I remember in the earlier games you could change the language, between Animalese, Bebebese, and Silence. Bebebese sounds like the text sound in game when people are not speaking.
@@Random-oy7vk Yeah. You use the phone in the highest room and can change it there, at least in the first game - I can't remember how it was done in the following games, but I think it was the same. One of the wikis say it was in Wild World and City Folk/Let's Go to the City.
I play in English and my mom plays in Dutch, and we often play side by side. You can definitely hear the difference in the way they pronounce vowels and stuff. So I think they did different Animalese for different languages.
yeah, if you slow down a clip of an animal crossing character speaking, you’ll kind of be able to understand what they’re saying. i was really surprised when i first did it
I always noticed this because it felt like the animals were saying a sped up version of the sounds the game would make when typing with the in-game keyboard! (Which pronounces the letters you're typing as you type them.) For a very long time I've made it a fun game to listen to what they say as they're saying it and picking out the sounds of the letters. If you know what to listen for, it's *almost* perfectly decipherable most of the time, and often enough some words just sound pretty accurate.
actually, Midna has English lines, that were then cut and rearranged...you can find the "original" samples on youtube, where she says things like 'want me to use my power?' (that said, there Could be some Japanese as well, i just know that its not ALL Japanese :-P)
Can't believe the international releases weren't touched upon. When you write messages in the game, each letter is read out when you type it. So I imagine they use a similar synthesiser for the other language releases?
My coworkers get a huge kick out of my Isabelle imitation. I go into long work discussions in Isabelle's language; I keep getting requests to become team leader. 😂 It really helps on those looong overnight 12 hour shifts.
I definitely worried about offending villagers when I was younger, and though I’ve never connected the two before (i think I was just raised right mostly) I strive to be a polite and sensitive adult. That said I almost always loved it when they got angry with me. I was only ever guilty about *upsetting* them
The English version of Animalese being just them spelling the words is incorrect. If you slow down Animalese you'll find in the newer games they are reading the English words in a Japanese accent, and in the Gamecube it's a English speech synth that pronounce the whole word, but isn't consistent with how words are actually pronounced in English. "See" might be "say", for instance.
Yeah, I think you're right. Information on how the English synthesis works is very limited, and I think my explanation was not completely correct. Since the rest of the video was (in my opinion) well researched and backed up, but that one English bit was not great, I've trimmed it out the video.
i thought i was the only one that had noticed how the language worked until now, thanks for making this video and bringing the concept up to light; also really interesting idea since it also gives further context and provides the story as to how the idea behind this language came to be. thanks once more for putting up videos like these
@@Random-oy7vk it's a format that animals sometimes speak, normally the sounds of characters thinking or system menus. Notably, in Animal Crossing Wild World, you can disable Animalese and make all animals speak Bebebese. That's as much as I know about it, which is why I wanted some more from the video lol.
6:10 This is a commonly spread myth that merely takes slowing down the English version's Animalese to disprove. Animalese in English actually works similarly to existing English TTS, it's just muffled, scrambled and highly sped up. Some have likened it to Japanese TTS trying to say English words phonetically. Here's a good example: th-cam.com/video/vSHZ0q5bqzI/w-d-xo.html If it was just saying the letters one by one, it'd be a lot more noticeable. Take the way he says "get" here for example. You can't make "gee ea tea" sound like that no matter how much you speed it up.
I think it's the same in English speaking countries as well. The animalese is just what we hear when typing a message but sped up. And with the tone changed to match the speaker.
According to someone else, they have made sure the letter-names are different per language, and since Spanish is more phonetically written, it will therefore sound more correct. Still, a word like "holla" would be "hache-o-ele-ele-a" since they are using letter-names and not letter-sounds. I guess it might sound close enough in fast speech.
@@Liggliluff Actually pretty sure they do pronounce letter sounds, I remember back in New Leaf Isabelle would say "Todo listo, pásala bien" each time you booted up the game and it was so clear that the text-to-speech was saying that, also in New Horizons smug villagers would often say "No-lo-pue-do-cre-er" when you gift them something and, again, it sounded just like how you'd pronounce phonetically
This is such a great video! When I was researching Animal Crossing development I read the same interview with Taro Bando about insect collecting, isn’t it so funny and charming? Thanks for the great video as always!
It reminded me of the voice function of older computers from like the late 90s early 2000s. And of those old animals that you could have on your desktop that used basically the same method to speak, having either a real or computerized voice and speeding it up a lot. I have a vivid memory of taking one of those voice clips, slowing it down to normal and just hearing a random voice saying “Yellow yellow yellow”
Thank you for the video! I'd love to see a continuation where you discuss how they changed the voice synthesizer to sound more like English for the players in English-speaking regions!
I should really play this series someday but on the other hand it seems like one of those black hole games. Those games where you don't really do much of anything but in spite of that it keeps pulling you back in cause if you drop it for a while and then come back everyone wonders where you went. So you feel a psychological need to return every day and say hello to everyone.
Yeah I played Animal Crossing literally every day for 3 or 4 months after it came out, and I had a lot of fun during that time! But I don't think I'd want to get back into it, at least not to that extent, right now. Not until the next game comes out at least, haha!
(6:20) Notice the Japanese accent on those letters, how it's not "ell" but more like "eru". So it's more like "etch-ee-eru-eru-oh". They do have sounds for the extended Latin alphabet as well, like Ñ, Ń, Æ and so on, so they can even read words with these. But that makes me curious if the characters still say "etch" for H and "ee" for E in for example German, because the German names for these letters are different. If someone plays the game in non-English and non-Japanese, and presses a Latin letter, as the sound is made, is it still the English name? Probably easiest with letters like H and W.
I play the games in German and the letters are changed to sound like the German names for them (numbers too!). This is also why the way the characters speak sound different depending on the language.
@@EXANIMO2 That's really neat! They really put that extra effort into it. But do they still have Japanese accents to it? I think "3" might be the easiest to tell, it's unique for German so not reused from English, and the question is if it sounds more like (using Japanese) "drai" or "durai", or "8" might also be interesting for that "ch" sound.
@@Liggliluff It does sound like there's still an accent, especially for 3. Some letters also tend to sound a bit weird, especially y (since it is pronounced ypsilon so... not an easy sound to make) and ä/ö/ü but you can definitely make out the letters!
btw thomas, if it's financially comfortable for you, you don't have to upload every week! tbh a video from you every 10 days or even 2 weeks would be fine, they're amazing!
Thank you to the creators of animal crossing! I love everything about these games, the music, the characters, the whole environment it just makes you happy. My kids got me a pair of leaf earrings last year from the game for mothers day and they're my favorite pair of earrings lol
Arcade Bunny from the Nintendo Badge Arcade has a cute sort of Animalese speech. I tried the Japanese version recently, and while it's not 1:1 with the text, the sounds he makes do somewhat match his speech quirks, like adding っす！ ("ssu!") to the end of most sentences. Ironically when you collect some huge number of badges (I think it was 5000?), you get to select a question to ask him about the game. Well I chose to ask how his voice was made, but he just responded with "Oh, you don't want to know that..."
I noticed animalese in new leaf quite quickly. It is an effect you notice sometimes, and start to understand. It fits the theme of communication because after a while, you kinda understand the tone, or "what is happening", mirroring experiences of those who learned english from their playstation or start to understand spoken japanese from exposure alone.
i knew it! because i realized that whenever they finish a sentence/word, it’s always sounds like they are saying the words by letters. like “hello” they would say it as “h e l l o” but sped up
Brilliant 💝 (language geek here and a new follower from now on). I was looking for answers for my first AC play ever and I stumbled over this brilliant channel full of deeper informations. Thank you so much for this. I'm gonna watch the next AC in your YT. Greetings and happy gaming🌸
I realised this back then only through the keyboard. As I was typing the letters I noticed that the sounds somewhat sounded like the letter I was pressing and in isolation I could really hear the letters. Then I paid attention to the conversations and I noticed that indeed the letters are spoken. Allthough one by one which doesn't make sense for english (in my case german) but it created that distinct sound
At least in New Horizons and possibly other games, they actually do say the words in English using some rudimentary text to speech. This should’ve been included since it’s obvious.
Yeah, this has been the case since the first game. I've heard actual words here and there even back then, so that's how they've always done it and still do (which since this video is about the original, it would make sense to mention it here, but I guess Thomas wanted to just cover the JP version?).
I do find it weird that they didn't consider having two sounds for each letter; the letter name (when typing on the keyboard) and the letter sound when they speak (ignoring double-letters). So hello would use the sounds (using IPA): /h/, /ɛ/, /l/, /oʊ/ getting the word /hɛloʊ/, which is accurate. But a word like "hour" would be /hoʊ.ʌr/ (how-ur). Of course, they could add some clusters and exceptions, like "sh" for /ʃ/ (sh) and "su" for /ʃʌ/ (shu). They could still speak fast, but they would speak a little slower since they're no longer saying "haichellellow" but just "hellow".
The Animalese in English is still synthesized using Japanese syllables. They take the English strings and convert them to kana. It is not known for certain exactly the way in which this is done, but the following sentence was a possible example given to me by a dataminer. (If you know Japanese kana, note how this is a lot closer to the English pronunciation of the whole sentence than the usual Japanese approximations of foreign words, allowing them to blend together, as well as having sounds that don't normally exist in Japanese.) > Please note that I can only move players who currently own a house on this island. becomes > ぷりーずのうとぅざらいかのうんりーむーぶ ぷれいあーずふーかーあんとぅりーおうなはうすあんずぃさいらんどぅ。 Romanized this is literally: > _purīzu nōtu zarai kanounrī mūbu pureiāzu fū kāanturī ouna hausu an zisairandu_ As I said this is different than how those English words would be read in Japanese which would be something like > プリーズ・ノート・ザット・アイ・カン・オンリー・ムーブ・プレーヤーズ・フー・カーレントリー・オーン・ア・ハウス・オン・ジス・アイランド or > _purīzu nōto zatto ai kan onrī mūbu purēyāzu fū kārentorī ōn a hausu on jisu airando_
@@leaflenster7340 animalise using some english words is more prononced in Animal Crossing New Horizons, the Villagers and NPC actually feel they are speaking a true launguage to you, with change in tone depeding on the villager personality( like a more high picthed voice for peppy vilagers and a low baritone tone for cranky villagers), even specials NPC like Broosters and Tom Nook has specials tone in his voice.
Im guessing the VAs were made to pronounce and record each letter of the alphabet and for each letter of a sentence each pronounced letters from the record are used Just guessing before the video
I realized this thing when I was playing Wild World as a kid. It was all gibberish to me for everything except for one sound where Blathers says "Fascinating..." while appraising a fossil. If you ever get a chance to hear it, it's REALLY clear. Like almost New Horizons-level clear!!
Tbh this is probably one of favorite things about these games as well, and yeah sometimes great ideas are made by complete accident because I've done that myself with my art
I've heard that the rudeness of the animal characters was something introduced in the English translation, and that it wasn't like that in the original Japanese version. This aspect has been toned down over later games, and the English translation has a more similar tone to the Japanese game.
@@fletchqc9900 But the tricky part is that some wants a version matching the Japanese-version as closely as possible, and then there are some wanting it changed. It's hard to satisfy both.
@@Liggliluff it isn't hard to satisfy both, actually. Normal, lazy and jock villagers are meant to be very nice to the player, just like the japanese version. Peppy is a weird case because they're neither nice nor mean, just sort of airheaded. And snooty and cranky villagers are supposed to be the meanest of the bunch. In the older games, jock and normal villagers especially were very nice and almost never mean to the player.
I think for the other languages they just read out every character So "hello" is like "H E L L O" very quickly and that way it kinda sounds like English oder German but you cannot really understand it It's the same vibe
Fantastic video over all. Gotta say, the lesson in Japanese pronunciation vs. mispronouncing the Japanese creators’ names (I.e. TAY-RO BAND-O versus TAH-RO BAHN-DOH) had me laughing a little
i’ve always thought that it sounded like they were saying what the subtitles (or.. text bubble.. whatever it’s called-) said, but i just told myself i’ve been isolated too long because of my illness and must be going crazy lol. good to know i wasn’t, after all.. it’s pretty cool how it was all made from an accident. the animalese will never be forgotten now.
As a creative I've found the most innovative, coolest ideas are always thought of at a dilemma, when something is stopping you from using your original idea
I always thought I heard the villagers speak out my name real quick and in a way, I'm not wrong. My name is Beatriz, but "Bia" is a.short nickname for ir, I can sometimes hear it, especially from blathers hahaha.
I actually didn't realize they were saying human language(in my case it was Korean) when I was child. I only noticed it when I started playing the Switch version.
about the thing you said regarding japanese sound of the words, I (a japanese student) think that there's lots of exceptions, there's also intonation in the japanese language and also there's きゃ; きょ; きゅ variations wich you didn't addressed, but I think this one is a little understandable.
yeah, when I put on screen "this is a simplification", I was referring to the double letter sounds of Japanese. I didn't think that it was in the scope of video to explain, but it is worth pointing out! Obviously, Japanese synthesis isn't exactly easy, but compared to English it's a lot more achievable. コメントをありがとう!
I've always known it was sped-up text because in New Leaf when posting on the message, if type a letter with the 3ds stylus, then it will read back the letter in Animalese. I made the connection eventually that it some of it sounded similar to sped-up English letters but sounded a little different (ex. type "e" and it would read back as "eh"). Didn't know it was actually based on Japanse tho.
I already figured this out listen closely to the sounds and you can sort of understand some of what there saying I realized it while talking to blathers
Alright let’s get things straight NUMBER 1: Japanese DOES NOT USE AN ALPHABET. Japanese orthography uses a mix of what are called syllabaries (kana) and logographs (kanji). NUMBER 2: The Japanese Writing System is far and wide much more complicated than the English one. There are most likely more homophones, homographs, and homonyms, than in all of English.
The idea was first introduced in Banjo and Kazooie though, it was a different kind of doubutsugo. There could even be prior uses of this of the snes era...
I had always noticed that the characters spoke in some kind of sped-up high-pitched text-to-speech when listen very closely especially when you make them pronounce your own custom words you made for them. Sometimes they kinda pronounce each letter individually very quickly as they es-pee-ee-a-kay (s p e a k)
Oh my ADHD brain kicks in and I read at the pace of the text bubbles and I thought they just recorded people talking and sped it up. I always understood it
The animalese is just the native language of the players, sped up really fast. The source is most likely an in-house voice synthesizer similar to the vocaloid voice banks. nintendo probably has one that was made for them to use.
that idea of "we dont even need to understand what they are saying!" kinda fell off because in most recent ac games like acnh, you can almost perfectly tell what the animals are saying, at least in english example: in happy home paradise dlc for acnh, when Niko says "Yo!" you can tell that hes saying "yo" they pretty much just record words, and speed them up to make the text, if you get any video of an acnh villager/special character speaking, and slow it down, you can perfectly understand what they are saying
since japanese letters are just called by what sound the make, in the english version of animal crossing the characters just spell the word out loud. you can hear it a little bit at the end of a sentence
@Heruru Meruru The original GCN version and New Horizons are the only ones I've played. It's been way too long since I played the original though, I can't remember exactly how they sounded.
From what I remember, they pronounce the sound every letter they're saying makes (instead of saying each letter's name). It's usually easier to make out short words.
would you make a video on why wario doesnt sound like he used to, theres been alot of changes like his voice going deeper and deeper and him even being german once
It always sounded to me like it was the actual word being said, or at least letter sounds very representative of the words, just sped and pitched up like 500%
If you put the play back speed down a bit you can hear the animal crossing characters speak English some words are hard to hear but some are clear as day
Animal crossing is the only modern game my 64yo mother can play. She asked if I knew of any good offline games since the guys playing online euchre were vulgar as sailors. She loves it, we've definitely talked more about AC in the last few months than just about any other topic since we're such different people
I remember in the earlier games you could change the language, between Animalese, Bebebese, and Silence. Bebebese sounds like the text sound in game when people are not speaking.
Wait, really? I didn't know about that change
@@Random-oy7vk
Yeah. You use the phone in the highest room and can change it there, at least in the first game - I can't remember how it was done in the following games, but I think it was the same.
One of the wikis say it was in Wild World and City Folk/Let's Go to the City.
In french, i think the animalese language was called "yoghurt"
@@TBaker-xu5is I can confirm that it's the same in Wild world.
Yeah I remember you can do that in Wild World and City Folk (the Wii one)
I play in English and my mom plays in Dutch, and we often play side by side.
You can definitely hear the difference in the way they pronounce vowels and stuff.
So I think they did different Animalese for different languages.
Yeah, in New Horizons the English version is actually so articulate that you can make out actual words.
yeah, if you slow down a clip of an animal crossing character speaking, you’ll kind of be able to understand what they’re saying. i was really surprised when i first did it
@@hexagonal69I can attest to this. I can actually hear Tom Nook saying "Hello Hello!" and Blathers saying "Jolly Good!" when I speak to them.
@@hexagonal69I can kind of hear “Happy Birthday” during my birthday
That dedication is actually insane tho
I always noticed this because it felt like the animals were saying a sped up version of the sounds the game would make when typing with the in-game keyboard! (Which pronounces the letters you're typing as you type them.) For a very long time I've made it a fun game to listen to what they say as they're saying it and picking out the sounds of the letters. If you know what to listen for, it's *almost* perfectly decipherable most of the time, and often enough some words just sound pretty accurate.
Nobody asked
same i thought everyone knew this
@@AbbeyKitty1013 nobody asked for your opinion
The most I've noticed it is in the first game when Tom Nook says "thorny".
They can all say my name pretty clearly
This reminds me of Midna's speech from Twilight Princess being created by recording Japanese dialogue and then playing it backwards.
actually, Midna has English lines, that were then cut and rearranged...you can find the "original" samples on youtube, where she says things like 'want me to use my power?'
(that said, there Could be some Japanese as well, i just know that its not ALL Japanese :-P)
@@rtyuik7 Interesting. Wouldn't surprise me though.
It also reminded me of the Chu's voice from the wind waker, how it's just two japanese guys fighting
Can't believe the international releases weren't touched upon. When you write messages in the game, each letter is read out when you type it. So I imagine they use a similar synthesiser for the other language releases?
I’m pretty sure it’s the case
Just sequentially voicing each letter
My coworkers get a huge kick out of my Isabelle imitation.
I go into long work discussions in Isabelle's language; I keep getting requests to become team leader. 😂
It really helps on those looong overnight 12 hour shifts.
Slave labour much?
Ha ha ha!!!
Nice
The villagers' rudeness being meant to encourage kids to talk to their parents more is such a strange avenue of wholesomeness- I kinda love it
I definitely worried about offending villagers when I was younger, and though I’ve never connected the two before (i think I was just raised right mostly) I strive to be a polite and sensitive adult.
That said I almost always loved it when they got angry with me. I was only ever guilty about *upsetting* them
300th like
The English version of Animalese being just them spelling the words is incorrect. If you slow down Animalese you'll find in the newer games they are reading the English words in a Japanese accent, and in the Gamecube it's a English speech synth that pronounce the whole word, but isn't consistent with how words are actually pronounced in English. "See" might be "say", for instance.
Yeah, I think you're right. Information on how the English synthesis works is very limited, and I think my explanation was not completely correct. Since the rest of the video was (in my opinion) well researched and backed up, but that one English bit was not great, I've trimmed it out the video.
I could honestly listen to Thomas’s voice all day, it’s so soothing.
Man Voices
man voice thomas voice
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allsl
Agreed.. 😌
I've been trying to explain to my friends for years how I can hear the words they're saying in the noises but nobody else would believe me
i thought i was the only one that had noticed how the language worked until now, thanks for making this video and bringing the concept up to light; also really interesting idea since it also gives further context and provides the story as to how the idea behind this language came to be. thanks once more for putting up videos like these
Loved the video, but would have appreciated a mention of Bebebese, since that always interested me
Bebebese is just "pop pop pop" though
Bebebese?
@@Random-oy7vk it's a format that animals sometimes speak, normally the sounds of characters thinking or system menus. Notably, in Animal Crossing Wild World, you can disable Animalese and make all animals speak Bebebese. That's as much as I know about it, which is why I wanted some more from the video lol.
the phoenix wright dialogue sounds
6:10 This is a commonly spread myth that merely takes slowing down the English version's Animalese to disprove. Animalese in English actually works similarly to existing English TTS, it's just muffled, scrambled and highly sped up. Some have likened it to Japanese TTS trying to say English words phonetically.
Here's a good example: th-cam.com/video/vSHZ0q5bqzI/w-d-xo.html
If it was just saying the letters one by one, it'd be a lot more noticeable. Take the way he says "get" here for example. You can't make "gee ea tea" sound like that no matter how much you speed it up.
I think it's the same in English speaking countries as well. The animalese is just what we hear when typing a message but sped up. And with the tone changed to match the speaker.
At least in the Spanish version, it still feels generally like the word they're actually saying. Like, vowel-wise. It's pretty cool
According to someone else, they have made sure the letter-names are different per language, and since Spanish is more phonetically written, it will therefore sound more correct.
Still, a word like "holla" would be "hache-o-ele-ele-a" since they are using letter-names and not letter-sounds. I guess it might sound close enough in fast speech.
@@Liggliluff Actually pretty sure they do pronounce letter sounds, I remember back in New Leaf Isabelle would say "Todo listo, pásala bien" each time you booted up the game and it was so clear that the text-to-speech was saying that, also in New Horizons smug villagers would often say "No-lo-pue-do-cre-er" when you gift them something and, again, it sounded just like how you'd pronounce phonetically
@@Liggliluff Also the fact that spanish is really similar phonetically to japanese, they probably used the same recordings as the japanese version
To me it sounds like it in English
@@Liggliluff what’s a holla? Lmaoo cus thats definitely not a Spanish word. You’re either saying Joya or OLLA.
This is such a great video! When I was researching Animal Crossing development I read the same interview with Taro Bando about insect collecting, isn’t it so funny and charming? Thanks for the great video as always!
It reminded me of the voice function of older computers from like the late 90s early 2000s. And of those old animals that you could have on your desktop that used basically the same method to speak, having either a real or computerized voice and speeding it up a lot. I have a vivid memory of taking one of those voice clips, slowing it down to normal and just hearing a random voice saying “Yellow yellow yellow”
Thank you for the video! I'd love to see a continuation where you discuss how they changed the voice synthesizer to sound more like English for the players in English-speaking regions!
Yo. It's good to see you uploading a video! Your videos are amazing! Glad that you're back! Keep up the great work!
I should really play this series someday but on the other hand it seems like one of those black hole games.
Those games where you don't really do much of anything but in spite of that it keeps pulling you back in cause if you drop it for a while and then come back everyone wonders where you went. So you feel a psychological need to return every day and say hello to everyone.
Yeah I played Animal Crossing literally every day for 3 or 4 months after it came out, and I had a lot of fun during that time! But I don't think I'd want to get back into it, at least not to that extent, right now. Not until the next game comes out at least, haha!
Im once again obsessed with animal crossing new horizons 😂 helpp
The legend is back at it again
Bucket
@@ceru1ean_f1n1ty bucket
bucket
Bucket?
@@thatrandominternetgeek 🪣?
(6:20) Notice the Japanese accent on those letters, how it's not "ell" but more like "eru". So it's more like "etch-ee-eru-eru-oh". They do have sounds for the extended Latin alphabet as well, like Ñ, Ń, Æ and so on, so they can even read words with these. But that makes me curious if the characters still say "etch" for H and "ee" for E in for example German, because the German names for these letters are different.
If someone plays the game in non-English and non-Japanese, and presses a Latin letter, as the sound is made, is it still the English name? Probably easiest with letters like H and W.
I play the games in German and the letters are changed to sound like the German names for them (numbers too!). This is also why the way the characters speak sound different depending on the language.
@@EXANIMO2 That's really neat! They really put that extra effort into it. But do they still have Japanese accents to it? I think "3" might be the easiest to tell, it's unique for German so not reused from English, and the question is if it sounds more like (using Japanese) "drai" or "durai", or "8" might also be interesting for that "ch" sound.
@@Liggliluff It does sound like there's still an accent, especially for 3. Some letters also tend to sound a bit weird, especially y (since it is pronounced ypsilon so... not an easy sound to make) and ä/ö/ü but you can definitely make out the letters!
I’ve been binge watching videos about animal crossing and playing acnh so much today.. then you upload this..wow
I hope you enjoyed it!!
These videos are always so fascinating! No matter how much I know there always seems to be something new to learn about, which is very cool 😎
btw thomas, if it's financially comfortable for you, you don't have to upload every week! tbh a video from you every 10 days or even 2 weeks would be fine, they're amazing!
Thank you to the creators of animal crossing! I love everything about these games, the music, the characters, the whole environment it just makes you happy. My kids got me a pair of leaf earrings last year from the game for mothers day and they're my favorite pair of earrings lol
Arcade Bunny from the Nintendo Badge Arcade has a cute sort of Animalese speech. I tried the Japanese version recently, and while it's not 1:1 with the text, the sounds he makes do somewhat match his speech quirks, like adding っす！ ("ssu!") to the end of most sentences.
Ironically when you collect some huge number of badges (I think it was 5000?), you get to select a question to ask him about the game. Well I chose to ask how his voice was made, but he just responded with "Oh, you don't want to know that..."
I noticed animalese in new leaf quite quickly. It is an effect you notice sometimes, and start to understand. It fits the theme of communication because after a while, you kinda understand the tone, or "what is happening", mirroring experiences of those who learned english from their playstation or start to understand spoken japanese from exposure alone.
I started getting back into animal crossing and now Thomas game docs uploads an animal crossing video lmaooo
i knew it! because i realized that whenever they finish a sentence/word, it’s always sounds like they are saying the words by letters. like “hello” they would say it as “h e l l o” but sped up
Brilliant 💝 (language geek here and a new follower from now on).
I was looking for answers for my first AC play ever and I stumbled over this brilliant channel full of deeper informations.
Thank you so much for this. I'm gonna watch the next AC in your YT.
Greetings and happy gaming🌸
The return we needed, and we got.
he literally uploaded 6 days ago
It was six days ago
There isn't a more overused comment than this one...
@@AlanTGP1 lol
I realised this back then only through the keyboard. As I was typing the letters I noticed that the sounds somewhat sounded like the letter I was pressing and in isolation I could really hear the letters. Then I paid attention to the conversations and I noticed that indeed the letters are spoken. Allthough one by one which doesn't make sense for english (in my case german) but it created that distinct sound
Huh never knew that the sound was actually based off what they were currently saying and not just random
At least in New Horizons and possibly other games, they actually do say the words in English using some rudimentary text to speech. This should’ve been included since it’s obvious.
Yeah, this has been the case since the first game. I've heard actual words here and there even back then, so that's how they've always done it and still do (which since this video is about the original, it would make sense to mention it here, but I guess Thomas wanted to just cover the JP version?).
I do find it weird that they didn't consider having two sounds for each letter; the letter name (when typing on the keyboard) and the letter sound when they speak (ignoring double-letters). So hello would use the sounds (using IPA): /h/, /ɛ/, /l/, /oʊ/ getting the word /hɛloʊ/, which is accurate. But a word like "hour" would be /hoʊ.ʌr/ (how-ur).
Of course, they could add some clusters and exceptions, like "sh" for /ʃ/ (sh) and "su" for /ʃʌ/ (shu). They could still speak fast, but they would speak a little slower since they're no longer saying "haichellellow" but just "hellow".
The Animalese in English is still synthesized using Japanese syllables. They take the English strings and convert them to kana.
It is not known for certain exactly the way in which this is done, but the following sentence was a possible example given to me by a dataminer. (If you know Japanese kana, note how this is a lot closer to the English pronunciation of the whole sentence than the usual Japanese approximations of foreign words, allowing them to blend together, as well as having sounds that don't normally exist in Japanese.)
> Please note that I can only move players who currently own a house on this island.
becomes
> ぷりーずのうとぅざらいかのうんりーむーぶ ぷれいあーずふーかーあんとぅりーおうなはうすあんずぃさいらんどぅ。
Romanized this is literally:
> _purīzu nōtu zarai kanounrī mūbu pureiāzu fū kāanturī ouna hausu an zisairandu_
As I said this is different than how those English words would be read in Japanese which would be something like
> プリーズ・ノート・ザット・アイ・カン・オンリー・ムーブ・プレーヤーズ・フー・カーレントリー・オーン・ア・ハウス・オン・ジス・アイランド
or
> _purīzu nōto zatto ai kan onrī mūbu purēyāzu fū kārentorī ōn a hausu on jisu airando_
@@leaflenster7340 animalise using some english words is more prononced in Animal Crossing New Horizons, the Villagers and NPC actually feel they are speaking a true launguage to you, with change in tone depeding on the villager personality( like a more high picthed voice for peppy vilagers and a low baritone tone for cranky villagers), even specials NPC like Broosters and Tom Nook has specials tone in his voice.
hoping the weekly uploads will come back 👌 glad your back!
Im guessing the VAs were made to pronounce and record each letter of the alphabet and for each letter of a sentence each pronounced letters from the record are used
Just guessing before the video
The animaleese was actually pretty easy to understand in the gamecube version! The newer versions, not so much!
The subtitles are very much appreciated, thank you!
7:09 if you put the playbackspeed at 0,25 you can hear the english letters/sounds they are saying
I realized this thing when I was playing Wild World as a kid. It was all gibberish to me for everything except for one sound where Blathers says "Fascinating..." while appraising a fossil. If you ever get a chance to hear it, it's REALLY clear. Like almost New Horizons-level clear!!
The music in the background is so nostalgic. I miss when ACNH was still new lol
Tbh this is probably one of favorite things about these games as well, and yeah sometimes great ideas are made by complete accident because I've done that myself with my art
I've heard that the rudeness of the animal characters was something introduced in the English translation, and that it wasn't like that in the original Japanese version. This aspect has been toned down over later games, and the English translation has a more similar tone to the Japanese game.
I really want the rudeness back
@@fletchqc9900 But the tricky part is that some wants a version matching the Japanese-version as closely as possible, and then there are some wanting it changed. It's hard to satisfy both.
@@Liggliluff it isn't hard to satisfy both, actually. Normal, lazy and jock villagers are meant to be very nice to the player, just like the japanese version. Peppy is a weird case because they're neither nice nor mean, just sort of airheaded. And snooty and cranky villagers are supposed to be the meanest of the bunch. In the older games, jock and normal villagers especially were very nice and almost never mean to the player.
I want the Rude language dlc please. XD
I think for the other languages they just read out every character
So "hello" is like "H E L L O" very quickly and that way it kinda sounds like English oder German but you cannot really understand it
It's the same vibe
Is it just me or is this game catching up steam again?
How fascinating! Also I wish New Horizons villagers would have a bit of sass from the Gamecube version 😅
*TL;DW version:* _sped up synthesized japanese._
Fantastic video over all. Gotta say, the lesson in Japanese pronunciation vs. mispronouncing the Japanese creators’ names (I.e. TAY-RO BAND-O versus TAH-RO BAHN-DOH) had me laughing a little
i’ve always thought that it sounded like they were saying what the subtitles (or.. text bubble.. whatever it’s called-) said, but i just told myself i’ve been isolated too long because of my illness and must be going crazy lol. good to know i wasn’t, after all.. it’s pretty cool how it was all made from an accident. the animalese will never be forgotten now.
As a creative I've found the most innovative, coolest ideas are always thought of at a dilemma, when something is stopping you from using your original idea
I always thought I heard the villagers speak out my name real quick and in a way, I'm not wrong. My name is Beatriz, but "Bia" is a.short nickname for ir, I can sometimes hear it, especially from blathers hahaha.
I can understand it. Should i take a break and work on my social life?
Yo My Name Is Thomas! 😁😁👍👍
This video was really cool! I always thought that they said each letter!
I actually didn't realize they were saying human language(in my case it was Korean) when I was child. I only noticed it when I started playing the Switch version.
Love the videos, man. Keep it up!!!
about the thing you said regarding japanese sound of the words, I (a japanese student) think that there's lots of exceptions, there's also intonation in the japanese language and also there's きゃ; きょ; きゅ variations wich you didn't addressed, but I think this one is a little understandable.
jsyk it's きゃ きょ きゅ not かゃ かょ かゅ
yeah, when I put on screen "this is a simplification", I was referring to the double letter sounds of Japanese. I didn't think that it was in the scope of video to explain, but it is worth pointing out! Obviously, Japanese synthesis isn't exactly easy, but compared to English it's a lot more achievable. コメントをありがとう!
@@tibethatguy This
@@tibethatguy I agree, that's the right way, was just making the point there.
@@ThomasGameDocs yeah, for the context of the video it made sense to keep it simple, but it is nice that you accepted the feedback!
I've always known it was sped-up text because in New Leaf when posting on the message, if type a letter with the 3ds stylus, then it will read back the letter in Animalese. I made the connection eventually that it some of it sounded similar to sped-up English letters but sounded a little different (ex. type "e" and it would read back as "eh"). Didn't know it was actually based on Japanse tho.
When i read the conversation i hear to them and i understand what they say xD
Its actually pretty weird
they are actually are saying letters
I knew it
yeah but super sped up
I’ve thought it meant something or something else. I knew something was up. Never knew there was all of this behind it.
I already figured this out listen closely to the sounds and you can sort of understand some of what there saying I realized it while talking to blathers
Alright let’s get things straight
NUMBER 1: Japanese DOES NOT USE AN ALPHABET. Japanese orthography uses a mix of what are called syllabaries (kana) and logographs (kanji).
NUMBER 2: The Japanese Writing System is far and wide much more complicated than the English one. There are most likely more homophones, homographs, and homonyms, than in all of English.
FYI, Taro Bando is also one of the composers for F-Zero X. What a legend!
I just picked up animal crossing new horizons again and this video releases. What a coincidence
How fortuitous. I was just about to embark once again on my random Animal Crossing Song Covers journey again.
The idea was first introduced in Banjo and Kazooie though, it was a different kind of doubutsugo. There could even be prior uses of this of the snes era...
I've only played New Horizons but I think it's neat that short phrases and single words are understandable
Me starting to get into animal crossing and getting a new Island: this is nice
Seeing this video: THUS IS GREAT
Patents in Japan and the U.S only last 20 years, so the patent expired in 2020 and is free game for anyone to use however they’d like.
I had always noticed that the characters spoke in some kind of sped-up high-pitched text-to-speech when listen very closely especially when you make them pronounce your own custom words you made for them. Sometimes they kinda pronounce each letter individually very quickly as they es-pee-ee-a-kay (s p e a k)
Cool vid Thomas!!
Oh my ADHD brain kicks in and I read at the pace of the text bubbles and I thought they just recorded people talking and sped it up. I always understood it
I dare you try to say “This is cool” by letter to letter in 300% of normal speed or even 1000% or dare I say, Animalese!
The original AC was the only game I could get my mom to play. She got into it pretty hard, especially for an older non gamer.
She didn’t like horizons?
Another example of how constraints and challenges force us to push the envelope forward sometimes
The animalese is just the native language of the players, sped up really fast. The source is most likely an in-house voice synthesizer similar to the vocaloid voice banks. nintendo probably has one that was made for them to use.
By what i knew, it was just the sounds of letters jumbled together i could tell when i typed in animal crossing
2:41 “But with the Japanese sound Ohio…”
*radio plays down in ohio*
@@mgrvr*DOWN IN OHIO SWAG LIKE OHIO*
Ohaiyou おはよう
Some words are more clear than others
that idea of "we dont even need to understand what they are saying!" kinda fell off because in most recent ac games like acnh, you can almost perfectly tell what the animals are saying, at least in english
example: in happy home paradise dlc for acnh, when Niko says "Yo!" you can tell that hes saying "yo"
they pretty much just record words, and speed them up to make the text, if you get any video of an acnh villager/special character speaking, and slow it down, you can perfectly understand what they are saying
Finally, something I didn't know.
Unpopular opinion: The older animal crossing games had more heart and mind put to it than new horizons
:(( I’ve never played the older version, wish I got to experience it
2:41 do not click if your a gen z
💀💀💀
since japanese letters are just called by what sound the make, in the english version of animal crossing the characters just spell the word out loud. you can hear it a little bit at the end of a sentence
In New Horizons they aren't just reading the letters, but the whole English word though right? I'm sure I can occasionally make out some of the words.
Yes, and i’m pretty sure this is the case in New Leaf. It’s pretty much just tts, definitely NOT just saying the letters in order.
That's the case in the Gamecube version as well.
@Heruru Meruru The original GCN version and New Horizons are the only ones I've played. It's been way too long since I played the original though, I can't remember exactly how they sounded.
From what I remember, they pronounce the sound every letter they're saying makes (instead of saying each letter's name). It's usually easier to make out short words.
would you make a video on why wario doesnt sound like he used to, theres been alot of changes like his voice going deeper and deeper and him even being german once
He's back
Man, that Ace Attorney Music just came out of nowhere and hit me square in the face with a nostalgia hammer.
This is something I was always wondering
Bro summoned the 7 year olds💀💀💀💀💀💀 2:41
Fr😃
😭
It always sounded to me like it was the actual word being said, or at least letter sounds very representative of the words, just sped and pitched up like 500%
I was literally just watching a Thomas Game Docs video
I remember I felt like a genius when I figured this out playing Wild World
If you put the play back speed down a bit you can hear the animal crossing characters speak English some words are hard to hear but some are clear as day
Animal crossing is the only modern game my 64yo mother can play. She asked if I knew of any good offline games since the guys playing online euchre were vulgar as sailors. She loves it, we've definitely talked more about AC in the last few months than just about any other topic since we're such different people
I thought that all the letters were being played really fast, never considered the fact Nintendo is a Japanese company
'O ha yo u'
Ohio Final Boss: GIMMI YOUR BALL
i love how good morning in japanees sounds like ohio