Figure out what Attila is speaking

[Gyathaar]

I figured out what he is saying...

Someone had uploaded the demo to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajY0oGbsxyI

For fun I enabled the automatic audio transcribe:

this is what he says... (according to google... )

Spoiler :

matching hair

moments there

underemployed extricated

have lower my archive

now the for some of these we've met the killing and as as a developer on this

 

[Khagan1]

Do you mean Kazan Tatar instead of Crimean Tatar? It sounds plausible. Chuvash has less speakers than Tatar, so maybe they chose Tatar.

Yes, I meant Volga/Idil Tatars. Unfortunately, Crimean Tatar language has gone through radical change after forced deportation of Tatar people by Soviet Union. I don't think they could find native speaker of Crimean Tatar. Plus there is confusion with the word of "Tatar". Russians tend to call all Turco-Mongol people as Tatars whether they are or not.

I guess, Attila speaks Chuvash or more to the Southern Siberia, Tuva or Hakas dialects which are very hard to understand for me as they are Northern dialects of Turkic languages. I'm sure I would catch a few words if it was Kazan Tatar as it is more similar to Oghuz/Southern dialect of Turkic languages (Turkish, Turkmen, Azeri etc.).

 

[Guandao]

So here are the possible Turkic languages which Attila may be speaking:

Chuvash-1,640,000 speakers
Sakha/Yakut-363,000
Tuvan-265,000
Khakas-29,000
Altay-20,000
Shor-9,800
Dolgan-5,000

Chuvash is my best guess for Attila's language. Unless he's speaking Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek or Uyghur.

 

[Blue Anteater]

An IPA approximation of mine of what he is saying:

/hɛzə hali atɪlaː! womɛntʃɛ, arɛːm holenə kəksɛn keke. haʋaːma kabalaxtaː, jykɛrmɛ ɛrɛ kampaɾ./

It may not help much, but I thought it would be useful.

 

[Guandao]

An IPA approximation of mine of what he is saying:



It may not help much, but I thought it would be useful.

Thanks!

Once I get the game and all of Attila's dialogue, I will try to contact professors who study Turkic languages. I wonder if they got a professor from Russia to write the dialogue

 

[IgorS]

Chuvash is my best guess for Attila's language. Unless he's speaking Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek or Uyghur.

Definitely not Kazakh\Uzbek\Kyrgyz. I'm from Uzbekistan, and although I don't speak Uzbek, I have heard it many times. I also know what Kazakh sounds like. He does not speak Kazakh.
He definitely sounds Turkic to me, though. I mean, my first reaction when I heard him was "wow, he actually speaks a Turkic language and not Hungarian". I thought they'll just record Hungarian speech, but they actually surprised me with their efforts here.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I'm thinking its Chuvash. When I first heard it I thought it sounded like a mix between a Finno-Ugric language and a Turkic language. It turns out this is how Chuvash is described.

 

[Blue Anteater]

I've contacted Victor of the website Chuvash.org about Attila's speech, and he says it's not Chuvash, and that to him it's no language at all.

Interesting...

 

[Guandao]

I've contacted Victor of the website Chuvash.org about Attila's speech, and he says it's not Chuvash, and that to him it's no language at all.

Interesting...

How is that possible?
Does this mean Attila's language is completely made up?

 

[Al-Iskander]

How is that possible?
Does this mean Attila's language is completely made up?

I sent the clip to a friend of mine who knows Turkish, Russian and a bunch of languages from the Caucuses, and he suggested the same result.

It would be a first for Civ 5 to have a fictional language involved, but I think we've exhausted most of our ideas here.

 

[Gyathaar]

Could it be one of the other extinct Oghur-Turkic languages where more words are known than Hunnic, like perhaps Bulgar?

 

[Guandao]

Firaxis needs to tell us if this language is fake or real. If it is fake, then there's no point in translating it.

 

[MadDjinn]

Firaxis needs to tell us if this language is fake or real. If it is fake, then there's no point in translating it.

Given that they haven't used 'fake' languages yet, I doubt it's early enough to call it that.

More likely they used something no one has thought of (or some variant that's very little known).

 

[Uberfrog]

Faking a language almost no-one will understand is like making up the digits of pi: it's actually more work than finding a suitable one.

If they were going to cop out to that extent, they almost certainly would have gone for something like Hungarian. It makes no sense to flat out make one up.

 

[IgorS]

I agree. I think it is a real language. And if it is not, then at least they made it sound like a language the Huns could speak.

 

[Krzowwh]

Okay, well this is probably a long shot, as I don't have any expertise regarding languages of in this area.
The first thing Atilla says, given that he says his name, is probably an introduction, likely meaning "I am called Atilla" or something similar. Most languages in the region around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea are grammatically subject first, so we can assume the first thing he says is the word "I". Looking through a database of equivalents of this English word, we can find that the Ossetic word for I is /æz/ in IPA, which is close to the first syllable that Atilla says in his intro.
Could this be a lead, anyone?

 

[MkLh]

It could be reconstructed Proto-Turkic. That would make sense as if Attila's language was a Turkic language (as most scholars think) it must have been very close to Proto-Turkic.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Are the guys behind this CIA or something? Just email the relevant developers and they'll tell us. I'm sure they will tell us eventually of their own will, or someone will figure it out.

 

[Optional]

It will come out at some stage, but at this moment they're having way too much fun reading this thread and seeing us make al these wild guesses.

 

[Blue Anteater]

It could be reconstructed Proto-Turkic. That would make sense as if Attila's language was a Turkic language (as most scholars think) it must have been very close to Proto-Turkic.

I do not think so, because if Attila were to say "I am Attila," he would be saying:

*men Attila!

Also, the reconstructed Proto-Turkic language does not appear to have the voiceless velar fricative (/x/), which is present in his speech.