Aztec language barely reconstructed

[stealth_nsk]

From the official site you could hear what Montezuma calls himself something like "Imperorin" - clearly a european-based word. I understand what modern nahuatl has a lot of European adoptions, but I'd prefer to hear more native even if less precise words.

Looks like they have the same thing with Ancient Egyptian - it seems to be based on modern coptic, which has rich arabic influence. But I'm not a specialist here and it doesn't sound disturbing for me.

Anyway, that's not a first priority feature, of course.

 

[Shurdus]

It seems fine to me. When I hear those guys speak I just hear some language that sounds alien to me, and therefore everything they say really has an impact. I am sure if I spoke Dutch to you you would not even note if I spoke dialect or not. It just needs to get a message across, it needs not be perfect. I am sure the developers did what they could in the time they had, so whatever the results are is fine with me.

 

[AriochIV]

If you are looking for up-to-the-latest-scholarship-accurate ancient spoken language from a game, I predict you are going to be disappointed.

 

[sköldpadda]

Well, we don't really have specific details about ancient Egyptian, so I'll let it go. Aztec, hey, we don't necessarily know exactly what their dialect was either. To the typical ignorant American (me) it will sound just lovely.

 

[Ambassador]

I can understand that for the average American gamer accuracy in foreign languages is not so important - as long as you do not yourself understand that language. Just imagine if George Washington spoke kids' slang of the Bronx or sounded like PuffDaddy. So I can relate to someone who says - hey, I can understand this language and it just doesn't seem right. But overall I agree - it's only minor issue.

 

[12agnar0k]

Well so long as its better than Civ-Rev leader's/advisors speech I don't care if its completely accurate. I.e they dont just go , bee-bide-ahhhh-ha-who (I cant really write Civ-rev gobildy guup.) If you dont know because you've never even looked at civ rev then try and find a trailer with the advisors in it. It gets very annoying. Seeming as leader's in Civ5 will actually be speaking proper languages I dont anticipate I will hate it.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I agree what it's mostly enough to keep phonetics - exact words aren't necessary. That's exactly why I don't like to hear European words from Montezuma - because I can recognize them!

 

[12agnar0k]

One thing I want to see is a leader from Africa, one of thier tougne clicking languages, or indeed any civlisation with interesting speech paterns like that. Can anyone tell me if any of the Civilisations will speek like that? IF NOT WHY NOT!

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well so long as its better than Civ-Rev leader's/advisors speech I don't care if its completely accurate. I.e they dont just go , bee-bide-ahhhh-ha-who (I cant really write Civ-rev gobildy guup.) If you dont know because you've never even looked at civ rev then try and find a trailer with the advisors in it. It gets very annoying. Seeming as leader's in Civ5 will actually be speaking proper languages I dont anticipate I will hate it.

I couldn't agree more. What they did with civ rev pretty much ruined the whole audio side of the game. The gibberish sounded worse than what a 2 year old would mumble.

As long as the language is mostly authentic where possible, I'm a happy chappy.

 

[LaRate]

I couldn't agree more. What they did with civ rev pretty much ruined the whole audio side of the game. The gibberish sounded worse than what a 2 year old would mumble.

As long as the language is mostly authentic where possible, I'm a happy chappy.

I'm just thinking of a SIMlish Civ... "Ooh tashuconana! Le la la cula!" ... What would their UU and UB be?

 

[NubianMercenary]

Ok, I agree with the notion that total language accuracy is really just 'nit-picking', but then again, something in me screams the following:

"From Civ 1 till now, this is the first instance where Leaders will speak their native languages, for s sake, at least do it properly!"

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[benjamin28]

I think two different things about this topic.
On the one hand, I definitely won't hate the speech as long as is not repetitive and I don't feel like turning it off. On the other hand, the first time I heard Montezuma speaking I thought "WTF?", because he says a couple of Spanish words (Imperio > Empire; Aztecas > Aztecs, which is the Spanish plural; also consider they were called themselves "Mexica", not aztecs). I also saw him as a kind of mad emperor whose first desire is to conquer the universe, according to his voice and movements, which is a very sad impression of an aztec emperor, but I guess one of the main funs in a Civ game is to have a fight with Montezuma and then destroy Tenochtitlan just because he's annoying. Pretty sad, but that's it

 

[awesome]

i didn't pay that much attention to what the leaders said, even the ones who speak english.

 

[bjbrains]

Well, remember that they're working with what they can get. It's not like we have a perfect dictionary of Ancient Aztec, Firaxis is just working with the most authentic speakers they can get.

 

[civ_king]

I think they did a recent job, it isn't as if they have a time machine to go find what they were speaking

 

[onedreamer]

They simply CAN'T make leaders speak perfect ancient egyptian, etruscan or aztec, because our knowledge on such languages isn't perfect. It's not like they didn't want or they didn't try as hard as they could, they did what it was humanly possible to do.

 

[BobDole]

I think I'll give them a pass, some of the languages they're bringing back are ancient/dead. If it sounds sort of authentic, that's good enough for me personally.

 

[Jamuka]

I can understand that for the average American gamer accuracy in foreign languages is not so important - as long as you do not yourself understand that language. Just imagine if George Washington spoke kids' slang of the Bronx or sounded like PuffDaddy. So I can relate to someone who says - hey, I can understand this language and it just doesn't seem right. But overall I agree - it's only minor issue.

That would be awesome

 

[luchofeio]

wow

nobody care if its fake or not, none of us can speak it
for christ sake if you have nothing to do go read a book instead of making stupid threads

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[Kimuyama]

They simply CAN'T make leaders speak perfect ancient egyptian, etruscan or aztec, because our knowledge on such languages isn't perfect. It's not like they didn't want or they didn't try as hard as they could, they did what it was humanly possible to do.

Why the hell would they want to reconstruct etruscan?