Civs' Languages

[aelf]

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

It's all supposed to be in your imagination, like Garfield or Snoopy's words. I can almost see the units speaking in thought bubbles. Actually they are speaking gibberish (to your people, at any rate, especially the barbs).

Anyway, I think the Chinese is fine. Standard, I would say. Not Cantonese by a long shot.

 

[Kristian95]

hehehehe and that's good, it should be mandarin after all that is the "official" language or main tongue or whatever it is called in English.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

It's all supposed to be in your imagination, like Garfield or Snoopy's words. I can almost see the units speaking in thought bubbles. Actually they are speaking gibberish (to your people, at any rate, especially the barbs).

Anyway, I think the Chinese is fine. Standard, I would say. Not Cantonese by a long shot.

I'm learning Chinese right now, and I definitely heard them say 出发 (chūfā, "Go", probably short for "Let's Go!" or "Let's Get Moving!")

 

[flamingzaroc121]

i forget, do the zulu workers do the clicking sound when they are talking like real zulus or not

 

[gettingfat]

The Chinese used in the game is Mandarin. FYI, it's actually not ridiculous to use Cantonese. This dialect is probably closer to the Chinese language used by the ancient Chinese (many ancient Chinese poems only rhymed with Cantonese, not Mandarin).

The simplified Chinese used in the Great Wall movie is certainly a joke, that's said, history is only 10% of the game anyway. I watched "The Departed" and those so-called "Chinese" actors in the movies spoke like Shaq O'Neille imitating Yao Ming. At least in this game the Mandarin is likely spoken by a native Mandarin speaker.

 

[abuaftab]

Considering that in real life most Chinese don't speak Cantonese it would be too limiting. Let's face it, if we were to you "Old English" then we would think it was German and not English. And somehow I don't think Sanskrit would go down well for Hindi. As for Egyptian, Coptic is still used in Coptic religious uses, so why not?

 

[Kushluk]

The Chinese used in the game is Mandarin. FYI, it's actually not ridiculous to use Cantonese. This dialect is probably closer to the Chinese language used by the ancient Chinese (many ancient Chinese poems only rhymed with Cantonese, not Mandarin).

Yeah Cantonese is much closer. The common saying is that the Classics should be read in Cantonese. People don't realize outside of China that Cantonese was very very close to becomming the national language of China, it was only narrowly outvoted in favour of Mandarin.

The simplified Chinese used in the Great Wall movie is certainly a joke. . .

You can cut that sentence a little short. Simplified is ALWAYS a joke. On the great wall it's gross. But then I spent all my time learning Chinese in Taiwan, where real men still use real characters hehehe

 

[abuaftab]

A mod using Cantonese would be cool, but I think a Shanghainese version would be sexy.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

You can cut that sentence a little short. Simplified is ALWAYS a joke. On the great wall it's gross. But then I spent all my time learning Chinese in Taiwan, where real men still use real characters hehehe

And get hand cramp.

 

[abuaftab]

And of course a person's handwriting of Chinese is nothing like simplified...

 

[Gyathaar]

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.

Yeah.. a more correct line would be "Alle mann til stede" (an expression used in the norwegian military) - translated; 'All men (are) present'

 

[Öjevind Lång]

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

One of the Enghlish voices sounds a bit Caribbean to me. Perhaps the guy is from Brixton.

 

[Kushluk]

And get hand cramp.

I used to be very much like you. You will see the light in time my child, and come to know the POWER of the traditional side. I was orionally educated with the simplified, and figured out soon enough it was crap. For reasons read on.

@ the other guy. Handwriting has it's plusses, but that plus is not in official documents and publications. I would no more want chinese handwriting as an offical standard t3n i wud wnt AIM skrl as n oficial 3nglish 14ngu4age wrtin systim. y? bcuz itz annoyn an inferiar.

Becides, Simplified goes so so far beyond simple bushou (radical)simplification. It simply makes up characters, which Kongzi tells me is just immoral Take for example the "yi4" in Mao2zhu3yi4 (Maoisim). It looks like an X with a dot and a greek iota. Gross. Not only gross but hard to memorize since none of those components suggest either meaning OR prounciation. I don't think the whole simplification idea was so terrible, but the application was generally bad and came out looking as good as anything that comes out of a communist comittie. For example I find the Japanese simplifcations are both time saving and don't diminish the beauty of the Characters, however the post Liberation simplifications often butcher.

I WONT EVEN get into character synthesis where they take multiple traditional Characters and meld them into one simplified character. This often results in comically bad/unreadable translations of classical texts.

Oh? and the final test. Literacy. Hong Kong and Taiwan BOTH use tradtional and both have higher literacy rates than the simplified Mainland. You might be able to argue from that that their GDP is higher and economy is more developed - and you may be right - but the one thing you cannot argue is that tradtional system is too ponderous or inefficient to be useful since both those areas have higher literacy. So in my view why not have your cake and eat it too, the higher literacy AND the better looking system. Who likes the simplified for 'love' and 'dragon' anyway?

 

[Lockesdonkey]

I don't have the time to talk about your other points, but I can talk about this one:

Oh? and the final test. Literacy. Hong Kong and Taiwan BOTH use tradtional and both have higher literacy rates than the simplified Mainland. You might be able to argue from that that their GDP is higher and economy is more developed - and you may be right - but the one thing you cannot argue is that tradtional system is too ponderous or inefficient to be useful since both those areas have higher literacy. So in my view why not have your cake and eat it too, the higher literacy AND the better looking system. Who likes the simplified for 'love' and 'dragon' anyway?

Red herring. HK and Taiwan both have long-established, well-developed capitalist economies. The PRC's is only about thirty years old. Furthermore, it's many times larger--population is 1.3 billion, so the same increase in the number of people knowing how to read will result in a smaller percentage increase. On the other hand, look at how rapidly mainland China went from minute literacy to 90+% literacy during the Communist regime--with simplified characters.

And to counter your argument more directly, Singapore uses Simplified characters. Granted, not all people from Singapore are Chinese, but it should be noted.

 

[anglosaxon]

The English accent is completely mis-represented. The worldwide stereotype of an English accent is something that to me (an Englishman) is very upperclass and false. The average Englishman sounds nothing like the one in the game, you can tell they might have used an American who specialises in doing English. In fact, there are so many accents in England, that no one accent can be a general representation.

The German accent too, sounds stupid, because it seems to be sounding deliberately effeminate.

The Viking accent is my favourite one, because of the aggression in the voice.

 

[aelf]

I spent much of my school life struggling with simplified Chinese. I guess that's the trouble when you don't use it as your first language. If I had to learn the more complex characters, I would have just died

Anyway, back on the topic, all the Chinese historical dramas that I have seen on the television or in the cinema are spoken in similar fashion, so I guess Civ's Mandarin is perfectly alright.

 

[dguichar]

...the Zulu speak isiZulu...

didn't they spoke swahilli?

 

[JMaltman]

I had to learn pinyin, Fantizi and Jiantizi in first and second year!

Then switched to just Fantizi in 4th year.

I call simplified "Uglified" characters. You take the beauty and story out of the language, and make it look like crap.

Just skip the whole simplified thing and go straight to typing Chinese - learning how to READ traditional is easier, its just remembering how to write that is the problem. Typing simplifies that considerably. Unfortunately Chinese language word processors came along a little too late.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

didn't they spoke swahilli?

Swahili is spoken in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, etc.) The Zulu are from South Africa.

If you don't believe me, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_language.

 

[abuaftab]

anglosaxon. Wouldn't it be cool if they had accents from around the country, try a little Lancashire? Some Newcastle? East end London? What about Cornwall? I'd probably have no idea what they are saying! Just never use my Australian accent, it would hurt!