But yeah it messes with my brain that is working hard to parse English. Even if it was just the timing and intonation, it could definitely be understood that the lines were actually being spoken in some form. And so it sounds like actual nonsense. They'd go insane. Since New Leaf, the player cannot change the setting. His name comes from the archaic exclamation "egad," something that one says in … I thought that was obvious, so I guess my comment wasn’t clear. English phonology is complex. Big sister[1][nb 1] (also known as uchi[nb 2]) villagers are a type of female character introduced in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Animal Crossing’s fake language sounds different in Japanese, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZE5A3DbHDk, https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Language#Bebebese, https://github.com/equalo-official/animalese-generator, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnI_ZLj5ys. I guarantee not a single Japanese player didn't notice this, or otherwise thinks it's pure gibberish. Then it's solely about distinguishing language characteristics and I think the amount of syllables would have an effect in that. Github: https://github.com/equalo-official/animalese-generator, Video Explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnI_ZLj5ys. You can tell right at the beginning when Rover says your name back to you. The big problem for a lot of skills is that the production capacity of a human is not high enough to pay for that fixed cost or just barely profitable enough for the top 10000 humans to have a career in this skill. I'd wager it's more obvious in the Japanese version because Japanese is the exceptional language. Is English your native language? That's the whole point of this system, to provide some fun sounding audio for the lines without having to actually dub them. KK. Writing their own TTS sounds like what Nintendo would do, to be honest. To anyone playing in Japanese or presumably other phonetically consistent languages, it's obviously a sped up, slurred/somewhat mangled version of what the text is saying. One of the franchise's most popular characters, he debuted in the title Animal Crossing, and has appeared in every installment since. You can notice it at the screen where you enter your name at the start of the game. Often what you end up with is MORE people doing job X, Y, and Z, it’s just that they use computers to do it, and have a different skill set. There are only 44 syllables in Japanese (English has about 16,000) and one would probably still notice this in otherwise unintelligible distorted speech. The speaker believes they’re speaking a foreign language, but when you examine the “language” it’s just random phonemes from the speaker’s native language. this is a huge improvement on the old extension and saved me from heartbreak when i realised the old one didn't work any more. I don't know if it would have been prohibitive on the GameCube to have audio of every line (there were a lot), but I wouldn't put it past them to have done so. After noticing it, it's been much easier to hear it happening for all characters. The problem is that English is a phonetically inconsistent language, with a massive number of rules required to even begin to approximate the mapping from text to phonemes (and zillions of exceptions). Its album art features the "wave" sidewalk design of Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, and Frank, an eagle based on the Brazilian yellow-faced parrot, appears as well. I was too young to really know how to google something like that. I think mine does it so much more. If you have an article, a book, movie, song, recipe, product, website, etc., that you would like to see reviewed here, simply submit it for consideration on the contact form below. I can see them making it sound more like Japanese gibberish in Japan. The rules in English are immensely complicated and inconsistent. We haven’t gotten rid of musicians, it’s just that musicians are much more likely to have computers. So this kind of really dumb TTS not intended to be actually intelligible doesn't work at all in English. Even if it's usually difficult to make out, occasionally you should notice it's not totally random, especially when you start playing around with giving the villagers catchphrases. It is just crazy to wrap my head around the amount of effort they put into this game. Especially how incomprehensible most of the dialog still is. The first Banjo was released in 1998, while Dobutsu no Mori (Animal Crossing) for N64 didn't come out until 2001. Interesting! I don't know how. I imagine this is specific to France as I’ve never heard this in Québec... My wife is from New York and has a very difficult time understanding non-US accents. Besides, can you imagine voice actors dubbing this stuff in this kind of voice line by line? Yes it is. Reminds me of a song from 1972 by an Italian comedian. That person might be a traditional modeler working in Blender, or a sculptor in ZBrush, or might be someone with a 3D scanner doing photogrammetry. Japanese is not my native language and I noticed immediately; any native would have too. For one of the characters, bits of the dialog sounded like incoherent Japanese and I could make out some words. Banjo-Kazooie [1] was the first game on the N64 to use what Animal Crossing terms "Animalese/Bebebese" [2], and their intention was never to build a TTS engine. Most TTS software out there will be better at English than any other language despite the more complex phonology. However in that game it always quite interesting listening to the TTS because the script an NPC is reading seems to be a paraphrased from the subtitle (and maybe partially complete gibberish?) (scratch.mit.edu) Nintendo was definitely talking with Rareware at the time and they exchanged ideas and techniques on game engine design, platformer mechanics, etc. I’m curious if it’s a native/non-native issue with parsing or not. The problem is that you have no idea how to write a symphony orchestra. Maybe not as well, but I do remember noticing in the original Animal Crossing that there was some correlation between the sounds and the text. Besides, can you imagine voice actors dubbing this stuff in this kind of voice line by line? The first Banjo was released in 1998, while Dobutsu no Mori (Animal Crossing) for N64 didn't come out until 2001. It is a slow, light jazzy tune that is based on the Brazilian music genre bossa nova, or simply "bossa". > since a "voice" for a speech synthesis engine still requires hiring an actor. If you aren’t convinced, then just look at soundtracks. It did work in English though. It's TTS. The song is called "Prisencolinensinainciusol" which means...well, nothing. So this kind of really dumb TTS not intended to be actually intelligible doesn't work at all in English. Writing their own TTS sounds like what Nintendo would do, to be honest. The tools are changing, but it is still people using the tools. In spite of this, getting a symphonic score is still expensive. Slider. On not all gibberish being created equal: it's been long enough since "What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners" that some people here may have missed have missed this. The rules in English are immensely complicated and inconsistent. To anyone playing in Japanese or presumably other phonetically consistent languages, it's obviously a sped up, slurred/somewhat mangled version of what the text is saying. The clothes shop attendant out front in Kakariko Village actually yells something in Japanese iirc. When I was a kid the only way I could play video games was in 1 week bursts in the form of hollywood video rentals. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;". Interviews from the Rare side admitted this (I'll need to dig up some sources to include here). Spanish is about as phonetically consistent as Japanese. These are different things. This technique predated Animal Crossing, though. I've played it in both Japanese and in English, and while Japanese is more phonetically consistent I don't understand how people could miss it in English either. As a native English speaker (UK), I'll be pedantic. This reminds me of the game killer7, where some NPCs would speak in a partially distorted voice. He always makes ambiguous gibberish sounds when speaking, and he frequently uses phrases such as "criminy," "hullabaloo," etc. I haven't played in a while, but I recall different characters had different sounding accents too. In English it’s a simplistic translation to phonemes as far as I can tell. Slider or K.K., is a fictional character within the Animal Crossing franchise. By using a 3D scanner, you aren’t getting rid of artists, you are just changing how artists do their jobs. They absolutely don't go dubbing around every line for this, that'd be insane. The tools for making 3D models are getting better and easier to use, and as photogrammetry is being used more and more, we see larger teams of modelers, not smaller. Nintendo was definitely talking with Rareware at the time and they exchanged ideas and techniques on game engine design, platformer mechanics, etc. Why would they do that? You can tell right at the beginning when Rover says your name back to you. It would be cool to know what languages have this, as I'm pretty sure not all of them do (Russian doesn't, for example). It's not about the number of possible syllables, it's about the rules to go from text to phonemes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZE5A3DbHDk (Actually a video of the year 2000 sequel, Banjo-Tooie, but this is a better example of the same voice engine using various voices. The distortion effects were presumably added so people overseas wouldn't notice how jarring it is. Fun fact: In the Japanese version it's literally just mac TTS voices with machine translated English. I'd wager it's more obvious in the Japanese version because Japanese is the exceptional language. Fun fact: In the Japanese version it's literally just mac TTS voices with machine translated English. It’s expensive enough that TV shows (with sizable budgets) often skip out on the symphonic score and do something cheaper. Animalese: Assist Trophies (English) Character Sounds: Common Sounds: Falcon Flyer: Items: Narrator: Narrator (French) Narrator (German) Narrator (Italian) Narrator (Spanish) Pokémon (English) Stage Sounds: System Sounds: Wiimote Character Selections ), [2] https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Language#Bebebese. A thread on jibberish video game languages isn’t complete without a mention of Simlish. Review This has 18 Contributors who are constantly writing reviews on a variety of topics. This exact thing is called "washawasheo" or "washawashear" in (Mexican) Spanish. When we picked up animal crossing for GameCube and I heard animalese, I thought my disc was messed up and went back to swap it out. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZE5A3DbHDk (Actually a video of the year 2000 sequel, Banjo-Tooie, but this is a better example of the same voice engine using various voices. That's also how Americans sound to me. So this kind of really dumb TTS not intended to be actually intelligible doesn't work at all in English. I think there’s a trap that people fall into, thinking that technology is just around the corner that will get rid of job X, Y, or Z.