Civs' Languages

[abuaftab]

It is such a cool feature that the units "talk" to you in their own language. But I am still really curious. Is it all real?

What I mean is that each of the civs uses a real language, but there are some "exceptions".

When I first used the Egyptians I was saddened to hear "Egyptian" Arabic, I was expecting Coptic or something. Which got me thinking about other civs languages. Are they authentic? as to accent and the words used? Some I am sure about, because I know those languages, but perhaps players could tell us how realistic the sound sets are.

English - Is it RP?
America - Which dialect?
Roman - Latin with Italian accent?
Russian -
Tokugawa - Which dialect of Japanese?
Cyrus - Iranian Farsi?
Mongol - Is it real?
French - Parisian?
Arab - This seems to be Algerian/Tunis accent to me.
Egypt - Egyptian Arabic Why?!
India - Standard Hindi - Not Urdu, nice touch.
Korea - Seoul dialect?
Ottomans - Turkish from where?
Mali -
Zulu -
German - Hochdeutsch?
Greece -
Vikings -
Spain - South American or Spanish version?
Carthage - Moroccan Arabic or Berber?
Aztec -
Inca -
China - Putonghua or standard Mandarin (Cantonese would be hilarious)
Celts - Irish? Scots? Welsh? I adore this soundset.

Maybe I left something out. But I am only a very curious cat. Maybe you could add some.

I would love to be able to make my own soundsets. It would be cool to have modded sound sets in other languages for use in scenarios and or mods.

 

[Shawnosaurus]

Aw crap, now I am going to have to play with the sound on.

Interesting question! I suspect a few of these languages will remain a mystery.

 

[MNGhost]

I guess I never noticed this? When do units talk to you?

 

[joasoze]

The Vikings speak Norwegian mostly. There are a few things that sounds sligthly swedish or strangly accented Norwegian, but its all understandable.

 

[Mark Jenkins]

I think the sound in this game is very well done. To play without it on would be a disservice... even if you scroll down and zoom into one of your cities you can hear period music coming from it.

As for the accents, they're probably more generic nation-sounding languages than authentic and historically accurate, for the most part. Although they do sound quite nice.

 

[Kushluk]

Also when Chinese is displayed in-game, it is in simplified (which is crap).

See the movie for the great wall and notice dragon written .....This is all the more troublesome becuase the wall was only built 1 billion years before the horror that is simplified chinese was spawned fourth.

EDIT: Characters don't display

 

[Gyathaar]

The Vikings speak Norwegian mostly. There are a few things that sounds sligthly swedish or strangly accented Norwegian, but its all understandable.

Vikings voices mostly sound like Norwegian with a swedish accent in my opinion

 

[KMadCandy]

i didn't notice that they talked to me for the longest time. i was gandhi a lot at first since i love the fast worker UU, never goes obsolete and i'm not a 'crush them early' type of warmonger. but then i started playing spain and then realized they were saying Si! so then i played with others to laugh at them all, cute touch.

 

[Willowmound]

Vikings voices mostly sound like Norwegian with a swedish accent in my opinion

But have you listened to what he actually says? These lines were written by someone who does not speak Norwegian, but might be proficient in Babelfish.

I give you: "Alle er til stede og komplett" -- this is supposed to be the 'Viking' (i.e. Norwegian) "all present and accounted for". Except that this isn't how one would say it. What the guy is saying, is something more aking to, "everyone is present and complete". What crap.

I give you: "Vi er på saken" -- literally "we are on the case", and something one would never say in Norwegian. But I guess Babelfish might translate "we're on it" thus. How moronic.

The actor is inconsistent in his pronunciation as well. Most noticable are his R's. He will sometimes use an alveolar trill (as a person from eastern or northern Norway might do, or one from Scotland), sometimes an uvular trill (as a person from southern or western Norway might do, or one from France). Which goes to show, this guy is not a native.

How hard would it be to find a Norwegian Norwegian (as opposed to a Hackneyed Impostor) in the US? Not very. Lazy casting, is what it is.

 

[Willowmound]

I guess I never noticed this? When do units talk to you?

When you click them.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

It`s weird you don`t notice it until you play a race speaking your language. I listened more carefully after hearing the English units. From what I know of Russian and German, it's sounds pretty good, but I am not fluent. I have to play more as the French and Spanish but I can understand most of what they say.

 

[Psyringe]

The German units speak accent-free German ("Hochdeutsch"). The pronunciation is that of a native speaker. Their is only one very minor occurence of a sound that indicates that the speaker may originate from Southern Germany, but it's very subtle and I think most Germans wouldn't even notice.

 

[abuaftab]

Willowmound

This is why I asked the question. I don't really know German but I was wondering if the speech was really accurate.

The Chinese and Hindi seem ok to me, as well as the arabic, but I really don't know about the others.

 

[Tarhun]

The Aztec units presumably speak Nahuatl, it certainly sounds like it. Now whether it's a modern dialect of Nahuatl (it is still spoken by over one and a half million people in Mexico) or classical Nahuatl spoken by a linguistics professor or something... I don't know.

EDIT: some people on a linguistics forum talking about this exact same thing...http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=19798&sid=0063dace2bb5c0ad8a4943e19b7cac6b

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Cool. Thanks for the link

 

[Cervus]

Russian sounds all right. Modern. No accent to concern about, in my opinion.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

The Chinese are definitely Mandarin...I know, I took Chinese until recently, and I was owned by the simplified characters.....

 

[Bluetooth]

I play the Vikings now and then and the unit sound is really annoying. :thumbdown A couple of months ago I finally change to English sound. Much better.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

I'm not sure why they did Egyptian Arabic for the Egyptians, but being of Egyptian descent, I love it when they say things I actually understand...

The American English is probably General American--i.e. Midwestern. I wouldn't be surprised if they just found some random guy among them and put him in a room and told him to say whatever. That was probably the easiest recording of them all.

I'm inclined to think that the Arabic that the Arabs units speak is closer to Syrian.

I don't speak their languages, but I think that the Malinese speak Mandinke (sp?), the Zulu speak isiZulu, the Inca Quechua (it's very much a living language, so they wouldn't have trouble finding speakers), and the Aztecs Nahuatl (not exactly common, but a few short phrases wouldn't be hard to get).

The Mongol words are a lot like those in Age of Empires II. So either they just copied AOE2 or they come from the same source. I'm partial to the latter theory--too many words that didn't show up in AOE.

As for the Persians, it does sound like my friend from Iran talking.

On the whole, I think they wanted to be able to find modern languages; who speaks Ancient Egyptian or Old Norse? Though Coptic would have been closer...

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I noticed something a while back while playing as the English, capture a barbarian or another Civ's worker, and click on them. They immediately speak perfect "The Queen's English"!....its an amazing and uncanny ability which they all possess. Absolutely no need for TEFL schools in CIV IV whatsoever