I’ve just downloaded the “Lords of the West” expansion… and I’ve been surprised listening Sicilians speaking Sicilian. Sicilian is so similar to Italian, so why italians don’t speak Italian?
Because North Italy spoke a number of different languages (Lombardian, florentine, venetian…), so it makes sense that they have a different language at least between north and south (and even the sicilian language isn’t that accurate…)
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But all Italian dialects derive from Vulgar Latin, so it should be the right language for Italians. For example, seeing Byzantines speaking Latin is wrong, because the offician language of Byzantine empire was Greek.
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Italians should talk the italian dialect spoken Dante Alighieri.The Divine Comedy was one of the first literary pieces to expand to the whole region of Italy, so it kind of make sense as the umbrella language for the whole italians civ. It works better than latin
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Yeah but such dialect was used in all parts of Italy. For example the north east had some similarities, but had a different language for the most, the same was the south or the islands. It was after the unification of Italy that a common language started to appear.
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Isn’t modern Italian a modern construct anyway that was basically forced on the entire Italian peninsula by the northerners?
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But a “common language” already existed, but with some variations from country to country, especially in pronunciation, for example:
- The “o” is pronounced like the “o” in “cost” or the “a” in “ball”;
- The “s” is pronounced like the “s” in “set” or the “s” in “slide”;
- The “e” is pronounced like the “e” in “set” or the “a” in “bay”.
These pronunciations vary even between cities which are close one another, but a “standard” exists for official usage, for politicians’ public speeches, TV news reports and so on, and it’s based on the pronunciation used in Florence.
But these variations also exist in other languages, for example in English… but nobody has raised this problem for Britons’ speech used in the game, for example, in which a single regional accent is used. I bet this problem exists also for other factions’ speech.
I suppose a criterion has been used for choosing which regional accent has been used for each faction… so, why this criterion cannot be applied to Italians? The accent from Florence can be used.
Because Italians started as an unofficial mod while back, so some details weren’t even thought about. And with DE, they probably purposely put them aside for better improving other aspects of the game.
Sicilians on the other hands are a new civs, it’s full with eye candy because they added just 2 civs with this DLC, which means more energy was used to settle every detail. It’s the same reason why the 2 civs have unique castles.
This DLC needed to sell (probably because aoe3 didn’t sell as much as they hoped) so they try to at least make it really worth its money.
As for the accent of Florence, it would be just an accent, it wouldn’t be that much accurate. Latin on the other hand would be at least accurate in representing the early years of the peninsula, when it was divided only between longobards and byzantines.
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Does anyone maybe know if they just used the exact same voices from the older games for DE?
Because if they did then that answers everything.
It costs money to do it all over again. So as much as we would like to have Greek byz and italian Italians who gonna pay for it?
I bought aoe2de for something like £10. That’s a third of the price of any of my other AAA games. And I’ve played 900hrs on it. 1 pence an hour is a a really insanely cheap hobby imo.
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I don’t know, I think that they re made them, but I’m not sure.
But even in this case, I simply think that it may have been simply an overlooked detail. For them and form most civs.
Speech and sounds aren’t the most important thing of the game in the end.
Also, while at least the reign of the normans was one and whole, choosing a single language was easy. The same cannot be said for the north of the peninsula.
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No voice set is remade. They are all directly copied over from HD. AFAIK.
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I also believe that’s the main reason.
Proper voice clips give a strong identity to civilizations, and what’s better than sicilian dialect to sicilians even if it’s historically inaccurate?
I don’t think italian voices are going to change but a mixture of Tuscanian and Venetian dialects ( one to villagers, another one to military units, etc) would be a nice touch .
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This would be the best solution. It’s very weird listening to Sicilians speaking something too much similar to Italian, and listening Italians speaking Latin…
I love the Sicilian dialect, was great to discover it after downloading the two civilizations.
Really appreciate this new touch of the development guys, makes the game even more realistic.
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