Language style: Old or modern?

Story & Setting
#206

It’s pretty easy to Google, but the myth has been busted from the movies suggesting that the old colonies or old English folk were speaking in the posh accents they have now. As the link below gives as a good example, the English used to say “hard” like Americans, rather than it sounding more like “hahd” with changes to the pronunciation of R, among other things.

As for which regional accents, generally when you say American accent, or in America if we say no accent, it is referring to the most common accent like you would find our major broadcast network news anchors using most of the time. For the English, their national broadcasters are a similar example of what is meant by English accent when regions aren’t specified. Here’s a blog post that summarizes it pretty well: When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?

And the wikipedia page where it mentions the American retention of many older mechanics that the English people dropped: Wikipedia: American English

#207

You wouldn’t be able to understand Middle English as it was spoken.

#208

I don’t know anyone who says “hard” like “hand”. Dropping the “r” is common, but the vowels are different. Here, “hard” is said like “car” and “hand” is said like “cafe”.
I also hear the American “r” to be different to the English “r”, and I do not think we can say the English “r” used to sound like the American “r”.

#209

That was just autocorrect on my computer. It is now edited - “hard” vs “hahd”

#210

Maybe English with a Czech accent I didn’t like the place holder voices in the game demo, I think old English would be really cool especially when it’s well presented like in Laurence Olivia’s henry V, but I think since this game is set in Eastern Europe then make it Czech with English subtitles or English with a Czech accent, I’m English and I have no problem with that :smiley:

#211

Czechs be proud of your history, your ancestors and your language. Because this Games presents a part of your great history, you should also treat that what you make, with honor and dignity. I understand that currently you don’t have the money, to make a historical correct language representation.
But if you have made a commercial sucess with this game, then please make for this game the spoken language in medival czech, polish, german, latin, hungarian etc etc.
You will be doing this for yourselves and all others, who appreciate a great deal of realism, the love to the detail and foreign languages.

3 Likes
#212

I am. I also know that my nation will be promoted much more widely by a game speaking english :stuck_out_tongue:

#213

How should i answer this statement? Besides that this is the truth, and also that it is known that people with english as their first launguage are lazy to learn other languages.
Hmmm. I know how. With FIRE and SWORD!

There you have your answer. The polish people are speaking polish, the ukrainians are speaking ukrainian and the tatars are speaking turkish or their language. :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

2 Likes
#214

Really old English, it would be sooooo cool to play the game like that, we will all use subtitles anyway so might aswell make it as immersive as possible:)

1 Like
#215

Hi, I thought about this a lot lately - as with more aspects of this game I guess it is hard to find the right balance between historical accuracy and contemporary entertainment. Recently I came across a good article about this illustrated by the differences between two TV series about Borgia family (here)

The argument is that in order to make historical settings understandable and enjoyable for modern audience, you need to adjust a lot of things. So I wound not see as problem to have characters speak in more contemporary language (words) if they use the language in historically accurate way - how they addressed they superiors, that there were great class differences in the ways of speech a lot of references to religion and god as basically everyone was believing christian and so on… also it should reflect completely different morality values to modern day - common use of violence, superstitions, fear of devil and hell, conflict between cruel reality and idea of good christian life. I think it is more important about WHAT and in WHICH MANNER are people in the game talking than language itself.

Also considering that in that age there were multiple ethnicities living side by side in the Bohemian kingdom and upper classes commonly knew more foreign languages and Latin as well, it was very common that people understood and spoke Czech and German without the need of translation or they used some broken version when not speaking in they native language. For example I can imagine someone to talk to they landlord in Czech and lord replying to them in German, while both characters understand each other (something like today’s Czechs and Slovaks do). This aspect I can see as more important for players immersion than use of anachronisms.

This could be interpreted with understandable (thought not necessarily most contemporary) version of main characters language (either Czech or English) and appropriate foreign languages (also understandable for those who can speak it) used by other characters with subtitles (like in the example of “With fire and sword” above).

So I have no problem with main character speaking English (Though I am Czech myself) - it is more question of world-wide accessibility of the game, than gameplay itself in my opinion. But I would appreciate if you could use a language version that would not sound too cheesy or forcefully “archaic” in the end. As it often happens with speakers on medieval fairs who use “old sounding words” to support atmosphere of event, but cannot construct sentences in old fashioned ways so it ends up as ridiculous nonsense. After all in 15th century they spoke in the way appropriate for they time, not in some archaic manner. So if you want to bring attention to what is actually happening in the game, you should say it in the language that is appropriate and understandable for the player and deliver experience based on periodical settings of story and behavior of characters…

(sorry for the long post)

4 Likes
#216

There are certainly many options when it comes to dubbing, but some, despite being quite enticing, would be hard to achieve for the team I think. Like having too many languages in the game.

What I would prefer and think that would be achievable is English, polite, poetic and nice one. Here is an example from one adaptation of Shakespeare. What I have in mind would be this as top level, a way noble can for example speak in the game. With vocabulary of common people being far less difficult.

And I must say I like British accents. Of course I would e glad for high quality Czech dubbing as an option in menu, but as the developers said in one of their videos, it may take longer to achieve that. But being able to freely choose mix of subtitles eng/cze and language sounds appealing.

Plus adding a bit of Latin to the mix for clergy would be great.

1 Like
#217

Hi there, new backer,
I would second this opinion, modern english grammar, archaic words/style of address. I think it doesnt have to be british accent like in the series because the game is settled in bohemia, so maybe englsih with strong eastern/baltic accent. That worked well in the Metro series, although russian obviously. The nobles speak accent free (which means no british accent either)

#218

Where did you come up with that? Germans first started to come to Bohemia in noticeable numbers during the rule of king Ottokar II of Bohemia (1253-7). German language was mostly used in the border areas with mixed German-Slavic inhabitants. German also became important at the court to some degree until the time of Luxembourgs who favored French; nevertheless all documents were written in Latin.

By 14th century Czech became relevant in the upper class again (replacing French) because Charles IV. promoted the language - he even went so far as to command German electors to learn Czech in the Golden Bull. The diminution of Bavarian and Saxon nations at the Charles University led to further promotion of the language. Portions of bible were translated into Czech in 1370s well before Wycliff’s English version. Whole bible was available in Czech by 1380, ahead of German Wenzel 1389 bible. By the time of King Wenceslaus all official documents were written in Czech (previously they were written in Latin).

I am always struck by these claims being made by contemporary Germans when no such were raised even by Nazis when looking for excuses for the 1938 and 1939 invasion. Please be so kind and let us know where the claim of German majority in Bohemia prior to 1380 comes from. Because even the brutal and savage Habsburg-Catholic Germanization introduced during and after the 30 years war, which led to population decline of up to 60%, did not accomplish that.

2 Likes
#219

As I said, it’s a weak source (the internet): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_Böhmens#Luxemburger - last paragraph. On re-reading I realize my mistake though. Germans in Bohemia were at their most numerous by around 1378 and declined from there, but the text doesn’t claim they actually outnumbered the Czech. My bad.

#220

Impossible! If you speak you have an accent.

3 Likes
#221

No old boy. Speaking correctly, in English is accent free. Everything else is “regional” or “foreign”.

1 Like
#222

Maybe a good mix between both?

#223

Or better yet… Nadsat?

#224

Doeth someone know how they solved it now?

#225

old old old. more obscure, less hipster.

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