects of Turkic languages. I'm sure I would catch a few words if it was Kazan Tatar as it is more similar to Oghuz/Southern dialect of Turkic languages (Turkish, Turkmen, Azeri etc.).

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shaglio said:

I couldn't agree more. I speak English and a little bit of Spanish. If people on this forum hadn't mentioned that Ramses and Oda don't speak their correct language, I would never have known the difference. But I'd prefer the leaders speak their own language (or a close enough approximation thereof) than speaking English with an accent or going back to text only.

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Sorry this is OT

Oda may be speaking archaic Japanese? It's very formal and is sort of parodied by the Japanese themselves in the Rouroni Kenshin anime where the lead just goes all out with the dialect. Can you direct me to the thread where his speech was discussed?

Most people who learn Japanese outside Japan learn the Tokyo Kanto-dialect.
I am obviously not a native Japanese speaker

Im glad you guys are figuring this out, after I met england or america I notice they arnt saying anything verbadim compared to what they say in text (usually) so I was very interested to knowing what the other Civs were saying.

Yeah, YouTube finally revealed it was slaughtered Chuvash. I wish it was accurate Chuvash, but Firaxis has had a very mixed quality for voice acting so far...(Augustus and Rameses are good, whereas some leaders, like Sejong and Attila, have odd intonations).

Maybe someone could make a sound mod to replace the odd voices? I'm glad I can't speak/understand Chuvash, because I would not like to have my language slaughtered.

I wonder where they got the Attila voice actor....maybe just in North America or Russia? (That would explain the slaughtered Chuvash)

Morningcalm said:

Yeah, YouTube finally revealed it was slaughtered Chuvash. I wish it was accurate Chuvash, but Firaxis has had a very mixed quality for voice acting so far...(Augustus and Rameses are good, whereas some leaders, like Sejong and Attila, have odd intonations).

Maybe someone could make a sound mod to replace the odd voices? I'm glad I can't speak/understand Chuvash, because I would not like to have my language slaughtered.

I wonder where they got the Attila voice actor....maybe just in North America or Russia? (That would explain the slaughtered Chuvash)

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I assume they contracted with a company to do these?

At least he sounds cool.

They did contract with a company to do these. I just wish we could get the voice actor to come onto the forums and talk about his role and where he comes from.

And yes, he does sound REALLY cool (unlike teddy bear Genghis).

Yeah, he sounds cool. I was having a growing fear that they just flat out made up a language. Butchering an obscure language, while less than ideal, is still at least an effort. It's not like they could call a person out for doing it wrong.

As for the voice actor. I wonder if it's possible to attribute nerves for part of the mistaken intonation.

True. And at least to an average American it sounds like a pretty well delivered set of lines. But I still wonder where they found someone who speaks Chuvash....there aren't many people from Chuvash in North America, at least, not to my knowledge.

I don't know about the nerves though, the voice actor sounds pretty confident (and nasty/cruel/evil) when delivering his lines...there seems to be a Russian accent in there somewhere, which makes sense, since Chuvash is very close to Russia.

Morningcalm said:

They did contract with a company to do these. I just wish we could get the voice actor to come onto the forums and talk about his role and where he comes from.

And yes, he does sound REALLY cool (unlike teddy bear Genghis).

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Yeah Genghis sounds so kind, really caught me off guard when I met him for the first time

Morningcalm said:

True. And at least to an average American it sounds like a pretty well delivered set of lines. But I still wonder where they found someone who speaks Chuvash....there aren't many people from Chuvash in North America, at least, not to my knowledge.

I don't know about the nerves though, the voice actor sounds pretty confident (and nasty/cruel/evil) when delivering his lines...there seems to be a Russian accent in there somewhere, which makes sense, since Chuvash is very close to Russia.

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I would assume they went to a university language department and asked for specialists in regional languages to help them out.

This could explain the varied quality as it may have been difficult to find native speakers for all or even specialists for all languages.

dexters said:

I would assume they went to a university language department and asked for specialists in regional languages to help them out.

This could explain the varied quality as it may have been difficult to find native speakers for all or even specialists for all languages.

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such as tyran phonecian, like dido speaks. That was really an achievement

luukdeman111 said:

I think they mostly payed attention to making it sound cool

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It seems exactly the case.

luukdeman111 said:

instead of being historically accurate in atilla's case.

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Well, the HISTORICAL accuracy is just out of the question, not only in case of Attila. Again, all the leaders (except probably Caesar, for the obvious reasons) speak modern languages, and, of course, these languages frequently don't correspond to the leaders' era. That means, there are Arabic loanwords (related to the Islamization) in Persian, Spanish loanwords in Montezuma's Nahuatl, and Suleiman speaks the modern purificated Turkish language instead of much more Arabized Osmanic one. The Egyptian Arabic of Ramesses is a kind of culmination in that aspect. As for the Hun language, then even if it really was Ogur Turkic, there are almost two millennia separating it from the modern Chuvash...

I personally don't blame Firaxis for not going into linguistic reconstructions - that would be just considerably more expensive, and there would be too few people able to appreciate it. Still, an actual representation of some modern-day languages could be better, I believe.

Morningcalm said:

there aren't many people from Chuvash in North America, at least, not to my knowledge.

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Let me guess: in North America they automatically become "Russians".

Btw a couple of comments from native speakers (at lingvoforum.ru, the translation from Russian is mine):

Zhendoso said:

The language is Chuvash, but it has a strong English accent.

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SWR said:

It just looks like... they've recorded heaps of words separately... And then just have assembled the words into sentences. As a result, the words seem right... but that doesn't sound right...

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P.S.: Also there are minor mistakes in the synthax, so the very text apparently wasn't written by a native speaker as well (even if he could be an ethnic Chuvash).

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for some sort of ungodly mix between hundreds of Eurasian languages, just like their city names.

Lingua said:

It seems exactly the case.

Well, the HISTORICAL accuracy is just out of the question, not only in case of Attila. Again, all the leaders (except probably Caesar, for the obvious reasons) speak modern languages, and, of course, these languages frequently don't correspond to the leaders' era.

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Actually, Alexander speaks Attic Greek, Nebuchadnezzar speaks Akkadian, and Darius speaks Aramaic (not modern Persian like you are assuming). To this list, they added Dido speaking Tyrian Phoenician and Theodora speaking Medieval Greek (to the best of my knowledge). So while you are mostly correct, I do want to point out the exceptions which show, in ideal circumstances, they have been able to get accurate languages.

ETA: With rare exceptions (such as Kamehameha), the text is not translated by a native speaker. That's something I wish they could change, but they don't want the person reading the lines to be the same person who wrote the lines and it's even more difficult to track down two people who know the language well. With Kamehameha, the voice actor refused to read inaccurate lines, so he recommended someone who could do the translation. Since it's a widely spoken language, this was manageable.

Source? Would like to read that .

Morningcalm said:

I wonder where they got the Attila voice actor....maybe just in North America or Russia? (That would explain the slaughtered Chuvash)

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I thought it was somewhere stated that translation and voice acting was done by 2 different persons .

About Atilla : actor is naturally Russian-speaker. It's very distinctive feature of his speech. Seems like they took Russian actor with brutal voice and he made some nice improvisation with things he knew from Chuvash. (He might be also assimilated Chuvash too, or Russian who lived at Chuvashia (which is part of RF for hundred years). All his said abracadabra is fun and suits quite well Atilla barbaric spirit .
About Dido - Phoenecian is so-called Cnaani Language, Well preserved ancient language which is very similar to few modern languages, and it also being used in some places and being studied at some linguistic faculties in Middle-Eastern universities. I Speak Russian and Hebrew Fluently, and i can understand the Phoenecian using my Hebrew knowledge in same way as i can understand Czech using my Russian knowledge, perhaps even more than so.. . Counting from 1 to 10 is 99% same in Hebrew and Phoenecian (true story), and uses same letter roots, which also been used in Kabbalah, and uses quite similar writing form and writing is Abjad. Voice actor for Dido sounds Ashkenazi Israeli (true story). So Phoenecian is not a wonder.

Imo they did nice job with both of Dido and Atilla, - in different way for each one of them