If you ever going to write a paper for this, please call it pseudophonetics. It's more sciency that way. Edit: Wow 14k likes, this is more internet cred than i would ever imagine.
I think it started out as a way, like they said, to mimic listening while reading the text so you aren't bombarded with a ton of words and it feels more like you're listening to something while you read it. From there, video game developers interpreted it more as voices and (like Jeanne said) used different pitches depending on who is talking to represent that it is supposed to be the character's voice. From there, it's become what they mainly discussed, which is the Animal Crossing languages. Pretty cool stuff!
It sort of is? She greatly oversimplifies it here, but I think the gist is less “beeping is meant to represent speech in a primitive way” and more “the auditorial feedback gives the illusion of being spoken to.” It’s not meant to sound like speech, but the audio makes it feel like you’re listening rather than reading.
I've noticed that when they have you type in Animal Crossing: New Horizon you can hear a little voice saying each letter you press. Didn't know they did something similar to the speech.
The more I think about it and watch this video, the more convinced I am that it's all just Vocaloid. It would explain why the speech sounds like English, but with a Japanese accent.
Ok this seems like a good a place as any to address the fact that there are, in fact, TWO known languages in the sims: Simlish, and Scots. Sims can clearly be heard singing "Auld Lang Syne" at new years, entirely in simlish EXCEPT for the titular line of the song, implying the existence of a history of spoken Scots at some point in the linguistic timeline of the sims that pervaded simlish in much the way it did english
They also completely revamped the language in the Sims Medieval and made Old Simlish. It sounds very different and they made it closer to languages such as French
I could swear I remember Tom Nook saying “Yes yes” in wild world. Edit: To clarify, he says “Yes yes” aloud in Animalese-English. But she says it’s the same as the Japanese version.
spell 'y e s' out loud faster than humanly possible, through a walkie talkie, through a phone from the 90s, through a grocery store intercom. it's gonna sound like you just said 'yes' lol
Anyone who’s played an animal crossing game has realized that the “language” was just reciting each letter in each sentence. It’s very easily recognizable when you type up a piece of mail. This is due to the fact that every letter you type, a voice will repeat it, and from then on you realize that whatever sentence said in game in the animal language were simply reciting letters.
I don't think so when I talk to balthers I can hear him saying and same with Tom nook I can hear him saying yes yes and same with the other animals that live in my town
@@motomatt5040 Thats actually incorrect theres videos of them slowing down the english version and its gibberish with certain english key words. And I myself have played it for years both JP and EG ver
I always thought "beep speech" was ment to represent the clickity-clacking of typing on a keyboard or typewriter, rather than trying to mimic speech at all.
Dude I just bought a typewriter (1980 Royal Academy) and I can't hear it without thinking about how it reminds me of characters talking in video games, especially since there is a pause between words.
I noticed this when I bought the English version (I watch Japanese let's players), and the characters sounded different. It's really strange that a game where no one actually speaks English is still technically dubbed into English.
Well they made things sound different because in certain languages things sound somewhat different. You know when you try to speak another language and your tongue can't seem to move correctly? Like the sounds you hear in English that you don't hear in other languages don't apply to others. So Nintendo switched it up so each language hears something familiar
Correction: In City Folk and Wild World, the voice synthesis was still called Animalese. Bebebese was actually the name given to an alternative voice option that replaced the voice synthesis with normal beep speech. They were given these names so the first letters would align as “Option A” and “Option B”
Antonio Aguirre yes. Up until about the halfway point, everything is fine, but her assumption that bebebese replaced animalese throws the rest of the video off
It actually goes all the way back to the Gamecube game, I remember playing Animal Crossing on my Gamecube as a kid and there were options to change the voices the animals used to Animalese (the one most people are familiar with), Bebebese (basically just little blips), or Silent.
yeah I remember looking at the settings in wild world and you can change the language from animalese and bebebese. As soon as she said that in the vid the rest of the info was confusing to me
On the fact that gibberish is depending on the language, that's totally true. The sims language is not localised as it's supposed to be kind of universal, but when you speak another language, it's really clear that it's based on English. I'm French and I played the game in French, and it really sounds like gibberish English, not a specific language.
Accent américains oui, mais les mots sont fortement inspiré du Français, du Hongrois et de plusieurs autres langues. Y'a des documentaires ultra intéressant sur le simlish déjà sur youtube.
I only speak English and it was super obvious that it was English based gibberish to me too, not even english, American English specifically. Actually, I'd go as far as to say west coast American English.
Maybe not English but germanic sounding? I’m swedish and I remember hearing words that sounded swedish, rather than english. French isn’t in the germanic languages group so if you only know english from that group maybe simlish more easily sounds like english?
I can definitely tell there's English words peppered in whe I'm talking to villagers. Especially when talking to someone like Blathers who says the same thing over and over. Marevlous becomes "Marvelu!", and Jolly Good becomes "Jolly Goo!" Also, Blathers is best boy. That is all.
I can definitely hear Blathers say "Le me see hyar. Hahummmm. Indidu." When I give him a fossil. I've also noticed my villagers pronounce my name "membocattu" which I thought was so Japanese lmao
"localized animalese can make you feel more comfortable and at home" me, having to play the english version every time: _laughs in a language that never gets localized_
I actually lose the ability to distinguish language when listening to music. I literally cannot hear english when people sing, nor can I learn lyrics by listening. I looked this up & it was surprisingly more common than I expected.
Lieutenant BaconWaffles yOOO I CAN UNDERSTAND SOME THINGS IF I LISTEN ENOUGH BUT I CONSTANTLY HAVE TO LOOK UP THE LYRICS I’m glad I’m not the only one!!!
I always seem to learn majority of lyrics of a song after listening to it once lol after a few listens I can understand almost all lines and sing along. Only exception is rapping. I cannot for the life of me understand a single thing people sing if they’re rapping.
same lol, since the scrips are already translated in spanish, french, german, russian, korean, etc it would make sense to run them through synthesizers as well
i thought it was comfirmed as that b/c when you type letters there’s a female (?) animal spelling it out and if i listened hard enough, it sounded like they were spelling
Bebebese and animalese are two different Animal Crossing “languages”. In Wild World, you could choose your settings to be one or the other. Bebebese is a more standard, bubbly-sounding “beep speech”
Kino ..no I was quoting beetlejuice the musical, since this person has characters from the musical as their profile picture. The name of this person is the start of a section of the song where Lydia says ‘Beetlejuice, beetlejuice be a doll and spare the lecture.’ So I was simply quoting. Sorry for any.. pain I may have caused towards you?
I'm a linguist and science communicator and I must compliment both the expert and the host on how well made and entertaining this video is!! Great job!!
Hi, I just wanted to say that you are awesome, your job is really important, and people like you are what made me love science! I'm hoping to one day be a science communicator myself!
I noticed back in wild world even that when you wrote an in game letter, the game says the name of the letter you are typing. Every letter in animalese is basically pronounced as its name, then sped up to sound natural
I got frita and has "ewe" as a catchphrase... the damn problem it that me and some friends do the uwu stuff ironically, so whenever her catch phrase appears i cant not ear it
In french, we actually have a noun to describe this kind of "language", that doesn't exist in english: It's called "yaourt", which literally means yoghurt. So Tom Nook speaks in yoghurt... see your own metaphor here.
Would that include Beaker's language from The Muppets; or nonsense languages like those used in animated series like Aardman's Pingu, and the Teletubbies?
@@BadWebDiver not really, whereas Beaker just says "mememe" or the Aarman's Pingu makes just sounds like onomatopoeia, talking in yaourt is meant to simulate something that could be a real language. The best example is the Sims. As a kid I was actually wondering for years what languages they were using until I knew the truth ^^.
@@mudz2d397 I discovered that during the 1960's there was a jazz singing style called " scat ". Whereas Scat has a musical purpose, yaourt is meant to simulate a regular conversation. I don't think that the people who created that jazz thing were thinking about the french notion of yaourt language, but it's interesting to compare the two. I put you a link below of scat singing example: th-cam.com/video/PbL9vr4Q2LU/w-d-xo.html
In the french version of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, without looking at the screen and simply hearing the characters, i can recognize what they are saying most of the time...
Okay, I knew that the animalese was localized, but here’s a weird thing: I don’t think they localized the speech on the radio. I clearly hear things like “konbanwa” and “ogenki desu ka” from the radio in my character’s house.
A bunch of the songs they play on the radio in New Horizon are songs that were used in the GameCube version. Which I'm assuming are the same songs used in the N64 Japanese version.
@@masonsaccount I personally like Forest Life cause it's so nostalgic. I use to have a kid's room in the old game and had the Ska song cause it was so fun.
It's most likely because the voice actors are American and they all have an American accent. I'm a Spaniard majoring in English and from my point of view (a non native speaker who invests a lot of time in English) they also sound too obviously American to me.
I believe that’s probably because the game was made by Americans. Lots of stuff in the game is also very American, like the way their schools works and stuff. The game seems to be almost set in a slightly altered version of America.
Just a clarification: the speeding up isn’t the main thing ruining the English prosody in animalese, it’s mostly that the synthesized voice is almost entirely monotone, and (at least within a phrase) has no emphasis. Every syllable recurved the same pitch and stress, whereas in English (and almost all other languages) those things differ greatly and are vital to understanding the language. Those are the real elements of prosody that animalese purposely butchers.
I'm willing to bet they're just using the Japanese voice synthesizer and inputting English phonetically into it (hence the english "I" being pronounced as "ai"), so the pronounciation is heavily Japanese-accented which is why it's not really legible sped up and sounds weird slowed down.
@@noodletribunal9793 hey there noodle tribunal, I'm playing どうぶつの森 in Japanese and to me although the gibberish being said is very close to the Japanese texts it feels like they jump over some of the words or maybe replace them with nonsense. But perhaps that's just because it's going so fast. But in this video, there was a slowed down Japanese text and talk which confirmed my theory that some of the words are removed or replaced with gibberish
@@mariushagelskjr5452 oh, yea, sure. it's gibberish! but the Japanese version's gibberish is closer to identifyable Japanese than the English is to identifyable English, you know? i think this because not only is Japanese relatively monotone, but because it doesn't contain complicated multi-part sounds that English does. it's all some variation on "A I U E O". no dipthongs or whatever those things are called lol. i didn't mean to say that they just straight up used Japanese (ヽ´ω`)
10:05 It's pretty noticable in Russian version of New Horizons. Sometimes it sounds like my villagers actually say some phrases! Especially "Что? Это мне?" when you give them something.
Playing animal crossing in Spanish, I kinda understand what they’re saying mostly because they say words one phoneme at a time and vowels are very distinct
I do have to raise a point with Symphony of the Night; “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!” Is actually a quote from a philosopher whose name escapes me. And besides, it’s a good line!
During one cut scene in new horizons, Tom nook says "Timmy, Tommy, ..." And I swear it's in plain English. No attempt to make it not sound like the actual words was made. I forget what he said after that, but it also sounded pretty close to real words. Just sped up a lot.
I was naming a design a while ago and whenever I clicked a letter (obviously to name my design) I swear I heard the animals saying the letters in English!!!
after taking japanese language class in high school and forgetting a huge chunk of what I learned, then spending the past 4 years of my life binging anime to catch up on my inescapable weebness, I can't help but notice this with common wasei-eigo phrases like 'number 1'
I’ve actually been studying this “language” personally for a personal project of mine recently, so this really helps out a lot. This is really interesting.
inSein Basically I’m using a program to make a synthesized voice that can sing. I’ve been studying K.K. songs mostly and some fan made K.K. song covers. Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to make my voice sound more ‘animal crossing’ since I’ll be recording it myself. Currently in the works is also a Simlish synthesized singer but cracking that language is a bit more difficult. It’s super exciting and fun though!
this entire dialogue is one huge mistranslation "what is a man, a miserable little pile of secrets" is just a cool quote from some french author iirc, that the localization dude decided to add
im pretty sure that the “english” sounds are put through japan’s syllabic system before being further garbled. that’s why some vowels are completely different. it’s as if you asked google translate to read english through a japanese voice and then sped it up. it would read certain vowels based on japan’s rules but for english words
It's a voice synthesizer that they feed the script to. It wasn't "dubbed," it was fed the English script. Leave it to Polygon to make a video proclaiming an answer to their own question, admit they don't have it, then contact an expert who wouldn't know how those things were handled in the video game space anyway, but still use their input to formulate their own answer to the question they originally claimed to have answered in the clickbait title. All in a week's well-paid work, only at Polygon!* *and Kotaku.
I kinda knew they were speaking English since I named my character "Moo Moo" and everytime the animals use the name in their dialogue, I always hear "Momo"
this is actually incorrect because bebebese is the sound of a regular text beep use for whispering and humans, and not the sounds that WW and CF used, which it still called animalese. But animalese in CF and WW was still different as she claims.
Sounds like in New Horizons, they made a synthesized sound for each "letter" of the japanese "alphabet" (people who know japanese can probably figure why I'm using ""). Basically, the english animalese is being pronounced with a japanese accent. I've caught it a couple times during gameplay with really distinct letters like "tsu". I also think they cut out a few letters here and there.
Yes!! Been studying Japanese for two years and I could notice that they were talking as if the sound was in Japanese, pretty interesting! Thanks for the fact my dude
The answer is that Japanese animalese is actually a legit speech generator with one sound per syllabe (Japanese writing is based on phonemes). It's relatively understandable at low speed. But the English etc. languages do not have phoneme-based writing, so the same system could not be re-apllied, and they had to write a separate speech synthesis system, but left it incomplete. It's harder to write speech synthesis for English than for Japanese, but they did a lot of R&D with Tomodachi Collection since then. I believe based on those resources that they could have legible english animalese in both versions. However at the end they didn't go all the way trough for stylistic purposes probably
@@eathanneal9031 for most languages you can know how a word is pronounced just from the spelling, as words are pronounced how they are spelled - English is a damn lottery though, who would know that threw and through would sound similar but through and thought wouldn't
@@eathanneal9031 not really @Roach DoggJR is right English has some syllables that look the same but are pronounced different like read and the past form read or though and thought. It's just a t added so you just pronounce it like though-t. Well no. Syllables in Japanese for example are always pronounced the same no mater in which word. What you are probably thinking are emphasis, yes sometimes you need to hear a word to get it right but there are usually some grammatical rules or there is a consistency going on. it really depends on the language though
@@romajimamulo there prolly still is it just sounds chinese. my german copy is animalese but i can clearly hear the first and least word if i pay attention
@@romajimamulo In some languages, like Japanese, Animalese is way more close to sounding exactly like the actual language due to how the language is structured. In English like languages, each individual letter have many different ways they are pronounced depending on many different factors that are impossible to replicate in fake language, where as in others, each character has a more universal sound resulting in more cohesive sounding Animalese.
I’ve played Animal Crossing for years and my most endearing moments from the game came recently and from Animalese. My grandson is 20 months old. He’ll crawl into my lap when I’m playing and the FIRST time he heard Animalese he mimicked it back to the screen perfectly. He has language right now... mommy, daddy, puppy, etc. But his Animalese sounded just like it should.. An even cuter moment... when he saw a standee poster of the characters next to a screen running the upcoming new game a few months ago he shouted out to it... in Animalese. ❤️ I told my son we have to try and grab a video to save for when he grows up. 🤓
I... want to see this. My son is about the same age but has to tackle two languages already, so I don't want to get him tangling with an extra one just for fun.
That’s almost a little scary, lol. I have a niece who’s going to turn 2 in May and because I don’t see her every day (especially now since this COVID crisis) I’m always having to learn a new baby talk she uses or real words that she knows but is still hard to understand by her pronunciation. (Example, she calls Elsa as Sa...lol). I can’t imagine if she also started using Animalese, I probably would be totally lost. 😂
in new leaf if you set the villagers greeting to something like "ooooooooo" then they will just say oooooo. so i always thought the voices were just saying each letter individually, then sped up
Slight error: Bebebese is actually not the name of the default language for City Folk; that’s still called Animalese in game. In the options you can change speech to Bebebese, which is a type of what this video has termed “beep speech”. It’s also what you normally hear when narrative text scrolls, like catching a fish or digging up a fossil.
@@youregonnaneedtothrowsomem2665 Yes! I was waiting for somebody to say this. I think you can change the language by using the phone in the attic? I don't quite remember, but I do know there was that option.
Sir Potato Bottom Yes! Until recently I've been playing City Folk and they are indeed speaking animalese. That part of the video really annoyed me because it's just completely wrong!
wait what??? i played a lot of city folk and i remember there being an option (which you accessed by picking up a phone in your house) to change the voices from "animalese" to "bebebese" and i could've sworn that bebebese was beep speech????
@@funkytime69 yeah i know, sorry i should've been more specific, i was referring to the fact that this video says "bebebese" is a modified version of animalese that features in city folk, when in fact it's not a synthesised voice at all
Don't know about previous games, but Animal Crossing New Horizons in Russian sounds really close to Russian speech too. I was really amused to hear Nook say "Да-да!" (Yes-yes)
Вообще, как единственный и немой человек на острове, могу предположить, что животные просто хотят говорить со мной на понятном мне языке, но у них не очень получается))) Это как узбеки. Вроде и говорят по-русски, но у тех, кто только приехал в страну и учится говорить, получается как в энимал кроссинге. Пару слов вроде понятные, но лучше бы жестами объяснил))))
I think one of the best and most effective examples of "beep speech" (or bebebese as Animal Crossing calls it) is how its used in Undertale. Fans and cosplayers were able to unanimously decide how each main character sounded based solely on the timbre of the speech sound (for example, Papyrus text speech and personality resulted in everyone choosing 'Skeletor' as a basis for his voice in regular speech.)
This is correct. You can hear the individual letter sounds when you type something on the in-game keyboard. They just take those and play them really fast. This is why they can kinda pronounce real words sometimes.
10:30 It sounds to me that prior Animalese English localization was pronounced with an English voice bank, but the one in New Horizons sounds like it is using Japanese katakana and Japanese voice bank to mimic English words. Using the same voice bank technology license may decrease localization costs. Because the alphabets work differently, there are some odd pronunciations. "I" in English works because it is pronounced the same as アイ (ai), but the "ct" in "Direct" cannot be replicated accurately in katakana. Instead, it may sound like ダイレクト (Dairekuto) since Japanese uses coupled sounds instead of individual vowels and consanants as English does. Oddly, this Animalese sounds like it is using the "-u" variation for consanants where normally you would put the "-o" variation, so "Dairekuto" becomes "Dairekutu." It's not really how you should write the katakana, but the application seems consistent enough to be recognizable.
I've never played Animal Crossing, but I'm a PhD student working on improving prosody in speech synthesis, so it's really cool to see these topics pop up on Polygon. It's also interesting to track how this compares to the history of "normal" speech synthesis--Animalese seems to be pulling heavily on a form of synthesis that's 30 years old or so, so it's almost more indicative of old school video games than actual attempts to replicate (and then distort) speech. It will also be interesting to see how/if video games use speech synthesis going forward, since we've made really rapid progress in the past five years, and the very best models are nearing human performance on certain passages. (It's still pretty bad at replicating emotion, though, so the robots have not yet replaced us.)
I dont know if this interests you but something that wasnt mentioned in the video is that AC-NL uses synthetized voices in other languages, i believe it uses a text-to-speech function (you can kind of hear it when you're writing a letter) but since anglo-saxon pronunciation relies upon context more so than latin languages they might be different
Can I just take a second to acknowledge that Jenna's presentation skills are just mad good, like, better than the vast majority of people doing videos on their own channels full time? OK I'm done. Would seriously love to see more frequent videos with Jenna in them though!
It also does this when someone says “Thanks” or “hey” or “Good evening, Mayor -persons name here-!” My name is easy to pick up with animalese so it still sounds fairly like some little girl saying my name when Isabelle greets me.
What's your favorite example of beep speech?
Beep Beep Beep, Beep Beep Beep. But, Beep Beep Bop is good too, not as good, but good. But I hate bloop bob beep. It's just anoying.
SANS UNDERTALE
Shovel knight!
Big Chungus for the PS4.
Flare0080 Im actually more of big Chungus for the Xbox guy, cuz I like the original version.
K.K sliders voice being slowed down makes me feel weirdly uncomfortable
Ikr, it was kinda creepy in a weird way
@@psychomanatee3459 demon kk slider
K.K. Slidin' into your dms like a creep
@@kazmakazii LOL
Time mark?
I’m surprised nobody mentioned that time Brian David Gilbert spoke in perfect Animalese.
@@juliajolina I need to know too
TELL US PLEASE
@@micheleposticcio5768 twitter.com/karenyhan/status/1186068064716103680 Here it is.
if we reveal it the consequences will be terrible
Here it is! instagram.com/p/B34NqSpD1xb/?
If you ever going to write a paper for this, please call it pseudophonetics. It's more sciency that way.
Edit: Wow 14k likes, this is more internet cred than i would ever imagine.
Psudeolinguisticphoneticismisms
Genius.
Lowell Jeff sounds so *professional*
Get a good tyein
Im sorry
me: *types number "0" in animal crossing*
My console: "Zedo"
me: :)
Hearing the little sounds as you type is my biggest source of seratonin. If only my phone could make those little noises
:D
Lina Awny what is that
I love the way it says 0
Lol
When I was a kid and played The Sims, I thought they were speaking english (i'm portuguese)
It sounds very much like North American English, being made in the USA.
I can see how you’d think that 😂 lmaooo im weak
Alexandra Matias IMAGINE IF THATS HOW WE TALKED HAHAHAHA
Me too! I'm French and as a kid I'd speak like that whenever I pretended to speak English.
@@irrationalfearofpinworms Zimba do da par la. (I'd freaking DIE-)
10:06 I never played animal crossing, and straight up thought he pulled a gun lmao.
💀💀💀💀
Dude me too
Batabii The part that sticks out of his hand resembles a pistol
Batabii Yes it does
Batabii calm down
I always thought that "beep speech" was mimicking the sound of words being typed out not a representation of the character's voice.
yes i'm also confused by that interpretation
it's both
サラ if it was just words being typed it wouldn’t be different pitches depending on who’s talking I think...
I think it started out as a way, like they said, to mimic listening while reading the text so you aren't bombarded with a ton of words and it feels more like you're listening to something while you read it. From there, video game developers interpreted it more as voices and (like Jeanne said) used different pitches depending on who is talking to represent that it is supposed to be the character's voice. From there, it's become what they mainly discussed, which is the Animal Crossing languages. Pretty cool stuff!
It sort of is? She greatly oversimplifies it here, but I think the gist is less “beeping is meant to represent speech in a primitive way” and more “the auditorial feedback gives the illusion of being spoken to.” It’s not meant to sound like speech, but the audio makes it feel like you’re listening rather than reading.
I've noticed that when they have you type in Animal Crossing: New Horizon you can hear a little voice saying each letter you press. Didn't know they did something similar to the speech.
and in new leaff :)
like when you are writing letters, naming your town, writing names and such :)
Same thing in Wild World, most likely in City Folk too.
The more I think about it and watch this video, the more convinced I am that it's all just Vocaloid. It would explain why the speech sounds like English, but with a Japanese accent.
Laura Schantz I think your onto something
You can hear it more clearly in the original animal crossing! Every single letter and number you can perfectly hear.
"Another strategy was to use vocal grunts, like sighs.. and yells.. and other non-language forms of communication."
*"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH"*
Ah yes, screaming. The most-powerful language of all.
RedYoshikira That’s how Screaming Quagsire came to be
A scream is a scream in any language
*HYAAAGH!*
It's wednesday my dudes
Simple phrases like “Jolly Good” from Blathers and “Thank You” from Timmy and Tommy are the easiest to listen to.
Or hearing The Dodo guy in the airport saying "Hello" or "Hey" is the easiest to hear
I agree
Tom Nook saying “Hello, hello!” also sounds very similar to the text
And Sable saying “Oh you need to use the fitting room?”
(well at least the beginning part)
And don't forget Tom's "Good, good, good!"
This is so interesting! And "bebebese" is the cutest phrase I've ever heard
IT'S SO CUTE
bebebebebebebebebebebebese
It's cuter now.
It has more letters.
*term
(sorry)
@@MisterAppleEsq it's somehow less cute with that much repetition but maybe it's just me.
@@thegreensunsetgroup2501 Okay but imagine an Animal Crossing character saying it
this was fascinating. and i also thought that animal crossing creature pulled a gun hahaha
E
omg we love legends supporting legends
“Animal Crossing Creature*
Duude, I love your music.
Good that I’m not the only one...😂
Ok this seems like a good a place as any to address the fact that there are, in fact, TWO known languages in the sims: Simlish, and Scots. Sims can clearly be heard singing "Auld Lang Syne" at new years, entirely in simlish EXCEPT for the titular line of the song, implying the existence of a history of spoken Scots at some point in the linguistic timeline of the sims that pervaded simlish in much the way it did english
Oh dip! I never let my Sims have a new years party because of the bugginess of Father Time and Toddler New Year
I might have to try it now!
Simlish also has quite a few words borrowed from slavic languages which is unfortunate because a lot of them are swear words
Viktor Chmiel what do you mean? Thats great lol
They also completely revamped the language in the Sims Medieval and made Old Simlish. It sounds very different and they made it closer to languages such as French
can bdg get on this
I could swear I remember Tom Nook saying “Yes yes” in wild world.
Edit: To clarify, he says “Yes yes” aloud in Animalese-English. But she says it’s the same as the Japanese version.
He does in New Horizons too!!! For real. It is impossible that it's a coincidence
spell 'y e s' out loud faster than humanly possible, through a walkie talkie, through a phone from the 90s, through a grocery store intercom. it's gonna sound like you just said 'yes' lol
CrazyPangolinLady It’s cause of the way animalese works making certain words sound like words. (Especially words like “Yo” and “So”)
Blathers too
IIRC the English version pronounces each letter as it comes up, so certain words would sound like they way they should due to the similar phonetics.
Anyone who’s played an animal crossing game has realized that the “language” was just reciting each letter in each sentence. It’s very easily recognizable when you type up a piece of mail. This is due to the fact that every letter you type, a voice will repeat it, and from then on you realize that whatever sentence said in game in the animal language were simply reciting letters.
Nedekrug exactly this
I don't think so when I talk to balthers I can hear him saying and same with Tom nook I can hear him saying yes yes and same with the other animals that live in my town
@@kennyizEmo Seriously? What do you think Y, E, and S sound like when played together.
Yes!
Sam Pearman bro I get the point you are trying to make, but the name calling was unnecessary and kinda rude
The japanese version is just the actual japanese text being spoken but sped up to crackhead levels
Yea that sounds about right
same as the english version
@@motomatt5040 Thats actually incorrect theres videos of them slowing down the english version and its gibberish with certain english key words. And I myself have played it for years both JP and EG ver
@@vvv____ incorrect. Refer to my previous comment. Unless they changed it in new horizons its gebberish with certain english words
@@motomatt5040 It's budderten to you,sir.
I always thought "beep speech" was ment to represent the clickity-clacking of typing on a keyboard or typewriter, rather than trying to mimic speech at all.
dude same
Same!
Me too!
Dude I just bought a typewriter (1980 Royal Academy) and I can't hear it without thinking about how it reminds me of characters talking in video games, especially since there is a pause between words.
same
when you type, you can hear the cute little “o, e, t,” with any letter honestly
ou, i, tee
Not sure about English because of phonetics and stuff but you can really hear some full sentences sometimes in Spanish, it's pretty cool
@@katwaii5627 same in french
@@tiphjyi5524 that's nice! I've always liked how French sounds but know nothing about it's phonetics
@@katwaii5627 spanish and french sound similar at some point
this video is really speaking my language
hey....
*rimshot*
BUH DUM TSSSSSSSH
I noticed this when I bought the English version (I watch Japanese let's players), and the characters sounded different. It's really strange that a game where no one actually speaks English is still technically dubbed into English.
they speak clear english you can hear them clearly, each word
@@chanslaptop0 did you even watch the video ?
@@michamicha1433 yeah
Well they made things sound different because in certain languages things sound somewhat different. You know when you try to speak another language and your tongue can't seem to move correctly? Like the sounds you hear in English that you don't hear in other languages don't apply to others. So Nintendo switched it up so each language hears something familiar
Correction: In City Folk and Wild World, the voice synthesis was still called Animalese. Bebebese was actually the name given to an alternative voice option that replaced the voice synthesis with normal beep speech. They were given these names so the first letters would align as “Option A” and “Option B”
Now I understand. So that means she made a small mistake, right?
Also in french we call it yogurt for some reason!
Antonio Aguirre yes. Up until about the halfway point, everything is fine, but her assumption that bebebese replaced animalese throws the rest of the video off
It actually goes all the way back to the Gamecube game, I remember playing Animal Crossing on my Gamecube as a kid and there were options to change the voices the animals used to Animalese (the one most people are familiar with), Bebebese (basically just little blips), or Silent.
yeah I remember looking at the settings in wild world and you can change the language from animalese and bebebese. As soon as she said that in the vid the rest of the info was confusing to me
me: **playing animal crossing**
literally any of my family members: wEeP weEp wHoMp bLop
“So, all you do is catch fish and pay back debt?”
I bet your family is saying that they love you!
“what do you do in this game”
VeryViper Gaming and Vlogs lol
North Wynd33 XD
On the fact that gibberish is depending on the language, that's totally true.
The sims language is not localised as it's supposed to be kind of universal, but when you speak another language, it's really clear that it's based on English.
I'm French and I played the game in French, and it really sounds like gibberish English, not a specific language.
It's also disconcerting as a non-American English speaker. Simlish is really obviously American sounding, and it kinda breaks my immersion.
Accent américains oui, mais les mots sont fortement inspiré du Français, du Hongrois et de plusieurs autres langues. Y'a des documentaires ultra intéressant sur le simlish déjà sur youtube.
I only speak English and it was super obvious that it was English based gibberish to me too, not even english, American English specifically. Actually, I'd go as far as to say west coast American English.
Maybe not English but germanic sounding? I’m swedish and I remember hearing words that sounded swedish, rather than english. French isn’t in the germanic languages group so if you only know english from that group maybe simlish more easily sounds like english?
Sabont Magont I‘m German and it is definitely based on American English
10:07 Oh my God for a moment I thought Gulliver pulled out a gun on the player!
Same
“As long as my communicator works again, everything will be alright!”
**pulls out a frickin gun**
when you refuse to give gulliver his communicator parts back:
Short version that directly answers the question: Linguists find that it's more comforting to whisper sweet nothings similar to your own language
Saved me 14 minutes, thank you 👌
Thanks! This video is waaaaayyyy too long
Thanks👌👍
Short version that misses out on an interesting history lesson.
@@LilChikyChan y'all types are weird.
10:07 for half a second I definitely thought Gulliver was pulling a gun on him
The communicator DOES look like a gun. Thanks for pointing that out.
@@thumpdragfilms no
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT
imgur.com/a/FtNyv5W Dont know why I made this
@@jeroenritmeester73 Nice work, my friend.
I can definitely tell there's English words peppered in whe I'm talking to villagers. Especially when talking to someone like Blathers who says the same thing over and over.
Marevlous becomes "Marvelu!", and Jolly Good becomes "Jolly Goo!"
Also, Blathers is best boy. That is all.
In the original, you could tell when he said "Bleah." It was adorable.
In NH at least, the villagers just say each letter individually speed up. You can tell when you type in the game
AHH omg when he says that disappointed "ah, I see.." when you ask him to tell you bug facts is the CUTEST THING!!!
L haha I it’s so funny when he does that
I can definitely hear Blathers say "Le me see hyar. Hahummmm. Indidu." When I give him a fossil.
I've also noticed my villagers pronounce my name "membocattu" which I thought was so Japanese lmao
I shouldn’t be watching a 14 minute documentary about a video game characters voice.
Correction: you *should* be
Me neither… BUT IT’S SO INTERESTING I CAN’T RESIST
“And other forms of non-language speech” link: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
You mean Jacksepticeye
I KNEW I HEARD REAL WORDS.
Edit- thanks for the gold kind stranger
My brother and I were gonna slow it down and check as a joke...
I wish we had now
Source same
Whale Sharko their voices actually sound really creepy slowed down xD
@Ulala Ingo dude, why?
i always listen and hear that the last vowels sounds are the same as the text
"localized animalese can make you feel more comfortable and at home"
me, having to play the english version every time: _laughs in a language that never gets localized_
Every language with more than 100000000 speakers tends to get a proper localisation.
Just make a lot of children.
Queefling if you don't have enough followers, homemade ones are fine
@@cutecommie lol
Me too, except I play animal crossing in japanese this time as the switch have the japanese language
What language do you speak natively lmao
I actually lose the ability to distinguish language when listening to music.
I literally cannot hear english when people sing, nor can I learn lyrics by listening.
I looked this up & it was surprisingly more common than I expected.
Lieutenant BaconWaffles yOOO I CAN UNDERSTAND SOME THINGS IF I LISTEN ENOUGH BUT I CONSTANTLY HAVE TO LOOK UP THE LYRICS I’m glad I’m not the only one!!!
I always seem to learn majority of lyrics of a song after listening to it once lol after a few listens I can understand almost all lines and sing along.
Only exception is rapping. I cannot for the life of me understand a single thing people sing if they’re rapping.
Lieutenant BaconWaffles wait omg what...i thought that everyone was like that
Hey, me too!
I used to feel this way when watching movies without subtitles sometimes.
Honestly I thought Animalese was a synthesizer spelling the words really fast, like the door chimes in acnl. This makes more sense though.
same lol, since the scrips are already translated in spanish, french, german, russian, korean, etc it would make sense to run them through synthesizers as well
i thought it was comfirmed as that b/c when you type letters there’s a female (?) animal spelling it out and if i listened hard enough, it sounded like they were spelling
Alice Sadler That's why I thought it too, the animals fooled us
It is. This video is factually wrong.
Yeah. I swear I can hear some words!
I can actually speak the English version. It's a special talent of mine.
Me too.
Flexing on peasants
brian david gilbert? is that you?
Please record it
so can brian david gilbert, he did it in a video on instagram
Bebebese and animalese are two different Animal Crossing “languages”. In Wild World, you could choose your settings to be one or the other. Bebebese is a more standard, bubbly-sounding “beep speech”
It's also present in City folk, but you had to directly change it from the phone rather than the menu.
First instance of it was in the GameCube version. Maybe even the N64 Animal Forest, too, but we’ll never know because no one played that one.
You know what, be a doll and spare the lecture.
@@natalie-cu3to be a doll and get out if something doesn't interest you, instead of being rude
Kino ..no I was quoting beetlejuice the musical, since this person has characters from the musical as their profile picture. The name of this person is the start of a section of the song where Lydia says ‘Beetlejuice, beetlejuice be a doll and spare the lecture.’ So I was simply quoting. Sorry for any.. pain I may have caused towards you?
Interesting. I never thought of beeps as speech in old games. I assumed they were just a sound effect for typing.
Yea
Same actually
I'm a linguist and science communicator and I must compliment both the expert and the host on how well made and entertaining this video is!! Great job!!
Hi, I just wanted to say that you are awesome, your job is really important, and people like you are what made me love science! I'm hoping to one day be a science communicator myself!
ooh cool job!!
Well they are incorrect about the information
@@DiamondRocksIt which information in particular? I'm curious now?
DiamondRockStar yeah elaborate
I noticed back in wild world even that when you wrote an in game letter, the game says the name of the letter you are typing. Every letter in animalese is basically pronounced as its name, then sped up to sound natural
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, my villager Rowan LITERALLY says "mango" as his catchphrase, and I can hear it.
Haha i got rowan too!
I can hear Orville say "Hey hey Hey!"
I got frita and has "ewe" as a catchphrase... the damn problem it that me and some friends do the uwu stuff ironically, so whenever her catch phrase appears i cant not ear it
Roman gang rise
Rowan: "MANGO!"
"What is a man?"
"A Jill Sandwich."
Lol
In french, we actually have a noun to describe this kind of "language", that doesn't exist in english:
It's called "yaourt", which literally means yoghurt.
So Tom Nook speaks in yoghurt... see your own metaphor here.
Jacky Daxter wow, could you tell me more about yaour?
Would that include Beaker's language from The Muppets; or nonsense languages like those used in animated series like Aardman's Pingu, and the Teletubbies?
@@BadWebDiver not really, whereas Beaker just says "mememe" or the Aarman's Pingu makes just sounds like onomatopoeia, talking in yaourt is meant to simulate something that could be a real language. The best example is the Sims.
As a kid I was actually wondering for years what languages they were using until I knew the truth ^^.
@@mudz2d397 I discovered that during the 1960's there was a jazz singing style called " scat ". Whereas Scat has a musical purpose, yaourt is meant to simulate a regular conversation.
I don't think that the people who created that jazz thing were thinking about the french notion of yaourt language, but it's interesting to compare the two. I put you a link below of scat singing example:
th-cam.com/video/PbL9vr4Q2LU/w-d-xo.html
@@mudz2d397 It can also be used to describe when someone sings a song but doesen't remember the lyrics, they sing Yaourt
10:06 I straight up thought Gulliver pulled a gun on him!
Me too 😂
It's easy to mistake any long dark object being pulled out of the waist for a gun
Gulliver.
Topsyturvy10 autocorrect
Same.
In the french version of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, without looking at the screen and simply hearing the characters, i can recognize what they are saying most of the time...
Okay, I knew that the animalese was localized, but here’s a weird thing: I don’t think they localized the speech on the radio. I clearly hear things like “konbanwa” and “ogenki desu ka” from the radio in my character’s house.
Simple, the radio is tuned into a japanese radio station.
You're character is canonically a weeb
BooMan Next up, the meaning of life
A bunch of the songs they play on the radio in New Horizon are songs that were used in the GameCube version. Which I'm assuming are the same songs used in the N64 Japanese version.
@@masonsaccount I personally like Forest Life cause it's so nostalgic. I use to have a kid's room in the old game and had the Ska song cause it was so fun.
BooMan morioh cho radiooo
I’m english, and simlish sounds really american to me.
Sammit if u play sims medieval they sound english
@@r0xyepis0de4 this reads like a joke but I have a feeling you're serious
It's most likely because the voice actors are American and they all have an American accent. I'm a Spaniard majoring in English and from my point of view (a non native speaker who invests a lot of time in English) they also sound too obviously American to me.
@@sfdgdrgdvxff dude are you kidding me? nah that's 100% english
I believe that’s probably because the game was made by Americans. Lots of stuff in the game is also very American, like the way their schools works and stuff. The game seems to be almost set in a slightly altered version of America.
Just a clarification: the speeding up isn’t the main thing ruining the English prosody in animalese, it’s mostly that the synthesized voice is almost entirely monotone, and (at least within a phrase) has no emphasis. Every syllable recurved the same pitch and stress, whereas in English (and almost all other languages) those things differ greatly and are vital to understanding the language. Those are the real elements of prosody that animalese purposely butchers.
Japanese is not as tonally diverse as English(from my understanding) so maybe Japanese animalese sounds even more similar to real speech than English.
I'm willing to bet they're just using the Japanese voice synthesizer and inputting English phonetically into it (hence the english "I" being pronounced as "ai"), so the pronounciation is heavily Japanese-accented which is why it's not really legible sped up and sounds weird slowed down.
@@noodletribunal9793 I was thinking that as well, but I didn't feel as confident enough about that memory as I did about the emphasis one XD Thanks!
@@noodletribunal9793 hey there noodle tribunal, I'm playing どうぶつの森 in Japanese and to me although the gibberish being said is very close to the Japanese texts it feels like they jump over some of the words or maybe replace them with nonsense. But perhaps that's just because it's going so fast. But in this video, there was a slowed down Japanese text and talk which confirmed my theory that some of the words are removed or replaced with gibberish
@@mariushagelskjr5452 oh, yea, sure. it's gibberish! but the Japanese version's gibberish is closer to identifyable Japanese than the English is to identifyable English, you know?
i think this because not only is Japanese relatively monotone, but because it doesn't contain complicated multi-part sounds that English does. it's all some variation on "A I U E O". no dipthongs or whatever those things are called lol.
i didn't mean to say that they just straight up used Japanese (ヽ´ω`)
10:05 It's pretty noticable in Russian version of New Horizons. Sometimes it sounds like my villagers actually say some phrases! Especially "Что? Это мне?" when you give them something.
What does that mean
Skilled Squid965 I speak a certain Slavic language, it means “What? For me?”
Therapist: Slowed down K.K. isn't real, it can't hurt you.
Slowed down K.K.: 6:49
Playing animal crossing in Spanish, I kinda understand what they’re saying mostly because they say words one phoneme at a time and vowels are very distinct
Same in Russian!
It's really cute when you start to recognize when the villagers say your name
also bc spanish speakers already talk as fast as animalese lmao
Red truuuuuu
yeah i play in french and i do hear what they say (kinda)
Auralboros? At this time of year? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your game? ...May I see it?
Flare0080 mm, no.
Ouroboros, not auralboris or Aurora Borealis
It’s just the Northern Lights, mother.
“Aural Boris”
No. You haven't finished your steamed hams.
10:07 I thought he pulled up a gun like ‘I ain’t taking no more shit of yours’
Sometimes when I talk to blathers it sounds like a real person, just sped up
yes same! especially at the end of his sentences
Meanwhile, pokemon sword and shield: *silence*
Sad piers noises
Yeah I swear they told me to choose what language voices would be in but I don't remember hearing any voices.
Because Pokemon stagnated back in gen4
Evanor Gen 5 was good and ORAS was good in Gen 6 but for the most part, it really has stalled out
@@razrv3lc sure they were entertaining, but they didnt do anything groundbreakingly different fron the prior gems apart from graphical updates
I do have to raise a point with Symphony of the Night; “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!” Is actually a quote from a philosopher whose name escapes me. And besides, it’s a good line!
Yeah, how did they use this clip and not anything from Zero Wing?
I'm pretty sure it's referencing how laughable the voice acting is
André Malraux
@@Luigi64 they used it as a reference to troubled localization.
@Kylis yes, in this case the acting wasn’t localized well. It doesn’t just mean language, it also means acting tone.
Me when the animal crossing characters talk:
*random robot sound*
During one cut scene in new horizons, Tom nook says "Timmy, Tommy, ..."
And I swear it's in plain English. No attempt to make it not sound like the actual words was made.
I forget what he said after that, but it also sounded pretty close to real words. Just sped up a lot.
I think they added some English or something. There's some words that you can clearly understand
I was naming a design a while ago and whenever I clicked a letter (obviously to name my design) I swear I heard the animals saying the letters in English!!!
after taking japanese language class in high school and forgetting a huge chunk of what I learned, then spending the past 4 years of my life binging anime to catch up on my inescapable weebness, I can't help but notice this with common wasei-eigo phrases like 'number 1'
I've always heard the letters being spoken when I type, but I also always thought I was losing my mind
Talk to Blathers and leave and he very clearly says "jolly good". He and Nook are easy to understand
I’ve actually been studying this “language” personally for a personal project of mine recently, so this really helps out a lot.
This is really interesting.
I'm so curious about your project
Yeah what is it..
inSein
Basically I’m using a program to make a synthesized voice that can sing.
I’ve been studying K.K. songs mostly and some fan made K.K. song covers.
Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to make my voice sound more ‘animal crossing’ since I’ll be recording it myself.
Currently in the works is also a Simlish synthesized singer but cracking that language is a bit more difficult.
It’s super exciting and fun though!
AlexAndCasper do you plan on making a video on this? I’m very intrigued..
Imagine being that bored, lol.
10:08 I thought Gulliver pulled a gun on the player.
For Gulliver's neutral special he wields a GUN.
Oh shoot it isn't a gun? Lol
Lol
*_gimme your bells_*
@@IdiotToonz No, YOU *_g i m m e y o u r B e l l s._*
When we type it’s bebebese and when the animals talk its animalese
“What is a man?” is a mistranslation??? Damn I thought it was just good writing.
The what is a man speech is actually from something else that someone wrote. I don't remember the author's name though.
I don't know why it's divisive at all, sure it's hammy, but they're having a great time and it's iconic
this entire dialogue is one huge mistranslation
"what is a man, a miserable little pile of secrets" is just a cool quote from some french author iirc, that the localization dude decided to add
Not a mistranslation, just an unbelievably hammy read.
japanese: boring generic power vs friendship shit
english: melancholic dracula has a minor existential crisis and tells belmont to sod off
when you're typing something out, the little sfx that play are the sounds of whatever letter you're typing! ah, bee, cee etc.
Yes! I always figured it sounded like japanese in the japanese version (あ, い, う, え, お, etc.)
So this video was a helpful add on!
Whenever ac gives me the option to type something i always type
urapp
egg egg egg egg you are a peepee
The “L” sounds like “R”
Yesss I love that noise
In the Spanish version you can tell they're talking sped up Spanish, they ARE speaking the words they're saying
Huh, really?? Like, I've never heard that, played the Gamecube one and Wild World in spanish, then the others in english. I swear they sound the same.
really? I think it's a mix in some words, like Spanglish xD
Same in italian
10:08 For a second I thought Gulliver pulled out dat stick on him, lmao
LMAO DAT STICK 🤣
it’s gun not stick
@@whyareyourunninga6782 Stick is slang for gun
im pretty sure that the “english” sounds are put through japan’s syllabic system before being further garbled. that’s why some vowels are completely different. it’s as if you asked google translate to read english through a japanese voice and then sped it up. it would read certain vowels based on japan’s rules but for english words
Indeed; at 10:27 you can hear Nook open with "gu-ri-i-tei-n-gu-zu".
Yeah I always figured it was like how vocaloids work where it's English characters being said by a Japanese voice synthesizer
that's exactly how it works, the video's incorrect
It's a voice synthesizer that they feed the script to.
It wasn't "dubbed," it was fed the English script.
Leave it to Polygon to make a video proclaiming an answer to their own question, admit they don't have it, then contact an expert who wouldn't know how those things were handled in the video game space anyway, but still use their input to formulate their own answer to the question they originally claimed to have answered in the clickbait title.
All in a week's well-paid work, only at Polygon!*
*and Kotaku.
😭 that’s so cute
Before I watch this: my guess was always that they made the sounds of each letter and sometimes that works out to actually sound like the words.
Kimberly same, that’s what it sounds like to me.
That’s what it is actually it’s not nonsense
Same! I'm pretty sure they do that for user-inputted stuff, because one of my characters always sounded like "App-leh".
Syllables put into a blender then stitched together
I think that’s what it does for stuff like your name!
Everyone's talking about Sans but no one's talking about how Sans is literally Patrick Star's voice chopped up
Wait fr?
@@toastarkat yep it genuinely is a sample from Patrick star!
Maybe it’s the way you’re dressed.
Raphael Sanchez can you use a different Patrick clip for the same results?
@@SpecSwamp No, because Smash Ultimate.
I kinda knew they were speaking English since I named my character "Moo Moo" and everytime the animals use the name in their dialogue, I always hear "Momo"
Oh my god that is so creepy 😳
They always pronounce my name like "Anya". They are just missing the 't'.
same, my name is “bee” in the game and whenever they say it, the word is really clear
@@josefujosta "pee"
That’s so awesome
Animalese is my favorite. Its the only beep speech I don't find to be annoying.
Yeah.. It's sounds more cute
I'm always able to understand a lot of the words in animal crossing.
I can clearly hear words like I, Yes, Oh.
Same.
i can only understand my name
yea its like really fast english
Sure lmao
I love that the coined term is "Bebebese".
this is actually incorrect because bebebese is the sound of a regular text beep use for whispering and humans, and not the sounds that WW and CF used, which it still called animalese. But animalese in CF and WW was still different as she claims.
Zachary Coleman bebebese was in CF but it wasn’t the main option. You could also choose bebebese.
@@cakiepop2038 In AC GC (english) Bebese was just a generic tapping sound replacing the voice
Kryptnyt ik. I was just saying that you can also use animalese in CF. The main option isn’t bebebese.
Yeah... undertale did the same. But with mouth noises like “ehh” and “err”
ehh and err remind me of the box (ee er)
Bruh I thought I was crazy for hearing actual words when the AC characters were speaking
At 10:08 I thought Gulliver pulled out a gun and I was like WOAH THERE
A lot of people think that, lol
Oh yeah, now that I look at it it's just a flatter device rotated at a _very_ specific angle
😂
Sounds like in New Horizons, they made a synthesized sound for each "letter" of the japanese "alphabet" (people who know japanese can probably figure why I'm using ""). Basically, the english animalese is being pronounced with a japanese accent. I've caught it a couple times during gameplay with really distinct letters like "tsu". I also think they cut out a few letters here and there.
yeah I've heard Tom Nook saying " sankyu"- " thank you" , so I think they are pronouncing English words with a Japanese pronunciation
Also 'l' and 'r' are pronounced the same.
Yes I noticed it sounds like he says “herro herro”
Yes, I noticed this too!
Yes!! Been studying Japanese for two years and I could notice that they were talking as if the sound was in Japanese, pretty interesting! Thanks for the fact my dude
When she slowed down k.k's speech, It was actually kinda scary
The answer is that Japanese animalese is actually a legit speech generator with one sound per syllabe (Japanese writing is based on phonemes). It's relatively understandable at low speed.
But the English etc. languages do not have phoneme-based writing, so the same system could not be re-apllied, and they had to write a separate speech synthesis system, but left it incomplete. It's harder to write speech synthesis for English than for Japanese, but they did a lot of R&D with Tomodachi Collection since then.
I believe based on those resources that they could have legible english animalese in both versions. However at the end they didn't go all the way trough for stylistic purposes probably
It sounds like a curse animal crossing.
That's why is said that no English speaker knows how to pronounce an English word without first hearing somebody else.
@@Lambda_Ovine Wouldnt that be for any language? More like for anything.
@@eathanneal9031 for most languages you can know how a word is pronounced just from the spelling, as words are pronounced how they are spelled - English is a damn lottery though, who would know that threw and through would sound similar but through and thought wouldn't
@@eathanneal9031 not really @Roach DoggJR is right English has some syllables that look the same but are pronounced different like read and the past form read or though and thought. It's just a t added so you just pronounce it like though-t. Well no. Syllables in Japanese for example are always pronounced the same no mater in which word. What you are probably thinking are emphasis, yes sometimes you need to hear a word to get it right but there are usually some grammatical rules or there is a consistency going on. it really depends on the language though
I was just blown away last night depositing bells in the machine and realized that the numbers were "correctly" spoken back to me when I selected one.
Vinya yea and when you type in the game you can kinda hear the letters your pushing
I noticed this too!! Such a cool feature
Or when typing letters it sounds like a foreners accent on pronouncing letters
Wait thats a thing you like, just noticed? I always thought that was a thing that everyone knew
At 0:36 if you close your eyes you can hear both butts AND voice. It's the same thing as the yanny/laurel craze last year.
whoa what the heck
At first I heard voice cause I wasn't looking at the screen then I went back and heard butts
You hear the Butt voice?
Florbz I only heard "voice" after you said that, but even then it was difficult to hear. I still think it sounds like butts.
I heard voice first and became confused because of the butts subtitles 😂
Narrator: *started another explanation*
Narrator's head: ↪️
The Chinese version is actually Chinese. I can confirm that.
Huh, so there's none of this kind of distortion, that's in the English and Japanese version?
@@romajimamulo there prolly still is it just sounds chinese. my german copy is animalese but i can clearly hear the first and least word if i pay attention
@@romajimamulo In some languages, like Japanese, Animalese is way more close to sounding exactly like the actual language due to how the language is structured. In English like languages, each individual letter have many different ways they are pronounced depending on many different factors that are impossible to replicate in fake language, where as in others, each character has a more universal sound resulting in more cohesive sounding Animalese.
@@Whispernyan yeah, I knew that, which is why I was surprised that the Japanese one was still distorted
Spanish too
I’ve played Animal Crossing for years and my most endearing moments from the game came recently and from Animalese. My grandson is 20 months old. He’ll crawl into my lap when I’m playing and the FIRST time he heard Animalese he mimicked it back to the screen perfectly. He has language right now... mommy, daddy, puppy, etc. But his Animalese sounded just like it should..
An even cuter moment... when he saw a standee poster of the characters next to a screen running the upcoming new game a few months ago he shouted out to it... in Animalese. ❤️
I told my son we have to try and grab a video to save for when he grows up. 🤓
I... want to see this. My son is about the same age but has to tackle two languages already, so I don't want to get him tangling with an extra one just for fun.
It rather illustrates the rhythms of language
That’s almost a little scary, lol. I have a niece who’s going to turn 2 in May and because I don’t see her every day (especially now since this COVID crisis) I’m always having to learn a new baby talk she uses or real words that she knows but is still hard to understand by her pronunciation. (Example, she calls Elsa as Sa...lol). I can’t imagine if she also started using Animalese, I probably would be totally lost. 😂
Let him become bilingual in animalese and he shall become unstoppable
Graestra This is a brilliant idea!
in new leaf if you set the villagers greeting to something like "ooooooooo" then they will just say oooooo. so i always thought the voices were just saying each letter individually, then sped up
sometimes i think i can hear tom nook saying my name, but i'm not so sure.
@@user-by6bg5eu6c OH SHIT YOU BETTER GET AWAY FROM THE TOWN THEN!!!
@@cheviot_ yes, immediately
Pat Rick He does definitely say your name! At first I thought I was tripping.
Whenever I hear Stu, a lazy bull who I may have a crush on, says his initial phrase “mroooo”, it’s sounds exactly like how we would say it.
i always thought the beeps were just high pitch-ed typing sounds
Slight error: Bebebese is actually not the name of the default language for City Folk; that’s still called Animalese in game. In the options you can change speech to Bebebese, which is a type of what this video has termed “beep speech”. It’s also what you normally hear when narrative text scrolls, like catching a fish or digging up a fossil.
animalese was also in wild world.
Yes, this. I was irritated when she said older games' Animalese was called Bebebese. If you're going to research a subject, please do it thoroughly!
@@youregonnaneedtothrowsomem2665 Yes! I was waiting for somebody to say this. I think you can change the language by using the phone in the attic? I don't quite remember, but I do know there was that option.
Yeah I played Wild World and their default speech is in Animalese, although you can change to Bebebese too.
Sir Potato Bottom Yes! Until recently I've been playing City Folk and they are indeed speaking animalese. That part of the video really annoyed me because it's just completely wrong!
wait what??? i played a lot of city folk and i remember there being an option (which you accessed by picking up a phone in your house) to change the voices from "animalese" to "bebebese" and i could've sworn that bebebese was beep speech????
wild world too!
It is. For example, when you talk to a snowman, that is always in bebebese. Animalese is the one that sounds like voices and talking.
@@funkytime69 yeah i know, sorry i should've been more specific, i was referring to the fact that this video says "bebebese" is a modified version of animalese that features in city folk, when in fact it's not a synthesised voice at all
No you're exactly right! Bebebese is exactly what it sounds like! Soft beeps. The video misunderstood the term somehow.
Yeah, the video is wrong.
Don't know about previous games, but Animal Crossing New Horizons in Russian sounds really close to Russian speech too. I was really amused to hear Nook say "Да-да!" (Yes-yes)
In Spanish "yes-yes" is si-si and it sounds "esei-esei", clearly they say every single letter separate but fast to make a word
well da-da has got to be distinctive, it's a really simple word
И это "угу-угу" из того же разряда)
@@sanyokk8024 а как же "ЗАМЕЧАТЕЛЬНО!" от Блезерса?
Вообще, как единственный и немой человек на острове, могу предположить, что животные просто хотят говорить со мной на понятном мне языке, но у них не очень получается)))
Это как узбеки. Вроде и говорят по-русски, но у тех, кто только приехал в страну и учится говорить, получается как в энимал кроссинге. Пару слов вроде понятные, но лучше бы жестами объяснил))))
I think one of the best and most effective examples of "beep speech" (or bebebese as Animal Crossing calls it) is how its used in Undertale. Fans and cosplayers were able to unanimously decide how each main character sounded based solely on the timbre of the speech sound (for example, Papyrus text speech and personality resulted in everyone choosing 'Skeletor' as a basis for his voice in regular speech.)
I believe the animals say each letter or character individually, very fast. This is why some words can kind of be made out in English Animalese.
This is correct. You can hear the individual letter sounds when you type something on the in-game keyboard. They just take those and play them really fast. This is why they can kinda pronounce real words sometimes.
Was expecting Sans to show up in the beep speech section
Same here
Uhuhuhuhuh uhuhuhuhuh uhuhuhuhuhh
"A phrase I'd hate to say out loud, but have to respect the usefulness of"
This changed me
10:30 It sounds to me that prior Animalese English localization was pronounced with an English voice bank, but the one in New Horizons sounds like it is using Japanese katakana and Japanese voice bank to mimic English words. Using the same voice bank technology license may decrease localization costs. Because the alphabets work differently, there are some odd pronunciations.
"I" in English works because it is pronounced the same as アイ (ai), but the "ct" in "Direct" cannot be replicated accurately in katakana. Instead, it may sound like ダイレクト (Dairekuto) since Japanese uses coupled sounds instead of individual vowels and consanants as English does.
Oddly, this Animalese sounds like it is using the "-u" variation for consanants where normally you would put the "-o" variation, so "Dairekuto" becomes "Dairekutu." It's not really how you should write the katakana, but the application seems consistent enough to be recognizable.
I've never played Animal Crossing, but I'm a PhD student working on improving prosody in speech synthesis, so it's really cool to see these topics pop up on Polygon. It's also interesting to track how this compares to the history of "normal" speech synthesis--Animalese seems to be pulling heavily on a form of synthesis that's 30 years old or so, so it's almost more indicative of old school video games than actual attempts to replicate (and then distort) speech. It will also be interesting to see how/if video games use speech synthesis going forward, since we've made really rapid progress in the past five years, and the very best models are nearing human performance on certain passages. (It's still pretty bad at replicating emotion, though, so the robots have not yet replaced us.)
Thanks for sharing, this is so cool! Good luck with your research :)
I dont know if this interests you but something that wasnt mentioned in the video is that AC-NL uses synthetized voices in other languages, i believe it uses a text-to-speech function (you can kind of hear it when you're writing a letter) but since anglo-saxon pronunciation relies upon context more so than latin languages they might be different
Yeah when you type in animal crossing new horizons you can hear the letters being said.
this has been true since wild world!
i remember in NL i heard my villagers say my name-
@@noahsabadish3812 actually, its been through since the very beginning, since AC64/ACGC
Also when you input numbers in the ABM.
Can I just take a second to acknowledge that Jenna's presentation skills are just mad good, like, better than the vast majority of people doing videos on their own channels full time?
OK I'm done. Would seriously love to see more frequent videos with Jenna in them though!
Adam Fontenot hell yeah! I’m a fan of Jenna
Yeah! she seems to enjoy and feel very passionate on the things she talks about
5:10
The editor messed up. This is from the remake, twin snakes, on the GameCube.
I never thought I would hear someone say, “regionally accessible gibberish.”
I first realized they spoke letters when Timmy said "yes yes!"
I take it you didn't listen to K.K. Slider on Saturday nights in the original. He has four clear words. "Hold me quick now"
@@AsmodeusDHare didn't have the original
It also does this when someone says “Thanks” or “hey” or “Good evening, Mayor -persons name here-!” My name is easy to pick up with animalese so it still sounds fairly like some little girl saying my name when Isabelle greets me.
10:08 Holy crap I thought Gulliver pulled out a gun at first lol
Glad I wasn't the only one that thought this. cheers
Tell me how the fuck she did that "Hey, listen!" So perfectly