What's with all these German speaking NPCs?

[falloutgod13]

Seriously annoying if you don't know German, I don't sprechen the Duestch. Okay? Quit speaking to me in German. It's just irritating when they speak half-German and less than half-English and Henry somehow understands what they're saying from like 3 English words in 10 word sentence. LOL How? I have no idea what they're saying most of the time and at this point I just started skipping dialogue when I start hearing them talk in German. I don't know who thought this was a good idea to put in the game but it's terrible. The subtitles are also written in German which makes zero sense to me. I think the only person I've seen translated is Adder(he's turkish? I forget), which is oddly inconsistent with everything else.

It's irritating to me because it's not just a couple of quirky NPCs, no, I've run into over 20 of them now. Some are just random encounters, but regardless, most people don't talk like this. It's just weird. Why would you talk in your language to someone who doesn't understand it?

Part of me wishes I paid attention in my German classes more than I did. I came away only being able to say a few things. One of them being, "Ich bin ein obst kuchen."(I am a fruit cake.) Needless to say, I did not take the class seriously and lament that I could have and would have made use of that knowledge while playing this game. That aside, the writing of dialogue for NPCs in this this manner is still complete rubbish.

[Fitzy]

Postat inițial de Hellsteeth30:

English has roots in nearly every nation that invaded England over the centuries.

Saxon (Germanic), Angles, Jutes, old French (Normans), Latin of course. With a hint of Viking influence.

Henry VIII eventually got fed up with the various dialects and started spreading a more unified English via the bible.

Later on French (more modern), Dutch, Afrikaans, which was itself a composite of colonial powers.

As to why English is the Lingua Franca, that's again tied to colonialism.

I speak Russian, Cantonese and some Spanish. Might move to Poland eventually as the UK sucks balls, so I'll have to learn Polish too.

Never got the hang of the Cyrillic alphabet though.

"English has roots in nearly every nation that invaded England over the centuries."

"Roots" is where something starts, English did not start in colonies those came later, speak sense. The building I live in is older than Englands colonies.

[Hellsteeth30]

Speak sense?

I did, I just elaborated. Sorry I guess......♥♥♥♥ me.

[Fitzy]

Postat inițial de Hellsteeth30:

Speak sense?

I did, I just elaborated. Sorry I guess......♥♥♥♥ me.

Now read the rest of what I said where you claimed that something which happened hundreds of years after England first existed is "the roots" I have no quarrel with ignorance, only with those so proud of their own they think the world needs it as a gift.

[Hellsteeth30]

Postat inițial de Fitzy:

Postat inițial de Hellsteeth30:

Speak sense?

I did, I just elaborated. Sorry I guess......♥♥♥♥ me.

Now read the rest of what I said where you claimed that something which happened hundreds of years after England first existed is "the roots" I have no quarrel with ignorance, only with those so proud of their own they think the world needs it as a gift.

Has roots in, as in the beginning.

Ignorance huh, I covered the roots then I moved on to the body of the tree then the branches.

Like I said, I elaborated on the whole history, starting with the roots.

What you did is conduct a maths lecture using only the number 1.

Are you usually this obtuse? Or do you not like being shown up?

[Fitzy]

Postat inițial de Hellsteeth30:

Postat inițial de Fitzy:

Now read the rest of what I said where you claimed that something which happened hundreds of years after England first existed is "the roots" I have no quarrel with ignorance, only with those so proud of their own they think the world needs it as a gift.

Has roots in, as in the beginning.

Ignorance huh, I covered the roots then I moved on to the body of the tree then the branches.

Like I said, I elaborated on the whole history, starting with the roots.

What you did is conduct a maths lecture using only the number 1.

Are you usually this obtuse? Or do you not like being shown up?

I'm not your school teacher or being paid to babysit you, this is literally what you said ""English has roots in nearly every nation that invaded England over the centuries."" this is categorically false, you're wrong mate, deal with it quietly on the blocklist. I have no time to waste on your mental gymnastics,

[Psycho_Soyer]

As a 9th Generation American who's Great X5 Grandfather (Noble Baggs) fought in the American Revolutionary War it matters little to me what language is spoken in a video game as long as it adds to the atmosphere.

Actually I just wanted to brag about how my Great X5 Grandfather fought in the American Revolutionary War. 😆

Carry on.

[McStorm]

Yeah, i don't understand most of it either.. and i don't wish that i paid attention to any german class to play a game for it. The Captain in Suchdol that teaches you sword stuff... i can't understand anything he is saying.. really annoying.

[Gustuv Wynd]

The only thing I can't figure out is why Henry can't communicate with Adder at all, but doesn't blink at all the German. Czech and Polish are pretty similar, but both are very different from German.

Though maybe that is why we get subtitles for Adder, but the German is all German in the subtitles.

[makbthemf]

They are Germans, they don't speak Czech properly, so they're mixing German words into their language. Jindřich doesn't know German, hence their German phrases aren't dubbed. What's your problem with it?

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

and Henry somehow understands what they're saying from like 3 English words in 10 word sentence. LOL How?

Despite Jindro is not the sharpest sword in the armory, he reads a lot, and he knows how to understand the context. It's not so hard to understand most of the Germans in the game, and when it does (for example, Master swordsman servant, who utilizes 90% of German lexis in his phrases) - Jindřich doesn't understand him.

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

I think the only person I've seen translated is Adder(he's turkish? I forget), which is oddly inconsistent with everything else.

He's Polish. Czechs understand Poles, just like Ukrainians do - so with a serious challenge we could understand 50-60% of words being said and guess other senses with context. That's why he is dubbed.

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

Why would you talk in your language to someone who doesn't understand it?

Because you need to understand each other sometimes. Once I've traded a great leather coat for 80$ instead of 160$ as a gift to my mum in Istanbul using a strange koine of English, Russian, Ukrainian and some Turkish words - if people want to come to the agreement, they would.

[Nîle]

Since German is my first language, I don't have any trouble understanding it. However, the choice of words seems completely random. It would make sense to struggle with certain terms or use greetings/expressions in your native language. But here, it's almost a 50/50 mix that is highly inconsistent. I've never heard something like this in real life, except among current-day German teenagers who use English for every other word because it appears to be more cool.

[falloutgod13]

Postat inițial de Nîle:

Since German is my first language, I don't have any trouble understanding it. However, the choice of words seems completely random. It would make sense to struggle with certain terms or use greetings/expressions in your native language. But here, it's almost a 50/50 mix that is highly inconsistent. I've never heard something like this in real life, except among current-day German teenagers who use English for every other word because it appears to be more cool.

Yeah, I've heard people use words from different languages to sound more sophisticated or cultured, but it's like one or two words or small phrases, c'est la vie! Never this weird mishmash of half one language half another. I've known plenty of bilingual people and this just comes off as obnoxious writing by someone on the team, humans don't communicate like this. What's more irksome is the fact that the subtitles don't translate it so it just confuses people of the target audience.

As for people saying you can figure it out through context, yeah - that's beside the point, a point you're all clearly missing. You can skip whole quest conversations and the quest log will tell you what to do, but a lot of the storyline context and nuance is lost in the process if you do that, much like it's lost when you can't figure out what the person is talking about. Meaning I know he need a permit from some guy, but who is the guy and why does he need it? All that's lost to me if it's spoken in a language I don't know.

[Agente Secreto]

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

Seriously annoying if you don't know German, I don't sprechen the Duestch. Okay? Quit speaking to me in German. It's just irritating when they speak half-German and less than half-English and Henry somehow understands what they're saying from like 3 English words in 10 word sentence. LOL How? I have no idea what they're saying most of the time and at this point I just started skipping dialogue when I start hearing them talk in German. I don't know who thought this was a good idea to put in the game but it's terrible. The subtitles are also written in German which makes zero sense to me. I think the only person I've seen translated is Adder(he's turkish? I forget), which is oddly inconsistent with everything else.

It's irritating to me because it's not just a couple of quirky NPCs, no, I've run into over 20 of them now. Some are just random encounters, but regardless, most people don't talk like this. It's just weird. Why would you talk in your language to someone who doesn't understand it?

Part of me wishes I paid attention in my German classes more than I did. I came away only being able to say a few things. One of them being, "Ich bin ein obst kuchen."(I am a fruit cake.) Needless to say, I did not take the class seriously and lament that I could have and would have made use of that knowledge while playing this game. That aside, the writing of dialogue for NPCs in this this manner is still complete rubbish.

They are German

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudeten_Germans

In 1348, the Luxembourg king Charles I, also King of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles IV) from 1355, founded the Charles University in Prague (Alma Mater Carolina), the first in Central Europe, attended by large German student nations, and its language of education was Latin. Czechs made up about 20 percent of the students at the time of its founding, and the rest was primarily German.

Germans living with Czechs fluently spoke Czech and code-switched between German and Czech when talking to Czechs and other Germans. Jews in Bohemia often spoke German and sometimes Yiddish.

[Dansoprazole]

Because Bohemia was like... right next to Germany, you're going to encounter Germans lmao.

[Abu]

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

As for people saying you can figure it out through context, yeah - that's beside the point, a point you're all clearly missing. ... [the meaning is] lost when you can't figure out what the person is talking about. Meaning I know he need a permit from some guy, but who is the guy and why does he need it? All that's lost to me if it's spoken in a language I don't know.

Pertinent details like that are always presented in the "native" language (that is, English). But you actually can figure out what the German means even if you don't speak German. I don't speak German and I'm able to do so. Just use the "native"/English portions as context - given what was said, what might the German mean? German itself is fairly similar to English given the two languages' common origins, which makes it easier.

[Valagh'lyn]

Postat inițial de falloutgod13:

Postat inițial de Nîle:

Since German is my first language, I don't have any trouble understanding it. However, the choice of words seems completely random. It would make sense to struggle with certain terms or use greetings/expressions in your native language. But here, it's almost a 50/50 mix that is highly inconsistent. I've never heard something like this in real life, except among current-day German teenagers who use English for every other word because it appears to be more cool.

Yeah, I've heard people use words from different languages to sound more sophisticated or cultured, but it's like one or two words or small phrases, c'est la vie! Never this weird mishmash of half one language half another. I've known plenty of bilingual people and this just comes off as obnoxious writing by someone on the team, humans don't communicate like this. What's more irksome is the fact that the subtitles don't translate it so it just confuses people of the target audience.

As someone who lives somewhere with 2 main language, I've seen many people talk just like the npcs in the game, mishmash of both language. Would they in a professional setting? No, they'll either speak one or the other depending on the clients' preference, but when speaking casually in big cities lots of people (mostly people in their 20s and 30s) mix the 2 language interchangeably as they speak. Even some local music, mostly rap/hip-hop, will sing mixing the 2 languages. On the rural side of things people mostly just speak 1 of the language though.

I am also "culpable" of speaking like this with certain people. In general I only speak one or the other, but with childhood friends I grew up talking with in that way, I still talk like that by old habits. Sometimes I'll have a full sentence in one language, sometimes I'll mix the words, sometimes I'll have 3 - 4 words in one language then the rest in the other... Pretty much however it ends up flowing as I speak.

Also, I'd say most of the non-english speech that mishmash their language with english in the game is more a case of people from the outside that aren't fluent in czech so they use their native tongue to supplement their speech where they lack the words. Not everyone moving to a country will be fluent in the country's language from the go even today with plenty of tools to help so I can only imagine 600 years ago.