Languages of This Game
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I always found it fascinating that the villagers and soldiers in Age of Empires 2 spoke in their native languages.
I believe it enhances the game’s immersion.
I have heard debates about whether some civilizations have non-native voice samples, but I am curious about which ones are which.
As a Korean-American who grew up speaking Korean, I can attest that both the Korean villagers and soldiers sound native, but the villagers may have a slightly more modern accent while the soldiers sound more serious and historical.
I would love to hear from other players who are knowledgeable about the languages of the civilizations in the game.
The Turkish voices are native.
But they speak modern (Istanbul) Turkish, which is not historically accurate, since the Turks in the campaigns are Seljuks or sometimes Ottomans (Forgotten Empires Campaign), therefore it would make sense, if they spoke Old Anatolian Turkish and/or used a couple of Persian or Arabic expressions, or used the expressions that derive from Persian or Arabic in their original form (Madenci -> Madanchi; Tamirci -> Tamirkar; Emrin -> Amrun).
The Persian voices are native, too.
They clearly speak modern Persian, which makes sense, if one excludes the Forgotten Empires Campaign with the Sassanid Empire and Chosroes being one of the AI names in the game.
The Sassanids spoke Middle Persian, which is not too different from Modern Persian, but contains differences in the usage of consonants (as there was a shift of consonants during the transition into Modern Persian) and also the stressing of syllables.
One weird thing is the Persian male villager’s “Ari” (“Yes” in English), which has a stressed intial vowel, which is a clear sign for Middle Persian, but all the other in-game dialogues are correctly pronounced according to Modern Persian standards.
The Arabic voices are most likely native as well, but they contain some heavy grammatical mistakes, which I will elaborate on later tonight, as I must go to work soon LOL.
Indians are also Natives.
But They speak modern Hindi.
The portuguese campaign voicing definitely doesn’t sound native to me, but the units do, except by a single grammatical error.
But I’m brazilian, I’m like an american trying to judge british accent, so take it with a grain of salt.
What aufdem said about German applies to French and English to, I believe.
They’re using an archaic dialect that’s not spoken today (example: Briton villagers say “Eos” instead of “Yes,” while Franks say “Oye” instead of “Oui”).
The Frank speakers are non-native as far as I can tell, while the English speakers are native.
I’m Chinese and I’m reasonably certain that the Chinese voices are native too
I would say that the voices of Spanish units are native too, even if what they say doesn’t make much sense sometimes 11
Magyar voice line is modern Hungarian native speaker for sure (probably wasn’t hard to find an immigrant to do it :)).
I also love that they are called Magyars and not Hungarians, fuck imperialist english pigs and their tendency to rename countries at their own will! 🙂
I think a problem is for most languages, that they are older versions of that language.
For me it would be Teutons mostly.
The words sound understandable but are not real german.
the vietnamese civ uses mordern vietnamese, but that is understandable.
something i find kinda odd is that female villagers use the northern dialect-the one you would find in Hanoi, and the rest use southern dialect.
while representing the different dialects of vietnamese is good, it’s worth noting that there are actually 3 broad dialects, so they just completely leave out one.
not to mention the core of our civilization lies in the northern plain, so if they choose to represent medieval vietnamese, either use only the northern dialect, or even better, try to find a source for old vietnamese.
going back ~150 years and the language spoken by the people was already super different than modern vietnamese.
side note: architecturally, the vietnamese civ uses indian.
this is totally wrong on many levels.
of all medieval SEA civs, we were the only one with chinese-influenced architecture and customs. 2 other civs with land in modern vietnam that had high indian influence were the cham, and the khmer down south.
this totally weirds me out; i was very hyped by the inclusion of vietnamese in AOE only to found out they sorta used the “wrong” one.
Loving your guys’ responses so far 🙂
One in particular I’m curious about is Mongols/Huns.
I’ve seen a post where someone said they’re not native but another post where the dude who said he was actually Mongolian called it, “non-accented.” I imagine there aren’t too many Mongolian players, so this one will probably be a pain in the ass to figure out 😛
Celts are fairly understandable from modern Irish (and possibly Scots Gaelic), e.g.
Ceart – right/ok
Iascaire – fisherman
Sealgaire – hunter
Can’t remember the others as it has been a while since I played.
I always loved the immersion that the different languages brought.
Briton’s language is very close to modern English.
You might not understand what they’re saying out of context, but it’s easy to piece together what “firm” means when you click on a farm or “battal” when you go to battle.
It’s also much clearer when you actually look at the words too.
Mandatum? – Order [like mandate]
Ready
Greetin
Correctus – Right
Ic wille – I will
Chopper
Gatherer
Hunter
fisk – Fish
firm – Farm
Dic – Trench [like dig]
builden
estorer – Restorer
fight!
battal! – Battle!
yis – Yes
Slavs speaks modern Russian with native accent.
Huns don’t speak Hunnic languages also, if you didn’t know, because the language has been lost (though it is said to be relatable to fenno-hugric languages such as Hungarian and Estonian).
I mean, i love the voice actors of the game, i don’t care if it is accurate but meh, i think it’s really hard to find some specific words of dead lenguages, like for example the Aztec one
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