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@@povilzem This is actually the German school pronunciation that is taught in several Germanic and Slavic countries, to my knowledge. It has nothing to do with the historical aspects of Latin - neither with the actual pronunciation by the ancient Romans nor with the Medieval Latin spoken by the clergy and educated people. "C" is pronounced as "ts" there because... I dunno, it's more convenient for Germans, I guess.
Ah, this kind of video sends me back to when my grandpa (a Sicilian typographer from Syracuse) helped me with Latin in High School: he was taught by Benedictine friars back in the '30s, and had the luck to read quite a wealth of ancient Greek and Latin texts during his working period. He had developed an uncanny ability to read Greek even *backwards* since he had to, well, print it with movable types. Every time I got the inflection, timing or length wrong he used to say "I didn't understand, are you a barbarian by any chance?" and joke about it before coaching me... good times. :)
@@lucabastianello9830 while that's true, latin of any kind is still based on vowel length. the difference between _vocem_ and _vōcēm_ is only in those vowels. unless you don't write them or speak them, that is suddenly gone. it's part of the grammar of any period.
who wouldn't want Luke's voice acting in a game? am glad he stressed how important correctness is in a language not into Latin but if I was and wanted to play a game that featured it I'd want the real thing. So if it means hitting up Luke for his skills in Latin I'd recommend so perhaps someone who knows Luke and vise versa but yeah. Just wanted to say that is so cool there's an ancient language institute. I never would've guessed it but props to those who made it happen. I always found old scripts to be the coolest thing I've not the slightest idea why but to see that then to see this was equally as cool. Enjoyed the video! 😎
The thing is, while the whole translation does reek of Google Translate, Google has always used the correct cases for words. It might not use them _correctly,_ but I've never seen it confuse a a 4th declension word for a 2nd declension one. And certainly not twice. Therefore, I posit that one of the devs had done four weeks of Latin at university, and they just got him to do the translations. 😐
11:25 Excellent point. People often ask why Latin is always found more readily than other ancient languages like Gaulish or Parthian, and my own answer was always: “because it’s Latin.” Latin is so well established, with so much literature and people learning it that there’s no excuse when it comes to this specific language. And it being a “dead” language isn’t an excuse-it’s easier to find translators for this dead language than for many current living languages. Try finding translators for Kumandin Turkic or Naiki, living native languages, vs Latin or Sanskrit.
The "dead language" part of your comment reminded me of one of the recent Civilization games where Ramses II spoke Egyptian Arabic (!!!). Thankfully in the next game they let Cleopatra speak in Egyptian (although I'm not sure what kind of Egyptian, if it's the classical language or the much more recent Demotic that was spoken in her time, or, for some weird reason, something else.)).
The "Et tu? Then fall Caesar" is a quote from Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act III), modified to be more of more general meaning: the original is "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar" and "fall" is indeed an imperative (Caesar is telling himself to fall, as he sees no reason to survive considering that his dear Brutus betrayed him). The quote originates from Caesar's presumed last words, which were "και σύ, τέκνον;" and are often translated in latin as "tū quoque, Brūte, fīlī mī". I think the voice actor was more familiar with this second form (especially if he's Italian), while for the English audience the Shakespeare variant sounds probably more common. I hope this helped!
Ah I misread “fall” as “fail,” probably because the text was so tiny. I should have remembered the line from Shakespeare. The Et tū was great, my points in mentioning it is that I think it’s better than the translation.
I remember arguing with my best friend when we were teenagers if it was "et tu" or "tu quoque" for several hours. We even shouted at each other. Until we googled and figured that we were both kinda right but also kinda wrong.
I am from Mexico and I have a friend here who knows the nahuatl language, and I showed the speeches of Montezuma in Civilization V and he said it was clear they used like an online translator cause it was very similar to this. I love these games, I never thought on sending the feedback, but it’s a great idea and I will do it, cause for many of us it’s a detail that matters for better immersion.
Luke! Civ 6 has a lot of greek speakers from different eras. I would love to see you some day doing a review of Basil II, Gorgo, and the others. I think their greek is pretty good expecially Basil's greek. (There is ancient/middle egyption too)
I've looked at Barbarossa's Old High German and the pronunciation is just modern german. Sadly, I'm not good enough at Old High German, to spot other mistakes.
It would be really cool to have Luke translate a modern book and make an audiobook of it. Just hours and hours of Latin translations to inundate your mind so you learn Latin in a few weeks.
Firaxis has announced that they are working on next Civilization game. Maybe you should propose your service to them, cuz it seems that they cannot find good Latin expert that can also give notations to voice actors on how to properly pronounce things.
You've previously reacted to Trajan and now Julius Caesar in Civilization 6, I would love to see how you react to greek in the game by reacting to Pericles, Gorgo, Alexander the Great, Basil II, and Theodora! Love the content!
There is an explanation as to why the subtitles don't usually match with what's being said: because they're not subtitles. Whatever the rival leader is trying to tell you it's actually on the dialogue box and the audio clips are just there to accompany them, presumably this was done to save on the budget by not dubbing every single possible line. You can clearly see this when playing agaisnt characters who speak a modern language, a particularly example that became a meme was Elizabeth in Civ 5, she usually request trade deals a lot (and declares war if you deny her requests too many times) with her famous "Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?" Line.
Feels like its been a while since we've seen a regular video again with Luke just home in front of a camera! All of his videos abroad are great, but I like these ones too.
I would love to hear your thoughts on warhammer 40k's "High Gothic" or as I call it: Derp Latin. They use latin sounding words [that I have been told are either made up or incorrect in some ways]. Examples off the top of my head in the form of High Gothic/ Derp Latin - Low Gothic / Space English [brief description of what it is] Legio / Adeptus Astartes - Space Marine Legion / Chapter [genetically enhanced super soldiers, like the Spartans in HALO, originally in20x 10-100 thousand strong legions, now broken down into 1,000x 1-2k strong Chapters] Adeptus Sororitas - Sisters of Battle [nuns with guns and power armor] Legio Titanicus - Titan Legions [armies of battlemechs, 30-100 foot tall walking fortresses] Adeptus Arbites - Judge Arbitrators [Judge Dredd, an army of Judge Dredd] Astra Militarum - Imperial Guard [the Army, WW2 armies with lasers] Tempestus Scions - Stormtroopers [what it says on the tin, infantry special forces, usually assigned to the Inquisition] From what I can gather, the bad latin is to have names Games Workshop could trademark, the High Gothic is the new 21st century Army Book names, the Low Gothic is the older turn of the century names, though the names for some [mainly the Adepta and Legio]
Theodora of Byzantium will be added to the game tomorrow, are you going to analyse her Greek dialect and tell us which use she uses, please? And nice channel, too. You got one new subscriber!
I posted this on another video of yours, I believe on your ScorpioMartianus channel. But, after all this time watching your videos... I FINALLY started studying Latin. I started the course on Duolingo. And from what I know from watching your videos, the voices on there seem to be pronouncing it using the Classical Pronunciation. However... the voices sound rather robotic. A lot less human than the ones for the other courses. Maybe they should have *you* provide your skills to the course... 😉😉😉😉
Thanks. I believe DuoLingo’s Latin team asked me to volunteer, but I declined because I didn’t have the time for such a huge investment of countless hours of work.
Oh, Luke, there are literally hundreds of millions of people speaking Russian, but studios big and small manage to mistranslate and mispronounce it all the time too 😑 Though there is hope that now this is so easily exposed, the producers of such product would realise that the time when they could get away with it has finally passed 😈
LOOOL! Luke's expressions. Muahahahahahaha! I am just starting my latin journey and you are correct. Most games companiy today focus on other things (NFTs), instead of good narrative and / or completeness. Almost everything they produce now is riddled with issues. I guess making a product that customers enjoy, is a long lost era. but Luke's expressions are far more entertaining, than any of those incomplete games.
So i came across your video because it was a short that popped up and i love language i love breaking downwards i collect words they're free and they don't take up any space at least not physical space... And there really fking fun, I love all words foul and fair alike. Words exist for the plane and simple fact that we as humans are obsessed with categorizing things. And for good reason, We can build categofreeze of oh these things are going to be deadly. But it can also create constructs like gender, We separated people into gender because we we're able to say oh there are similar differences between these other humans that means we can categorize them. The reason to me that words are so amazing is that they don't have any true power. The idea of that may seem outlandish to some people but in my mind in my world words do not have power unless you give them power. I also think it's really weird people like to flip out and say that's not a word, you just made that up... um... so... is... anyone... nope just me... ok... That is literally how words are made. Some words we build off of pre existing words, Because they already have meaning and it makes things easier.... Some things we create all on our own. Ain't, I'm barely certain that that word was used so often that it actually made it into the dictionary.... And they tried to call it not a word. So here's the thing if people are using it if people are saying it it is out there it exists. You cannot stop something from existing just because you don't want it two it's the same lesson people have tried to teach about homosexuality, about trans lives, or even people of color or different racial backgrounds. Words are figuring out how to recreate the same sound out of your mouth consistently and to have a consensus on their meaning. I have rambled on an on far too much and I apologize. I hope I was able to stay on topic enough. And I would like to say thank you again for the fantastic video for all of the videos I can't wait to continue to discover what you have to offer. And I hope my comment on your short video did not make you uncomfortable.
Hey, great video! Can you take a look at the Greek leaders in Civ 6? We have Alexander, Gorgo, and Pericles, so I think there'd be a lot of good material to critique!
Can we talk about how over-the-top Caesar's armour is in this depiction? All gold and oddly proportioned. He looks like he took a page out of the Emperor of Mankind's playbook and decided to style himself in gold lol
Hi Luke. Could you perhaps do a video on the different Latin accents they had back in the classical period? I’ve heard the Latin community here on TH-cam say there’s much evidence of this, but other than Varro’s works, I can’t find any! Thanks.
Firaxis a small indie company can't be bothered to hire someone who knows their stuff. Edit. Civilization 7 is currently under development. I hope they reach out to people like you and don't butcher ancient latin and greek.
I've been following the "Language translations for leaders saying" threads on CivFanatics for both Civ5 and 6 and from the discussions there - Firaxis outsource the translations and the voice acting and sometimes they find really good ones and sometimes really bad ones.
Love your reviews of Latin in media! I think you should take a look at the Latin in "Roman Songs", a short album in Latin by John Linnell. I like to sign along to the Latin and I've always wondered how good it was
As a Civ VI player I am wondering when they added this Caesar? I only have Trajan. I have all the DLCs. I'll have to check my playable leaders again. They may have snuck him in there while I wasn't looking.
5:00 Yeah, that's because ancient greek voiced and voiceless aspirated stop series became voiced and voiceless fricatives, respectively, but sequences of nasal + voiced plosive didnt undergo that, and later, together with nasal + voiceless tenuis plosive clusters, they became a new voiced/prenasalised stop series
In my head canon Caesar said «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος» in Greek like Plutrarch claims (Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐκβοήσας) rather than 'Jacta ālea est' like Suetonius reports, it would have been so cool for the devs to add one or two Greek lines in there although there are Greek speakers in the video game anyway :P Then again I guess if they cared ebough about the voice lines in the ancient languages to do something like that they would at least be grammatically correct in the first place 🤣 Great video like always!
There is a 2011 documentary called "The Destiny of Rome" that has all its scenes in Latin and Greek and at least for Latin, the actors vary the pronunciation greatly so that may be of interest to check out and possibly do a video on. Thank you for the great content as always~
'I put on my legionary armour to talk about Latin in a video game'... *hears this and cracks up* I remember the *last* time you did that... Some of your responses in that case were absolutely hilarious. :D Gratiās tibi agō, magister, doceō linguam Latīnam librō LLPSI et ludō ALI. amāvī Latīnam in scholā, multōs annōs abhinc. (Declensiōnes nōn amicōs mihi!!)
I've never heard Caesar's name spoke in Latin and also heard that the German leader name Kaiser was derived from Caesar, but it never made since till now.
Fun Fact: the Proto-Germanic people pronounced Caesar as 'Keisar', later becoming 'Kaisar' in Old High German and finally 'Kaiser' in modern German. (It is surprising how many people try arguing Kaisar/Kaiser is "correct Latin" despite this.)
We'd certainly like to! Currently focused on building out curriculum and classes for the four languages we offer, with no active plans for adding a fifth, but in terms of what might be next, Old Norse is very high on the list.
I’ve been learning Latin and I’m so used to hearing your Latin videos. I didn’t even realize you were speaking in English for the first couple seconds oof😅
1:52 I do hear phonemic vowel length, here. So, that’s 1 point, for the voice actor, that doesn’t come naturally, for most Italians. *EDIT:* There, you addressed it, but say there was none. It could be that my Finnish ears are mistaking the slight lengthening of stressed vowels for phonemic vowel length; because Finnish doesn’t tie length to stress 🤔.
I read in a history manual that the actual quote from Caesar wasn’t “ālea iacta est” but “ālea iacta esto”, “may the dice be cast” making it a quote from the Arrhephoros by Menander “anerrhiphtho kybos”. Could that be true?
I initially thought he was latin american when he said Caesar because the c in spanish is either a th or s depending on the accent. but then I couldn't ignore the shwa vowels
I find it verry interesting that Caesar (in some spoken way) sounds to germans like that Kaiser witch is actually the word for emperor and with that it's again beautyfully seen that many languages take smth from latin
8:31 I think the translator meant to write it as "Tū quoque? Nam Caesar cadat." It's a quote from Shakespeare translated into Latin. Also, the way he said /sezar/ at the beginning instead of /kaesar/ is just as funny as when the Brazillian dubber in Thermae Rōmae Novae said /'dusere/ instead of /'du:kere/ for "dūcere".
Right! I misread the English words I missed the Shakespear reference. Good translation. "Cadat igitur Caesar" would be my choice. Good call on the "dusere" haha
A humble request, Song of Lament is a song from the game Elden Ring where they sing in Latin and I would be very curious to know your analysis of the song ( the song is beautiful by the way)
I've been doing Latin on Duolingo for a few weeks. Yes, everyone else can call me out for not using ALI but I can't afford it..yet. Everything you said about voice actors not getting the sounds right is very accurate for Duolingo I feel. Not only that, it lacks phonemic length indicators so learning to speak it in Duolingo for me is based on your pronunciation. Nunc...Quis sacrificatis? (My current favourite yet random Duolingo phrase! )
You may like seeing Luke's video on the "Ranieri-Dowling method", or otherwise check out a book called Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, which a lot of people say effectively teaches you fluent Latin grammar if you can read it to the end. I maxed out every skill on the Duolingo Latin course, but they have a stronger focus on vocabulary and they don't even teach you more than like 3 declensions and only the present tense (perhaps this's changed since I learnt), so unfortunately it couldn't take you further than the basic steps I suppose.
For the “nam Caesar ruat” part - it’s clear that the text is taken from Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” during the famous assassination scene - “Et tu Brute! Then fall Casear.” Here the word ‘fall’ has an imperative sense, as this would have been a poetic device in Early Modern English - referring to oneself in the 2nd person, to command oneself to do something. So the English is perfectly fine, and really neat reference. And for the Latin, though I am by NO means a fluent or even particularly good speaker, being an amateur at most, it would then be “Nam rue, Caesar” or “Nam Caesar rue!” to express the imperative meaning :)
Yes, I misread "fall" as "fail" and the famous Shakespearean line somehow didn't come to mind when I make that reading error. For the Latin, the "nam" is one of the weirdest things here.
@polymathyluke Maybe you could do an episode where you ask ChatGPT to translate English movie quotes into Latin, and rate ChatGPT's Latin. I tried a couple of Princess Bride quotes, and it seems to be more accurate than Google Translate, though I'm a total noob when it comes to Latin, so I'm a poor judge of the faithfulness of the translations.
I am pretty confident some modders would be interested to mod better latin into the game. Sadly, I can't direct you to one of them that could do that, sorry. But with this game having so many history buffs as fans, I think it is likely you would find someone interested pretty quickly by going to the community forum.
Hahah definitely. I would add that I would never treat a student in such a way. But when a multi-million dollar company makes a mistake in a huge part of their marketing material, they're asking to be critiqued. That's how I see it, anyway.
Kind of funny that based on your previous review of Civ's Trajan also from civ 6, it seemed like they did a lot better with Trajan, though from what you said it still was far from perfect (I have no idea and am just here out of interest, I'm shamefully monolingual 😅). The context here regarding development is that Julius Caesar is a free leader given out for linking your 2k account, and developed alongside the very last DLC content in the game, whereas Trajan was the leader of Rome in the base game and the only leader of Rome in the game for a really long time. I suspect because they were giving Julius Caesar out for free, they probably cheaped out and didn't bother hiring a proper translator at all. Seems a bit of a shame!
As an avid fan of the Civilization series, it is kind of disappointing that the translation work done for the voice acting is often subpar; Civ 5 and 6 both have leaders who speak utter gibberish. However, I can understand why accuracy in that department might not be a priority, since the voice acting is really just flavor in the context of the game. It's not like you need to understand what the leaders are saying to be able to play the game, it's not central to any mechanic of the game and you can even just turn it off and have the leaders be static images. I certainly hope they make a more fervent effort to get accurate translations and pronunciations for VA clips in Civ 7 but if doing so takes away from the quality of the gameplay then we could probably go without it.
I remember playing one of the Civilisation games, I think it was Civ 5, and met with Wu Zetian, empress of China. Now there is a very special type of parlance that Chinese royalty used, a form of Classical Chinese with special pronouns used only by the emperor, with lots of flowery idioms to express their power and wisdom. However, she sounds like a shy exchange student, speaking in casual modern Mandarin. It's incredibly jarring. I'd rather have her speak English. I imagine Luke must feel the same about crappy Latin like in this case.
An odd and irrelevant observation from someone recently interested in Latin: the pronunciation of the word 'Latin'. Americans (at least) pronounce it with a glottal stop instead of a real 't' sound; I think that posh UK speakers will use an aspirated 't'. What's unexpected is that even people who speak Latin or instruct it (like you) will usually pronounce it with the glottal stop when speaking English, although I heard both in this video. As for the pronunciation, I am reminded of the indie '60s horror film, 'Incubus' (1966), for which the screenplay was translated to the interlanguage Esperanto and performed in that language (Leslie Stevens thought that it would make it sort of otherworldly and Bergmanesque). The script is fine; they had a competent Esperanto speaker do the translation. But when it came time to film it, they decided that they didn't need a dialogue coach. The rules for Esperanto pronunciation are simple, but of course it requires some instruction and practice. The actors had little or none, and since they did not speak the language, they had to learn it phonetically and look at the original English to decide how to perform. It is infamous because William Shatner is there speaking egregiously-pronounced Esperanto, though his acting is pretty decent, actually. You need a competent dialogue coach and writer, even for cut scenes in a video game. Alas, the phrase, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well," (does it have a classical antecedent? It seems like the sort of aphorism that might…) will always take a back seat to working cheap and profitable.
Even in posh British English you’ll hear the glottal stop in front of an ‘n’ some of the time, also for words like mitten, kitten, etc. In this and environment and intervocalically Americans’ t will experience some form of lenition, while in most UK voices it becomes a glottal stop
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Hearing him say Caesar for the first time like that gave me that same sort of shock you get when you accidentally bite into the sour part of a fruit
lol
The same!
It's a bit similar to the pronunciation I've been taught, but the first "C" should make a "ts" sound, not "s".
@@povilzem This is actually the German school pronunciation that is taught in several Germanic and Slavic countries, to my knowledge. It has nothing to do with the historical aspects of Latin - neither with the actual pronunciation by the ancient Romans nor with the Medieval Latin spoken by the clergy and educated people. "C" is pronounced as "ts" there because... I dunno, it's more convenient for Germans, I guess.
Was drinking water and almost spit it out in anticipation of Luke's reaction lol
Ah, this kind of video sends me back to when my grandpa (a Sicilian typographer from Syracuse) helped me with Latin in High School: he was taught by Benedictine friars back in the '30s, and had the luck to read quite a wealth of ancient Greek and Latin texts during his working period. He had developed an uncanny ability to read Greek even *backwards* since he had to, well, print it with movable types. Every time I got the inflection, timing or length wrong he used to say "I didn't understand, are you a barbarian by any chance?" and joke about it before coaching me... good times. :)
Your grandfather sounds like he was a cool guy!
This comment made my day. What a wonderful man he must have been!
Ecclesiastic latin and ancient Latin are not the same
@@lucabastianello9830 while that's true, latin of any kind is still based on vowel length. the difference between _vocem_ and _vōcēm_ is only in those vowels. unless you don't write them or speak them, that is suddenly gone.
it's part of the grammar of any period.
@@SoulcatcherLucario you forget dialers, inflexions and so on
I hope Luke gets hired for Civ 7 for Rome properly translated classical Latin
So do I.
Me too.
The worst part is that, if I recall correctly, Augustus's latin in Civ V was pretty good, not perfect, but clearly they tried
I remember it being better
Civ V was better in every way, so this isn't really surprising to be honest.
@@beetheimmortal Amen!
who wouldn't want Luke's voice acting in a game? am glad he stressed how important correctness is in a language not into Latin but if I was and wanted to play a game that featured it I'd want the real thing. So if it means hitting up Luke for his skills in Latin I'd recommend so perhaps someone who knows Luke and vise versa but yeah. Just wanted to say that is so cool there's an ancient language institute. I never would've guessed it but props to those who made it happen. I always found old scripts to be the coolest thing I've not the slightest idea why but to see that then to see this was equally as cool. Enjoyed the video! 😎
@@beetheimmortal idk about everyway, but I can say that both V & VI left a mark on me
The thing is, while the whole translation does reek of Google Translate, Google has always used the correct cases for words. It might not use them _correctly,_ but I've never seen it confuse a a 4th declension word for a 2nd declension one. And certainly not twice. Therefore, I posit that one of the devs had done four weeks of Latin at university, and they just got him to do the translations. 😐
Agreed
To forget declensions is one thing. To not realise you might have forgotten, and not double check, is another.
11:25 Excellent point. People often ask why Latin is always found more readily than other ancient languages like Gaulish or Parthian, and my own answer was always: “because it’s Latin.”
Latin is so well established, with so much literature and people learning it that there’s no excuse when it comes to this specific language. And it being a “dead” language isn’t an excuse-it’s easier to find translators for this dead language than for many current living languages. Try finding translators for Kumandin Turkic or Naiki, living native languages, vs Latin or Sanskrit.
Well said, my friend!
The "dead language" part of your comment reminded me of one of the recent Civilization games where Ramses II spoke Egyptian Arabic (!!!). Thankfully in the next game they let Cleopatra speak in Egyptian (although I'm not sure what kind of Egyptian, if it's the classical language or the much more recent Demotic that was spoken in her time, or, for some weird reason, something else.)).
@@ХристоМартунковграфЛозенски lmao, that's such a blunder
@@ХристоМартунковграфЛозенски Oh, wow! That’s bad! It’s like Constantine speaking Turkish; or Montezuma speaking Modern Mexican Spanish (not Nāhuatl). 🤯
I don't get it. There are many turkic languages and there are many translators of these languages.🤔
The "Et tu? Then fall Caesar" is a quote from Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act III), modified to be more of more general meaning: the original is "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar" and "fall" is indeed an imperative (Caesar is telling himself to fall, as he sees no reason to survive considering that his dear Brutus betrayed him).
The quote originates from Caesar's presumed last words, which were "και σύ, τέκνον;" and are often translated in latin as "tū quoque, Brūte, fīlī mī". I think the voice actor was more familiar with this second form (especially if he's Italian), while for the English audience the Shakespeare variant sounds probably more common.
I hope this helped!
Ah I misread “fall” as “fail,” probably because the text was so tiny. I should have remembered the line from Shakespeare. The Et tū was great, my points in mentioning it is that I think it’s better than the translation.
I remember arguing with my best friend when we were teenagers if it was "et tu" or "tu quoque" for several hours. We even shouted at each other. Until we googled and figured that we were both kinda right but also kinda wrong.
I learned it as "Etiam tu, mi fili?" in latin classes and that's the one that only comes to my mind.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Shakespeare learned Latin at school, of course his original was better!!
Beat me to it! Absolute legend!!
I am from Mexico and I have a friend here who knows the nahuatl language, and I showed the speeches of Montezuma in Civilization V and he said it was clear they used like an online translator cause it was very similar to this. I love these games, I never thought on sending the feedback, but it’s a great idea and I will do it, cause for many of us it’s a detail that matters for better immersion.
Luke! Civ 6 has a lot of greek speakers from different eras. I would love to see you some day doing a review of Basil II, Gorgo, and the others. I think their greek is pretty good expecially Basil's greek.
(There is ancient/middle egyption too)
Theodora is also will be added some time in the nearest future.
I've looked at Barbarossa's Old High German and the pronunciation is just modern german. Sadly, I'm not good enough at Old High German, to spot other mistakes.
I love your precision, care and passion for Latin. Bravo!
Even more, I admire your sense of fun with the whole schtick.
Heh thanks very much! I'm glad you enjoy it as much as I do
It would be really cool to have Luke translate a modern book and make an audiobook of it. Just hours and hours of Latin translations to inundate your mind so you learn Latin in a few weeks.
I have done something like that with other texts you can find.
Firaxis has announced that they are working on next Civilization game. Maybe you should propose your service to them, cuz it seems that they cannot find good Latin expert that can also give notations to voice actors on how to properly pronounce things.
They're welcome to contact me.
You've previously reacted to Trajan and now Julius Caesar in Civilization 6, I would love to see how you react to greek in the game by reacting to Pericles, Gorgo, Alexander the Great, Basil II, and Theodora!
Love the content!
There is an explanation as to why the subtitles don't usually match with what's being said: because they're not subtitles.
Whatever the rival leader is trying to tell you it's actually on the dialogue box and the audio clips are just there to accompany them, presumably this was done to save on the budget by not dubbing every single possible line.
You can clearly see this when playing agaisnt characters who speak a modern language, a particularly example that became a meme was Elizabeth in Civ 5, she usually request trade deals a lot (and declares war if you deny her requests too many times) with her famous "Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?" Line.
Absolutely.
It's fun when you get annoyed 11:07 because you are so passionate about it, keeping it real. 😂😂
I was expecting this video. Thanks again your precious insight on Latin pronunciation 👍
Thanks for watching!
Feels like its been a while since we've seen a regular video again with Luke just home in front of a camera! All of his videos abroad are great, but I like these ones too.
Thanks! It's fun and old school for me too
I would love to hear your thoughts on warhammer 40k's "High Gothic" or as I call it: Derp Latin. They use latin sounding words [that I have been told are either made up or incorrect in some ways]. Examples off the top of my head in the form of High Gothic/ Derp Latin - Low Gothic / Space English [brief description of what it is]
Legio / Adeptus Astartes - Space Marine Legion / Chapter [genetically enhanced super soldiers, like the Spartans in HALO, originally in20x 10-100 thousand strong legions, now broken down into 1,000x 1-2k strong Chapters]
Adeptus Sororitas - Sisters of Battle [nuns with guns and power armor]
Legio Titanicus - Titan Legions [armies of battlemechs, 30-100 foot tall walking fortresses]
Adeptus Arbites - Judge Arbitrators [Judge Dredd, an army of Judge Dredd]
Astra Militarum - Imperial Guard [the Army, WW2 armies with lasers]
Tempestus Scions - Stormtroopers [what it says on the tin, infantry special forces, usually assigned to the Inquisition]
From what I can gather, the bad latin is to have names Games Workshop could trademark, the High Gothic is the new 21st century Army Book names, the Low Gothic is the older turn of the century names, though the names for some [mainly the Adepta and Legio]
Hey, thanks for taking my suggestion!
Thanks for making it!
Theodora of Byzantium will be added to the game tomorrow, are you going to analyse her Greek dialect and tell us which use she uses, please? And nice channel, too. You got one new subscriber!
I posted this on another video of yours, I believe on your ScorpioMartianus channel. But, after all this time watching your videos... I FINALLY started studying Latin. I started the course on Duolingo. And from what I know from watching your videos, the voices on there seem to be pronouncing it using the Classical Pronunciation.
However... the voices sound rather robotic. A lot less human than the ones for the other courses. Maybe they should have *you* provide your skills to the course... 😉😉😉😉
Thanks. I believe DuoLingo’s Latin team asked me to volunteer, but I declined because I didn’t have the time for such a huge investment of countless hours of work.
Thoroughly enjoyed this - thanks for debunking the nonsense while looking on point too.
Thanks my man! I’m glad you enjoyed it
Oh, Luke, there are literally hundreds of millions of people speaking Russian, but studios big and small manage to mistranslate and mispronounce it all the time too 😑 Though there is hope that now this is so easily exposed, the producers of such product would realise that the time when they could get away with it has finally passed 😈
Good point!
I just love this series! So fascinating to watch.
Would be great if you reviewed the Civ 4 latin, where it was the units that spoke and not the leaders.
FINALLY! I was waiting for this video! Valē magister
Were you the one who suggested it? If so, thanks!
Echoing other sentiments in that your expertise would be sorely appreciated for Latin and Greek in CIV VII.
LOOOL!
Luke's expressions. Muahahahahahaha!
I am just starting my latin journey and you are correct. Most games companiy today focus on other things (NFTs), instead of good narrative and / or completeness. Almost everything they produce now is riddled with issues.
I guess making a product that customers enjoy, is a long lost era.
but Luke's expressions are far more entertaining, than any of those incomplete games.
Very flattered. Thanks for watching
Thanks for posting Luke!👍
Thanks for watching!
These are my favourite type of videos
I’m glad! If only there were more Latin in video games haha
I absolutely never heard of this video game before the pronunciation sounds sort of fun haha.
I always imagine that when you wear the armor you have on cargo shorts just out of frame
Basketball shorts, and I just had on the subarmalis but no tunic (just a modern undershirt), since my arms were out of frame.
So i came across your video because it was a short that popped up and i love language i love breaking downwards i collect words they're free and they don't take up any space at least not physical space... And there really fking fun, I love all words foul and fair alike. Words exist for the plane and simple fact that we as humans are obsessed with categorizing things. And for good reason, We can build categofreeze of oh these things are going to be deadly. But it can also create constructs like gender, We separated people into gender because we we're able to say oh there are similar differences between these other humans that means we can categorize them. The reason to me that words are so amazing is that they don't have any true power. The idea of that may seem outlandish to some people but in my mind in my world words do not have power unless you give them power. I also think it's really weird people like to flip out and say that's not a word, you just made that up... um... so... is... anyone... nope just me... ok... That is literally how words are made. Some words we build off of pre existing words, Because they already have meaning and it makes things easier.... Some things we create all on our own. Ain't, I'm barely certain that that word was used so often that it actually made it into the dictionary.... And they tried to call it not a word. So here's the thing if people are using it if people are saying it it is out there it exists. You cannot stop something from existing just because you don't want it two it's the same lesson people have tried to teach about homosexuality, about trans lives, or even people of color or different racial backgrounds. Words are figuring out how to recreate the same sound out of your mouth consistently and to have a consensus on their meaning.
I have rambled on an on far too much and I apologize. I hope I was able to stay on topic enough. And I would like to say thank you again for the fantastic video for all of the videos I can't wait to continue to discover what you have to offer. And I hope my comment on your short video did not make you uncomfortable.
I don't study Latin, and yet you draw me to your videos
plaudo!
Watching "et tu?" get translated from Latin to "Latin" knocked a decade off my lifespan.
Lol
Hey, great video! Can you take a look at the Greek leaders in Civ 6? We have Alexander, Gorgo, and Pericles, so I think there'd be a lot of good material to critique!
Yeah! My favourite type of videos on this channel
Hey Luke great Video!! Can you analyse the pronunciation of Basil II in Civilisation VI? I'd love to see your take on it!
Great suggestion
Papae! I love these videos.
This performance is to Latin what Civ 6 is to the Civ series. Like poetry.
I hope we get to see Luke as the writer and voice actor in Civ 7!
If only! To my knowledge it will be released next year. I haven’t been contacted.
Thank you for your support
Baldur's gate 3 actually uses the proper classical Latin pronunciation in its incantations and spells. It's a pleasure to hear.
Please review it
Can we talk about how over-the-top Caesar's armour is in this depiction? All gold and oddly proportioned. He looks like he took a page out of the Emperor of Mankind's playbook and decided to style himself in gold lol
Hehe
Caesar in this game sounds more like Joaquim Phoenix's Commodus than what I'd have expected from Caesar
You should review The Forgotten City. It has lots of Latin graffiti of varying quality.
Hi Luke. Could you perhaps do a video on the different Latin accents they had back in the classical period?
I’ve heard the Latin community here on TH-cam say there’s much evidence of this, but other than Varro’s works, I can’t find any! Thanks.
Usually in Civ Games the characters say complete different things that what is shown in the subtitles.
Firaxis a small indie company can't be bothered to hire someone who knows their stuff.
Edit. Civilization 7 is currently under development. I hope they reach out to people like you and don't butcher ancient latin and greek.
Lmao
They've only been making 6 of this genre defining game so far. How can this poor small studio find budgets to hire a decent translators?
I've been following the "Language translations for leaders saying" threads on CivFanatics for both Civ5 and 6 and from the discussions there - Firaxis outsource the translations and the voice acting and sometimes they find really good ones and sometimes really bad ones.
I really hope they don't go full hipster with the leader choices like they did with 6. Nothing wrong with the iconic classics.
Firaxis is not a small indie studio lol
Love your reviews of Latin in media! I think you should take a look at the Latin in "Roman Songs", a short album in Latin by John Linnell. I like to sign along to the Latin and I've always wondered how good it was
I have that album on vinyl! I agree, I want Luke to review it :)
the "plaudō!" sarcasm killed me all too much, i missed this sass
Haha I actually meant that sincerely here. But I was trying to be silly, so I'm glad you liked it
As a Civ VI player I am wondering when they added this Caesar? I only have Trajan. I have all the DLCs. I'll have to check my playable leaders again. They may have snuck him in there while I wasn't looking.
I heard it was recently
5:00 Yeah, that's because ancient greek voiced and voiceless aspirated stop series became voiced and voiceless fricatives, respectively, but sequences of nasal + voiced plosive didnt undergo that, and later, together with nasal + voiceless tenuis plosive clusters, they became a new voiced/prenasalised stop series
In my head canon Caesar said «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος» in Greek like Plutrarch claims (Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐκβοήσας) rather than 'Jacta ālea est' like Suetonius reports, it would have been so cool for the devs to add one or two Greek lines in there although there are Greek speakers in the video game anyway :P
Then again I guess if they cared ebough about the voice lines in the ancient languages to do something like that they would at least be grammatically correct in the first place 🤣
Great video like always!
Haha as great as that would be, I don't think they could handle that kind of complexity
9:20 The English phrase is almost a direct quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1 - "Et Tu Brutè? - Then fall Cæsar."
Yes, I misread the English as "fail," hence my confusion and not noticing the Shakespeare reference.
There is a 2011 documentary called "The Destiny of Rome" that has all its scenes in Latin and Greek and at least for Latin, the actors vary the pronunciation greatly so that may be of interest to check out and possibly do a video on. Thank you for the great content as always~
'I put on my legionary armour to talk about Latin in a video game'...
*hears this and cracks up* I remember the *last* time you did that... Some of your responses in that case were absolutely hilarious. :D
Gratiās tibi agō, magister, doceō linguam Latīnam librō LLPSI et ludō ALI. amāvī Latīnam in scholā, multōs annōs abhinc. (Declensiōnes nōn amicōs mihi!!)
Et tibi grātiās agō!
you should do Basil II next from Civilization VI, he speaks in byzantine greek
I’ll give it a look
I've never heard Caesar's name spoke in Latin and also heard that the German leader name Kaiser was derived from Caesar, but it never made since till now.
Fun Fact: the Proto-Germanic people pronounced Caesar as 'Keisar', later becoming 'Kaisar' in Old High German and finally 'Kaiser' in modern German. (It is surprising how many people try arguing Kaisar/Kaiser is "correct Latin" despite this.)
Does ALI plan to add Old Norse to their curriculum at some point? (Great video btw)
Thanks! I bet they will some day
We'd certainly like to! Currently focused on building out curriculum and classes for the four languages we offer, with no active plans for adding a fifth, but in terms of what might be next, Old Norse is very high on the list.
Excellent! Combined with Dr. Crawford's upcoming book, I guess there won't be any reason not to start picking up Old Norse
I’ve been learning Latin and I’m so used to hearing your Latin videos. I didn’t even realize you were speaking in English for the first couple seconds oof😅
Haha a nice compliment
1:52 I do hear phonemic vowel length, here. So, that’s 1 point, for the voice actor, that doesn’t come naturally, for most Italians.
*EDIT:* There, you addressed it, but say there was none. It could be that my Finnish ears are mistaking the slight lengthening of stressed vowels for phonemic vowel length; because Finnish doesn’t tie length to stress 🤔.
I read in a history manual that the actual quote from Caesar wasn’t “ālea iacta est” but “ālea iacta esto”, “may the dice be cast” making it a quote from the Arrhephoros by Menander “anerrhiphtho kybos”. Could that be true?
Indeed! There are different attestations; it’s not clear if he said it in Greek or Latin or if he used the future imperative or present.
I initially thought he was latin american when he said Caesar because the c in spanish is either a th or s depending on the accent. but then I couldn't ignore the shwa vowels
Haha yup, my thoughts too
His problem with the "nt" means he could be a Southern Italian or, may the Lord protect me, a Sicilian.
You look so slick in that armor.
Can you make a video about Pericles in Civilization VI? He speaks Ancient Greek i guess so a video about it would be awesome.
7:52 I am wondering. How about something like "ad portas" or "ante portas" instead?
Sure, why not
Could you make a video showcasing movies, series and video games where classic Latin is pronounced correctly?
The best is probably the first seasons of Barbarians, which I’ve already reviewed here on this channel. Enjoy!
Luke, the schwa-sound (ə) at the end of certain words is so typical Italian.
It sure is
I find it verry interesting that Caesar (in some spoken way) sounds to germans like that Kaiser witch is actually the word for emperor and with that it's again beautyfully seen that many languages take smth from latin
"Et tu, Brutus..." tragoediā "Julius Caesar" ab William Shakespeare scripta inest.
8:31
I think the translator meant to write it as "Tū quoque? Nam Caesar cadat."
It's a quote from Shakespeare translated into Latin.
Also, the way he said
/sezar/ at the beginning instead of
/kaesar/ is just as funny as when the Brazillian dubber in Thermae Rōmae Novae said /'dusere/ instead of /'du:kere/ for "dūcere".
Right! I misread the English words I missed the Shakespear reference. Good translation.
"Cadat igitur Caesar" would be my choice.
Good call on the "dusere" haha
A humble request, Song of Lament is a song from the game Elden Ring where they sing in Latin and I would be very curious to know your analysis of the song ( the song is beautiful by the way)
I've been doing Latin on Duolingo for a few weeks. Yes, everyone else can call me out for not using ALI but I can't afford it..yet. Everything you said about voice actors not getting the sounds right is very accurate for Duolingo I feel. Not only that, it lacks phonemic length indicators so learning to speak it in Duolingo for me is based on your pronunciation.
Nunc...Quis sacrificatis? (My current favourite yet random Duolingo phrase! )
You may like seeing Luke's video on the "Ranieri-Dowling method", or otherwise check out a book called Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, which a lot of people say effectively teaches you fluent Latin grammar if you can read it to the end. I maxed out every skill on the Duolingo Latin course, but they have a stronger focus on vocabulary and they don't even teach you more than like 3 declensions and only the present tense (perhaps this's changed since I learnt), so unfortunately it couldn't take you further than the basic steps I suppose.
For the “nam Caesar ruat” part - it’s clear that the text is taken from Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” during the famous assassination scene -
“Et tu Brute! Then fall Casear.”
Here the word ‘fall’ has an imperative sense, as this would have been a poetic device in Early Modern English - referring to oneself in the 2nd person, to command oneself to do something.
So the English is perfectly fine, and really neat reference. And for the Latin, though I am by NO means a fluent or even particularly good speaker, being an amateur at most, it would then be “Nam rue, Caesar” or “Nam Caesar rue!” to express the imperative meaning :)
Yes, I misread "fall" as "fail" and the famous Shakespearean line somehow didn't come to mind when I make that reading error.
For the Latin, the "nam" is one of the weirdest things here.
Would the subtitle change in the defeat line be for the famous “last words” of Caesar, then translated to a correct speech?
"Then fall Caesar" is from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
Yes, I misread the English as "fail" heh
No matter what/how they pronounce latin in games,movies or music, I will always pronounce latin in Classical latin
@polymathyluke Maybe you could do an episode where you ask ChatGPT to translate English movie quotes into Latin, and rate ChatGPT's Latin. I tried a couple of Princess Bride quotes, and it seems to be more accurate than Google Translate, though I'm a total noob when it comes to Latin, so I'm a poor judge of the faithfulness of the translations.
A very fun idea
Lets go a Caesar civ 6 Latin review
I am pretty confident some modders would be interested to mod better latin into the game. Sadly, I can't direct you to one of them that could do that, sorry.
But with this game having so many history buffs as fans, I think it is likely you would find someone interested pretty quickly by going to the community forum.
Since Civ 7 is officially announced to be in development maybe you should try to get in touch with Firaxis for quality Latin voice acting!
It’s up to them to get their nonsense together. They can contact me if they want.
Remember in "Romanes eunt ad domum" where you said a teacher will say stuff to people, now you are saying what that teacher would do :P
Hahah definitely. I would add that I would never treat a student in such a way. But when a multi-million dollar company makes a mistake in a huge part of their marketing material, they're asking to be critiqued. That's how I see it, anyway.
Antique Agent 47 was teaching me Latin. Amazing
Methinks that Marcus was the “scholar”whom the developers of this game
consulted.
Haha. I’m sure they kid could have done much better. He’s a native speaker after all, even if not a great speller
@@polyMATHY_Luke True, I didn’t think about him being a native speaker, quia is pigerrimus discipulus est.
i clicked to learn some latin and i was not expecting seeing fire burning down the library of alexandria
Kind of funny that based on your previous review of Civ's Trajan also from civ 6, it seemed like they did a lot better with Trajan, though from what you said it still was far from perfect (I have no idea and am just here out of interest, I'm shamefully monolingual 😅).
The context here regarding development is that Julius Caesar is a free leader given out for linking your 2k account, and developed alongside the very last DLC content in the game, whereas Trajan was the leader of Rome in the base game and the only leader of Rome in the game for a really long time. I suspect because they were giving Julius Caesar out for free, they probably cheaped out and didn't bother hiring a proper translator at all. Seems a bit of a shame!
Luke, Mel Gibson should hire you for consulting the spoken Latin in the new "Passion of the Christ: Resurrection".
I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say about The Barbarians season 2
I wrote a whole review for it. But it was so disappointingly and inexcusably bad that I don’t feel like touching it again for a while.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Haha, I don't blame you! I couldn't even get past the third episode.
I wrote a whole script for my film review channel, but the displeasure of having to edit the whole thing makes my stomach turn.
As an avid fan of the Civilization series, it is kind of disappointing that the translation work done for the voice acting is often subpar; Civ 5 and 6 both have leaders who speak utter gibberish. However, I can understand why accuracy in that department might not be a priority, since the voice acting is really just flavor in the context of the game. It's not like you need to understand what the leaders are saying to be able to play the game, it's not central to any mechanic of the game and you can even just turn it off and have the leaders be static images. I certainly hope they make a more fervent effort to get accurate translations and pronunciations for VA clips in Civ 7 but if doing so takes away from the quality of the gameplay then we could probably go without it.
I know this is unrelated to your video but what are your thoughts on "Middle English"? Will you ever cover it?
I remember playing one of the Civilisation games, I think it was Civ 5, and met with Wu Zetian, empress of China. Now there is a very special type of parlance that Chinese royalty used, a form of Classical Chinese with special pronouns used only by the emperor, with lots of flowery idioms to express their power and wisdom. However, she sounds like a shy exchange student, speaking in casual modern Mandarin. It's incredibly jarring. I'd rather have her speak English. I imagine Luke must feel the same about crappy Latin like in this case.
An odd and irrelevant observation from someone recently interested in Latin: the pronunciation of the word 'Latin'. Americans (at least) pronounce it with a glottal stop instead of a real 't' sound; I think that posh UK speakers will use an aspirated 't'. What's unexpected is that even people who speak Latin or instruct it (like you) will usually pronounce it with the glottal stop when speaking English, although I heard both in this video.
As for the pronunciation, I am reminded of the indie '60s horror film, 'Incubus' (1966), for which the screenplay was translated to the interlanguage Esperanto and performed in that language (Leslie Stevens thought that it would make it sort of otherworldly and Bergmanesque). The script is fine; they had a competent Esperanto speaker do the translation. But when it came time to film it, they decided that they didn't need a dialogue coach. The rules for Esperanto pronunciation are simple, but of course it requires some instruction and practice. The actors had little or none, and since they did not speak the language, they had to learn it phonetically and look at the original English to decide how to perform. It is infamous because William Shatner is there speaking egregiously-pronounced Esperanto, though his acting is pretty decent, actually.
You need a competent dialogue coach and writer, even for cut scenes in a video game. Alas, the phrase, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well," (does it have a classical antecedent? It seems like the sort of aphorism that might…) will always take a back seat to working cheap and profitable.
Even in posh British English you’ll hear the glottal stop in front of an ‘n’ some of the time, also for words like mitten, kitten, etc. In this and environment and intervocalically Americans’ t will experience some form of lenition, while in most UK voices it becomes a glottal stop
Hello! how difficult is to learn the latin fron the spanish? I would like to learn a basic conversation
I think you can learn quickly! Watch these
th-cam.com/play/PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV.html
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you
They need to get you to do the Latin
I hope they reach us to you. As you say there is no excuse not to hire professionals so your product does not come across as a joke.
Thanks. I'm just one among many, so it would be great if they found *someone*
Saw this on Metatron and recognised it from when I saw it the first time about a year ago...should have given it a thumbs up then.
Now or then, always appreciated!
Real random question, but how would u say the phrase “The limp in your stride” in Latin? Implying we are the limp in your stride? If that helps.
Hello Luke, would you consider reviewing the Latin in the game "Fallout New Vegas"? Thank you.