If I don't forget any, only this remains undeciphered:
- Eya air erracter/Iya er errəftah (Battle Command, only said by military units)
While these remain dubious:
- Ee-you-refer/Aerifear (Agreeing): I don't know Egyptian, but based on bad pronunciation I would have guessed "a w rfr"... then, I've found this hypothesis online: "iw rf ir", supposedly meaning "thus, do". Can you confirm?
- Entiyoh/Antioh/Intoyou (Expressing Readiness): these could actually be the same as "initu" ("in.i tw"?), since the characters who say that don't say "initu", and "entioh" is the male villager equivalent of female villager's "initu"). Interestingly, the Pharaoh says "antioh?" to express readiness and "entiyyoh!" when attacking. If it weren't for that, I would have been 100% sure that "antioh" and "entiyyoh" were the same phrase (considering bad pronunciation).
- Attyou (Battle Command) = the same as "eye-ah ah-tchew" without the "eye-ah" part?
For the sake of archaeoludophonology!
I've also found this interesting piece of information:
Greg "DeathShrimp" Street, one of the designers of Age of Mythology, came up with most of the lines based on what he could "scrape together off the early 2000s internet". If one of the lines sounded "too goofy", they would change it during recording, as they considered entertainment value more important than historical accuracy.
As someone who's made a mod fixing one of the spoken phrases (Chinese villagers' "fishing"), I absolutely love this article. I always wondered what the Egyptian in AoM was based on - and why it sounds nothing like games like Assassin's Creed Origins and maybe a few others. I read somewhere that the devs/voice directors kind of "winged it" on pronunciation with some of the phrases across the languages, but generally for the Greek and Chinese according to native-speaking YouTube commenters they seem to have gotten things correct (if not for the time periods depicted, necessarily).
Thank you! I’m honestly stunned how much effort they put into the Norse and Greek voices, considering no one would really be able to tell. With the Egyptian though, it’s really hard because the correct pronunciation isn’t even agreed on by experts. I think Assassin’s creed has some reconstructed Coptic in it though, which is very impressive
If I don't forget any, only this remains undeciphered:
- Eya air erracter/Iya er errəftah (Battle Command, only said by military units)
While these remain dubious:
- Ee-you-refer/Aerifear (Agreeing): I don't know Egyptian, but based on bad pronunciation I would have guessed "a w rfr"... then, I've found this hypothesis online: "iw rf ir", supposedly meaning "thus, do". Can you confirm?
- Entiyoh/Antioh/Intoyou (Expressing Readiness): these could actually be the same as "initu" ("in.i tw"?), since the characters who say that don't say "initu", and "entioh" is the male villager equivalent of female villager's "initu"). Interestingly, the Pharaoh says "antioh?" to express readiness and "entiyyoh!" when attacking. If it weren't for that, I would have been 100% sure that "antioh" and "entiyyoh" were the same phrase (considering bad pronunciation).
- Attyou (Battle Command) = the same as "eye-ah ah-tchew" without the "eye-ah" part?
For the sake of archaeoludophonology!
I've also found this interesting piece of information:
Greg "DeathShrimp" Street, one of the designers of Age of Mythology, came up with most of the lines based on what he could "scrape together off the early 2000s internet". If one of the lines sounded "too goofy", they would change it during recording, as they considered entertainment value more important than historical accuracy.
Ah yes I saw that quote from Greg Street. That’s probably why this is so hard hahaha.
And I suppose iw rf ir could be “thus, do”, but the introductory iw is very odd there, as it is a command, and who would say “thus, do” anyway?
Oh and I didn’t think of that, “attyou” is almost definitely the same as “ay-yah att-you”
As someone who's made a mod fixing one of the spoken phrases (Chinese villagers' "fishing"), I absolutely love this article. I always wondered what the Egyptian in AoM was based on - and why it sounds nothing like games like Assassin's Creed Origins and maybe a few others. I read somewhere that the devs/voice directors kind of "winged it" on pronunciation with some of the phrases across the languages, but generally for the Greek and Chinese according to native-speaking YouTube commenters they seem to have gotten things correct (if not for the time periods depicted, necessarily).
Thank you! I’m honestly stunned how much effort they put into the Norse and Greek voices, considering no one would really be able to tell. With the Egyptian though, it’s really hard because the correct pronunciation isn’t even agreed on by experts. I think Assassin’s creed has some reconstructed Coptic in it though, which is very impressive