Pfft, Japanese has nothing on English. You put the letters r-u-n together, and it could mean any of 179 possible definitions.(1)
Sources used:
(1)Dictionary.com
Civ 4 was funny with the languages sometimes. The Vikings speak nonsense as far as I can tell, and it couldn't have been that hard to use Icelandic, which is almost the same as Old Norse (in writing, at least. The pronunciation has changed of course, but you could say the same thing about English).
Has anyone else noticed that Wu Zetian is speaking conversational modern Mandarin Chinese? Which does not bear a particularly close resemblance to the Chinese spoken during the Tang dynasty? I can't help but feel that the developers sort of halfassed their research in this area...of course it's still a good deal more authentic than the diplomacy dialogue in Civ 4.
Probably not allowed to. How large are they, you could possibly e-mail them to interested participants?
I just spent a long while reading through this whole thread and thought I really should comment to lay some of this to rest. I speak Arabic, both Egyptian and Classical/Modern Standard, as well as English (obviously).
Ramses is speaking what is called Egyptian Arabic. It is a dialect of Arabic, which originated in the Arabic peninsula, and is a Semitic language of the larger Afro-Asiatic family.
Ramses actually would have spoken Egyptian, a member of the Egyptian branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.
They are not the same language, nor is one a modern version of the other. Being in the same family doesn't make them sound the same (at all)-- languages like German, Persian, English, French, and Spanish are all in the same family (Indo-European) and you probably realize how different they are.
Having Ramses here speak Egyptian Arabic truly is akin to having Caesar speak Italian. Coptic would have been the best choice, it is also within the group of Egyptian languages like ancient Egyptian, and we know how to speak that as well as we do Latin or Nahuatl.
Also, about the lack of vowels in the writing-- it is not that vowels are unimportant or unstressed, rather that it allows fewer letters to be needed to write down the word, so it is simpler. You don't need vowels really-- I bet you can read this sentence without them: "Wh wnts hmbrgrs nd frnch frs fr dnnr?"
I don't think the choice to use Egyptian Arabic ruins the game or anything, and I don't know if it was done out of ignorance or what, but it's too bad. It would have sounded nicer in Egyptian (re-created) or Coptic.
And just so you know, Harun Ar-Rashid speaks Classical Arabic in his videos, which is fully appropriate and well done.
I know for a fact that in Egypt (the modern nation) there is a sizeable Coptic minority, which is Christian and holds very good knowledge of the Coptic language (they have literature in that language!).
I do take a stand here because it is not seriously difficult to use that knowledge.
I was just pointing out that the closest relative alive is Coptic, not Arabic. So the "minimum effort" argument does not go in favour of Arabic.
I just spent a long while reading through this whole thread and thought I really should comment to lay some of this to rest. I speak Arabic, both Egyptian and Classical/Modern Standard, as well as English (obviously).
Ramses is speaking what is called Egyptian Arabic. It is a dialect of Arabic, which originated in the Arabic peninsula, and is a Semitic language of the larger Afro-Asiatic family.
Ramses actually would have spoken Egyptian, a member of the Egyptian branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.
They are not the same language, nor is one a modern version of the other. Being in the same family doesn't make them sound the same (at all)-- languages like German, Persian, English, French, and Spanish are all in the same family (Indo-European) and you probably realize how different they are.
Having Ramses here speak Egyptian Arabic truly is akin to having Caesar speak Italian.
I don't think the choice to use Egyptian Arabic ruins the game or anything, and I don't know if it was done out of ignorance or what, but it's too bad. It would have sounded nicer in Egyptian (re-created) or Coptic.
And just so you know, Harun Ar-Rashid speaks Classical Arabic in his videos, which is fully appropriate and well done.