What language does Ramessess II speak?

Ramesses said:
It is interesting how ancient languages like Egyptian and Hebrew have no written vowels. It's practically a basic rule of any modern language, so it's almost inconceivable to imagine a time when vowels were seen as being unnecessary, trivial garnishments.

Personally, it's one of the things that bugs me about the Hebrew language. I am, by and large, a visual learner, so it made my Bar Mitzvah a pain in the ass to practice.
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As I understand it, semetic languages have very soft, unstressed vowels. They probably just didn't consider them necessary in written form at first. Even the Phoenician alphabet had no vowels so, when the Greeks borrowed it, they had to convert some of their symbols to represent vowels instead.
 
While it seems to me that this is a very silly thing to be complaining about, I suppose that, with the game not out yet, we don't have much else. However, there is a factor to consider that hasn't been mentioned so far: the fact that you speak a language, no matter how fluently, does not mean you'd make a good voice actor in it.
 
All this is true. In the end, it is disappointing, but probably not more (actually, if they told me they tried to get a voice actor who could speak ancient Egyptian but didn't like the result, I would just be slightly sad and move on). Right now, I'm either disappointed that they didn't succeed or disappointed they didn't try. And we're discussing it because we just more or less found out. In the end, this will be something I'd have to accept and move on.
 
Louis XXIV said:
As I understand it, semetic languages have very soft, unstressed vowels. They probably just didn't consider them necessary in written form at first. Even the Phoenician alphabet had no vowels so, when the Greeks borrowed it, they had to convert some of their symbols to represent vowels instead.
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Or they just did not think it was necessary. If you look at japanese, it's even worst, quite often you just must know how the word is written if you want to be able to pronounce it.

流星 is ryûsei
流れ星 is nagareboshi


the fact that you speak a language, no matter how fluently, does not mean you'd make a good voice actor in it.
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Indeed. And whatever the language, in a movie "I am Imhotep, may your soul be devored by ten thousand scorpions!" with good acting will always sound better than "Hello, it's Ramses II. How may I help you today?".
 
But one have to agree that the voice actor for Ramssess is pretty damn awesome.
Compare it like this:
Ramssess:
Language:3 pts(Not right, though relevant as it is what Egyptians speak today) | Voiceacting:10 pts | Total: 13
Montezuma:
Language:8 pts(Not sure if it really is Classical Nahuatl)| Voiceacting: 2 pts | Total:10
 
Wani said:
Or they just did not think it was necessary. If you look at japanese, it's even worst, quite often you just must know how the word is written if you want to be able to pronounce it.

流星 is ryûsei
流れ星 is nagareboshi
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Is pronunciation easier or harder if that were katakana instead of kanji?
 
Is pronunciation easier or harder if that were katakana instead of kanji?
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That's the funny thing. If you write ryûsei down in kanas, then you are sure of the pronunciation, but you don't know what word it might be and must use the context to find out. It could mean "prosperity", "meteor", or just be a proper noun. (Yes I'm simplifying things quite a bit).

But we disgress :crazyeye:
 
generalwar said:
Speaking with cases is so much easier. You don't have to put all of those. You would be so happy if Croatian would be your mother tongue, because we read as we write.
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But I do read as I write. :confused:
I hate in English game that you read my name Ivan wrong. How to explain that ? When I say that we read as we write(few words are exeptions). This rule is really important in Serbian, they would write John= Džon(that's how John is read and you read that way but you don't have right letters to write that:p). Ivan is Ivan not like how you pronunciate something like Ajvan. That's not my name. John=Ivan. Apostle John= apostle Ivan. I haven't explained a damn thing, have I:lol:? I adore Latin and we almost never translate from Croatian to Latin, it's hard. You can forget to put on the right places nominativ, objectiv case, and all of those parts of sentence to Latin. It's an easier for me to translate from Latin to Croatian(I'm the first year now).Easy Latin sentence I can translate in a minute if I know all of the words. It's easier, I don't understand how can bother you translate from language with cases (Latin) to language without cases(English). It's so easy to translate from Croatian( cases) to English(no cases). I though that you can translate Latin on English in few seconds, really.
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Well, that's because I'm not anywhere near professional at translating. It's mostly the word meanings themselves, not the actually grammar, that throws me off most of the time. Not to mention that some Latin that we have to translate have the strange ability to confuse me by putting commas in very unnatural places.

Plus, I grew complacent with the idea that all ablatives have the - placed above the last letter but apparently, its only liked that for "beginner's" Latin. :lol:
 
Wani said:
That's the funny thing. If you write ryûsei down in kanas, then you are sure of the pronunciation, but you don't know what word it might be and must use the context to find out. It could mean "prosperity", "meteor", or just be a proper noun. (Yes I'm simplifying things quite a bit).

But we disgress :crazyeye:
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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
 
Sonereal said:
But I do read as I write. :confused:


Well, that's because I'm not anywhere near professional at translating. It's mostly the word meanings themselves, not the actually grammar, that throws me off most of the time. Not to mention that some Latin that we have to translate have the strange ability to confuse me by putting commas in very unnatural places.

Plus, I grew complacent with the idea that all ablatives have the - placed above the last letter but apparently, its only liked that for "beginner's" Latin. :lol:
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Someone has to love Latin too, right ;)?
 
Ramesses said:
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
Click to expand...

Chinese>Japanese
 
Sorry to bump the thread, but I just had a random thought on this subject. If they couldn't get Ramses to speak Egyptian, what are the chances of them getting Nebuchadnezzar to speak Akkadian? Now I could be wrong about his language (maybe he spoke Aramaic, which would be much easier to find). Odds would be, however, that he would speak Iraqi Arabic.

If they added Carthage into the game, could they find someone to speak Punic? Would he speak Tunisian Arabic? What about if they added Sumeria? You could conceivably have five civs speaking Arabic (actually, what language did the Songhai speak? Would that be six?). I think that, when you get that many, someone's bound to notice that they're all speaking a dialect of the same language.
 
(actually, what language did the Songhai speak? Would that be six?)
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There's some West African language that was spoken by both the Malian and Songhai Empires that still is spoken today, I forgot its name.

But good point about the Arabic, nevertheless.
 
I thought I was lucky speaking English so I can directly understand two civs, but it looks like Arabic speakers are the true lucky ones....
 
lifelessgamer said:
I thought I was lucky speaking English so I can directly understand two civs, but it looks like Arabic speakers are the true lucky ones....
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If by lucky you mean they get the most immersion-breaking experience, then yes, they are very lucky indeed.
 
Yeah, pretty much.

I don't suppose anyone knows what language the Carthaginians, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Sumerians spoke in Civ4? I realize it was basic unit commands and entirely different, but could at least give some indication.
 
Even though I'm no expert on ancient languages, the Babylonians and Sumerians seemed to be speaking something that sounded Mesopotamian. Or at least it didn't sound Arabic.
 
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).
 
^Perhaps they used modern Swedish/Norweigian/Danish or something? Although even then it shouldn't be that much different from icelandic or Old Norse.
 
I studied Old Icelandic in University. It was fun reading the sagas in the original Icelandic. :)

I think it would be very cool to have a Scandinavian Civ leader speaking old Icelandic.

It would certainly be more authentic.
 
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