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This line is probably the most unforgettable line uttered in a Final Fantasy game. Why is that line so memorable? Is it the strange context the line comes from? Is it the person uttering the line? (Kefka, who gets so many good lines)

Personally, the sight of Kefka uttering that line while hopping up and down and shaking his fist is funny as hell, edging out "spoony bard" as the weirdest and funniest line in the entire series.

Who's idea was that? What's the original Japanese translation?

What do you think?

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"So, are you a fan of the Fett?"

"Nah, I'm more of a Star Wars guy."

It's Woolsey's.

I do not remember ever thinking it stood out much.

The line that makes me laugh is one of Celes'.

The Impresario's all "you can't ruin the performance" and she's like, "Come on!!"

D:(

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X is blue.

This provides some interesting background and comparison to the original Japanese: Son of a Submariner! Kefka’s Famous Line in Detail.

One of my favorite Woolseyisms is from Chrono Trigger, when he called Cryus' soldiers in Guardia Castle the "Knight of the Square Table." That's entirely his own invention, it doesn't exist at all in the Japanese. But the pun works so well - the company name is Square, the table the knights meet at is actually square shaped. I thought it was hysterical and didn't like that they changed it for the DS translation.

"You spoony bard!" is not, contrary to popular belief, a Woolseyism. That was the Japanese translation team, and it was their botched translation of FF4 that led to Woolsey's eventual hiring. It's definitely the most enduring of the oddly translated Final Fantasy lines. Things like "Son of a submariner!" and "Knights of the Square Table" have been changed in newer translations, but "You spoony bard!" remains.

I was personally saddened that they replaced that line in the Advance translation. It's just so From Out of Left Field.

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Greetings! First post to these forums, and, sadly, it's a bit long. Your forgiveness is humbly begged in advance.

The link MetroidMorphBall posted does a great job of explaining, but for whatever it's worth, I'd like to add a bit.

Not sure how the forum handles Japanese text (I hereby declare my noobish status), so if you see some gibberish, that's what you're missing. I'll also romanize the text.

Kefka's first line is

ヒーーー　くっそー！ (Hii~~~ Kusso~!)

The "hii~~~" bit is just an infuriated squeal or a shriek. It's in katakana, which suggests to us it's onomatopoeia (a sound word). So this is angry Kefka noise.

くっそ (kusso) is something of a variant of くそ (kuso). Doubling down on the consonant sort of...intensifies it, and, at least in my minimal experience, drops the exclamation down a register partway. That is to say that it's somewhat more direct and more rude.

Kuso, properly, is feces, and has its very own kanji to that effect (糞). Used as an invective, as the linked article suggests, it can range in meaning from something like "darn it!" all the way up to an F-bomb, depending on context. Here, I'd put it closer to the F-bomb than not, but not quite that intense.

My rationale has to do with what follows:

このかりは必ず返しますよ！ (Kono kari wa kanarazu kaeshimasu yo!)

かり (kari) could mean one of several things since we're seeing it without kanji, but the most reasonable take, IMO, is the concept of a debt or similar thing that must be repaid. Specifically it has connotations of something extended on credit or loaned out.

必ず(kanarazu) means 'certainly' or 'surely' or 'definitely' -- basically it's very strong language of certainty.

返します(kaeshimasu) is the polite-register form of kaesu, which means 'to return' with a strong implication that the thing being returned was borrowed or lent out, thus suggesting, at least in this case, that the one who will be doing the giving back has no particular right to have it in the first place. That is, the initial lending was a merciful or generous thing.

EDIT TO ADD: It can also be used in the context of something stolen or taken that the taker has no right to, and which is being demanded back.

よ(yo) is just an exclamatory particle, but it does have some interesting implications here when paired up with the previous bit of text. Taken together, the polite-register verb and -yo suggest feminine speech of some refinement.

So what we have here in this line, literally and without idiomatic usage taken into account, is something akin to "This debt will surely be repaid!"

But the debt mentioned here is metaphorical. I take it to mean that Kefka's referring to the fact that Edgar, Lock(e), and Terra/Tina escaped with their lives and--perhaps more importantly--had the chance to humiliate Kefka. And he's basically promising them he will extract payment for that little 'mercy' in times to come.

On top of that, Kefka's swinging wildly between speech patterns here. We've got the squealy noises, then some rude and direct cursing (but not the worst he could be capable of saying). Then he swings back to a refined, polite, and feminine manner of speech. So he's kind of all over the board, and we can get the sense that he's extremely angry, maybe a bit emotionally overwhelmed, and definitely unstable (this is a thing that happens a lot with Kefka's speech in Japanese, at least as I read it).

So taken all together, here's how I see the line break down:

Kefka: *furious, shrieking noises* Shiiii~~~ (Or your other favorite scatalogical exclamation!) You will pay for this!

Alternately, it could be 'they will pay' because it's not, thanks to the tendency of Japanese to omit pronouns, clear who he's speaking to. Previous lines, IIRC, have him yelling at Edgar, though, so I'd suggest that's a fair enough guess.

Given that the original line contains kuso, we're most decidedly dealing with an issue of profanity here, and my presumption has long been that Woolsey tried, in his...unique Woolsey-humor way, to leave the suggestion of profanity while technically writing a silly line. For what it's worth, when I was 13 and playing this game for the first time, I always took it to be 'son of a bitch,' but figured Nintendo hadn't let him use the real phrase. Turns out it was slightly more intense. Still, idiomatically speaking, 'son of a _______' as a construct works, at least as I see it.

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 28th May 2014 01:04

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I'm always fascinated by the way Chinese and Japanese are constructed; so much different from Germanic and Latin-root tongues with so much untranslatable subtlety of meaning.

I'm always partial to Germanic/Latin and Klingon swears, though. =p Qu`vatlh!

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Yeah, there's a great deal that's tough to translate from Japanese into English. I can't speak for Mandarin, as I have no experience with it. (Though I do know how to insult someone's mother and/or horse in Cantonese...depending on whether or how badly I botch my tones. )

A lot of this has to do with how much social structure and such is built into Japanese. English, for instance, hasn't got a full range of variable patterns that tell the social relationship of the speaker to the addressee, or the gender of the speaker, or things like that--all of which can suggest subtle differences in how the character is perceived.

One thing that's always tended to save me and helped me understand what was intended in games like VI, though, is the expressive nature of the sprites. Sure, they're limited, but what body language they're able to manage helps to bridge those gaps that translation can sometimes leave in the narrative.

And yes, Klingon makes for colorful swearing, especially when I need to clear my sinuses at the same time!

"ghay'cha'!"
"Gesundheit!"

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German is almost as bad. You can give someone a compliment and it sounds like an insult. =p

"Hast du nett Schühe!"
"What?!"
"I said you have nice shoes..."

This post has been edited by Zephir on 29th May 2014 02:43

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Great breakdown and explanation! Thanks, and welcome to CON.

I've heard similar things about Kefka's erratic speech pattern in the original Japanese. It's interesting you say he shifts to the feminine. I've also heard that he commonly refers to himself with 僕は (boku wa) which suggests that he is something of manchild, as this is a phrase typically used by boys instead of adult men. Could you also comment on whether or not Kefka serves as much of a common relief role in the Japanese version? I've heard conflicting things. Ranging from he's not humorous at all, to he's humorous to the same goofy extent as the Woolsey translation.

I have some familiarity with Japanese as I took a year in college, before I returned to focusing on Spanish both because it's easier to learn and more practically useful in the U.S. (especially now that I live in California). Having watched a lot of Japanese language film and anime thanks to the Internet, it seems to me it might be easier to speak and understand than read and write. As a spoken language, the pronunciation doesn't seem too difficult, especially since everything is broken down phonetically and the vowel sounds are by some coincidence of history identical to Spanish. But reading and writing (which I would need to play my favorite Square games in their original language) seems much more daunting. The hiragana and katana were not so difficult to memorize. The kanji gave me too much trouble.

This post has been edited by MetroidMorphBall on 29th May 2014 05:37

Thanks for the welcome!

He does tend to say boku, yes, which is more of a boys' first-person pronoun. It can be used by young men (and, in a strange twist, sometimes female pop singers when the song is more masculine in tone), but for a man of his age--35 if my memory isn't failing me--boku is a fair bit out of place, as I understand it.

I'd say manchild is a good way to characterize him in some ways. He's...unbalanced. Immature in some ways, but also profoundly experienced and/or capable in others. To me, he's never really read as comic relief so much as deeply unsettling. I don't know if it's an apt comparison, but if you've seen the animated film adaptation of Akira, the unsettling combination of knowledge and childlike behavior in the kids has kind of the same effect. Not precisely the same, but it's there.

From what I've seen of Dissida, his more comical elements seem to be played up there, and that portrayal doesn't necessarily match what's in my head. He seems to have been made much more comic--but that could just be a conflict in terms of deeply entrenched headcanon.

Regarding how he comes out in Woolsey's translation, to be fair to Woolsey, the things that set my teeth on edge about Kefka in Japanese are kind of hard to convey in English without resorting to the absurd. We don't have as many registers of speech (or at least ones that are very clearly defined and enforced socially). That and English is much lower-context than Japanese is--i.e., in Japanese you're expected to have background knowledge of certain ideas and constants, so certain mutually understood things can be omitted, but in English, shared knowledge generally isn't treated as guaranteed or expected, so the language, like the culture is far more say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say. All of that put together with factors like NoA's enforced censorship policies would make it really hard to convey Kefka's...weird, creepy, unease-inducing nature, I think.

Regarding Japanese as a language, I find that once you punch through the sense of unnaturalness that native speakers of English will perceive (the word order, for instance, is Subject-Object-Verb to English's Subject-Verb-Object) and the writing system, it can be very regular. If I'm recalling correctly, you can count all the irregular verbs in Japanese on one hand, for instance...which is a blessing considering how many of the things English has.

Kana are pretty easy to learn. The trick with kanji is to understand how they go together. They're composed of radicals--modular parts that convey meaning and/or sound--and despite there being thousands of kanji, there aren't even 250 radicals--215 or so, I think. Once you start to get a grip on the radicals, you'll find that learning new kanji is much easier. Heisig's Remembering the Kanji is a great set of books if you want to delve into teaching yourself.

As to playing games in Japanese, I started out with Dragon Quest. I knew the game back to front as Dragon Warrior, it's a fairly faithful translation (minus the pseudo-Shakespeare and some people and place-name changes), and it uses all kana. First time I played FFVI in Japanese, I about soiled myself. Kanji everywhere. Luckily, my dorm-mates in Japan at the time (I was on exchange in my undergrad) were JRPG gamers, too, and had all played the game in Woolsey's translation. So we made a quest out of playing it in Japanese together. Four or five college geeks, armed with kanji dictionaries, trying to keep up with the text--it was wild! And the fact that there was a booze shop down the street sure helped.

Honestly, though, learning through what you like is a solid, solid practice. Unlike the stale stuff in textbooks, you'll want to know, understand, and remember it. And man, did I ever learn kanji in FFVI. Too bad most of them weren't useful in class...but they apply pretty well in other JRPGs, which is ultimately what turned out to matter.

Incidentally, this thread has me eager to do another JP playthrough now. If I do that, is there anything you want me to look for and/or screencap in particular?

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 29th May 2014 06:01

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Re: "Shakespearian language," I'm wondering if Cyan talks in the Japanese equivalent of an archaic dialect in the original..

Woolsey used that same type of knight talk for Frog in Chrono Trigger, but I know that was of his own invention and Frog speaks normal modern Japanese in the original. Interestingly, while I figured this was also the case for the "caveman talk" of Ayla & Co., I've actually read that this does have an equivalent in the Japanese version, but I've never really understood how. Have you played Chrono Trigger in Japanese? If so, can you elaborate on how the "caveman talk" is portrayed in Japanese?

Fascinating stuff, I appreciate your insight.

Cyan does use archaic speech patterns. If I'm remembering correctly, the most telling thing was that he ended his sentences in the archaic verb 'de gozaru' as opposed to, say, the more or less modern 'desu.' And I believe that the equivalent of Woolsey's "Mr. Thou" name was "De Gozaru."

De gozaru is something you run into if you watch a lot of samurai movies, and that 'old-fashioned' vibe is something that was pretty clearly suggested with Cyan's character. Using the pseudo-Shakespeare type stuff is probably the closest way in English to pull off a "sounds like he came out of a Toshiro Mifune movie" vibe.

Frog, as I'm recalling, did not have this speech pattern, as you point out. His speech was fairly normal Japanese. I'm not remembering exactly how Ayla's was done, but I think she did things like omit articles and particles from her sentences, which, if she did that, would give her speech a sense of primitiveness. But again, I don't properly remember, as it's been a long while since I did CT in the original.

To give you an example in English of how word omission makes things primitive consider this:

"We went to the store and bought beer because life's no good without beer."

"We went...store...bought beer...life no good...unless beer."

(A personal rule of mine, regardless of which era we're in! )

But note how, by omitting words that you technically don't need, but can intuit the presence of, you get the same meaning with a flavor of primitiveness or, depending on context, perhaps lack of intelligence.

Works very similar in Japanese. For instance:

Watashi no namae wa Chocobo desu. (My name is Chocobo.)
...namae...Chocobo... (Name...Chocobo.)

The words left in are all that's technically necessary for comprehension. Probably based on context and choreography, you'd know the speaker is not naming the listener, so it'd be reasonable to assume the speaker is naming him or herself...but with the added flavor, again, of primitive speech.

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 29th May 2014 07:53

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Quote (ChickenFriedChocobo @ 29th May 2014 07:00)

I'd say manchild is a good way to characterize him in some ways. He's...unbalanced. Immature in some ways, but also profoundly experienced and/or capable in others. To me, he's never really read as comic relief so much as deeply unsettling. I don't know if it's an apt comparison, but if you've seen the animated film adaptation of Akira, the unsettling combination of knowledge and childlike behavior in the kids has kind of the same effect. Not precisely the same, but it's there.

From what I've seen of Dissida ... he seems to have been made much more comic--but that could just be a conflict in terms of deeply entrenched headcanon.

I have to say, I very much agree with this. I don't have any real grasp of Japanese, and my knowledge of the translation differences is far from thorough, but Kefka has always come across to me as unhinged and unsettling, rather than goofy - even in the Woolsey version. You laugh at him sometimes, but only in the same way as you laugh along nervously when the crazy guy sits next to you on the bus and starts a conversation. It's not funny, your brain is just struggling for an appropriate reaction due to the discomfort. I guess it's the difference between a harmless crazy guy (which can be pretty amusing) and the kind of crazy guy who might just suddenly decide to gut you to see how your insides work, laughing while he does it...Kefka is definitely crazy #2.


Oh, and I fear you may have set yourself up for a lot of questions here as a resident linguistic sensai, CFC! Good luck!

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...Kefka has always come across to me as unhinged and unsettling, rather than goofy - even in the Woolsey version. You laugh at him sometimes, but only in the same way as you laugh along nervously when the crazy guy sits next to you on the bus and starts a conversation. It's not funny, your brain is just struggling for an appropriate reaction due to the discomfort. I guess it's the difference between a harmless crazy guy (which can be pretty amusing) and the kind of crazy guy who might just suddenly decide to gut you to see how your insides work, laughing while he does it...Kefka is definitely crazy #2.

Precisely. Human beings laugh as a defense mechanism as well as in response to humorous things, and there's a prevailing theory regarding comedy routines that the two aren't actually so different. Miserable things happening to other people, while we ourselves remain completely safe in that moment, can be funny. And if you look at the way Kefka acts and what he finds funny, it's perhaps a look into what he himself fears, has experienced, and hopes to avoid.

(Since that would be a swan dive into both fanfic-land/headcanon-space and the abyss of off-topic-dom, though, I'll let it ride, unless someone wants to discuss, in which case we can adjourn to a new thread.)

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Oh, and I fear you may have set yourself up for a lot of questions here as a resident linguistic sensai, CFC! Good luck!

Very well, then. Hajimemashou~!

Well, I'll state for the record that I'm no expert. I can certainly be wrong, have been wrong before, will be wrong again. (Gasp!) Nevertheless, questions are fine, and I'll do my best to answer them as best I can--or to tell you when I don't know and/or try to find someone else who's covered the topic before to my satisfaction.

But I'm game to do my best to address the questions and thoughts of folks who want to know how things differ or work in Japanese. Matter of fact, I will be starting a runthrough of the JP version of VI today and recording it on my emulator as I go, so we will have the capacity for both screencaps and videos. If there is interest, and if I can figure how to do it, I might make a set of subtitled videos of the playthrough and pop it onto YouTube.

Let me know if there's interest. If people dig it, i could maybe start doing that with other games, too, and we could all debate the follies of my quick-translations until the end of time!

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CFC- I salute you. I was amazed at your grasp of lingusitics. I might be consulting you repeatedly.

As far as finding humor in that situation, it's a nice contrast to what happens later on. At the point the line is uttered, Kefka comes across as a weaseley, institutional bully. He's trying to bully Edgar and Figaro to get what he wants. The sudden surprise of the castle sinking and Kefka getting personally humiliated shows him getting a comeuppance for his behavior. He truly turns dark and psychotic (Terra's flashback shows him as a bully as well.) when he poisons Doma's water supply and kills the innocents with the poisoning. Included in this are prisoners of war.

It's also the only time Kefka gets any real comeuppance until the end of the game as a matter of fact, and I laugh with glee each time I see it.

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"So, are you a fan of the Fett?"

"Nah, I'm more of a Star Wars guy."

Feel free on the questions. I may not always have an answer, but I'll give it my best shot!

It's also interesting that Kefka, in Terra's Narshe flashback, refers to himself as 僕様 (boku-sama) while talking to himself. This is good bit...weird. In rude, arrogant speech being directed at an inferior, males will sometimes use 俺様 (ore-sama) to refer to themselves, especially when taunting. It's literally "lord me [!male!informal!downward-directed]," but using boku in that construction is...off. Boku is softer, it's more...deferential? Kind of has a cute connotation that ore does not have, depending on the use.

The best explanation I've encountered, and one I agree with, is that it reads as both scrambled in terms of 'proper' direction of speech and word selection. It's possibly also condescending and facetious in a way that might amuse the speaker, but will unnerve and/or piss off the listener.

The fact that Kefka's talking to himself when he uses it (right before he fits Terra/Tina with the slave crown), combined with his gigglefit in that scene, suggests an overall "this guy isn't exactly all here" kind of feeling.

ETA (because I always think of things after the fact): Maybe--maybe--a good way to get this sense of weirdness across would be if that line were rendered "Little Lord Kefka" instead of "I" in English. But that presumes you already know that this is Kefka, and he's not referring to someone else--which, at that point, we don't unless the dialogue box identifies him. In that case it might work. I think it's also vital to know Kefka's age--that he's a grown man in his thirties, not a teenager--since sprites are pretty indistinct, and since there are no 'young [whoever]' variant sprites except for that of infant Tina/Terra.

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 29th May 2014 20:04

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Quote (ChickenFriedChocobo @ 29th May 2014 11:55)

It's also interesting that Kefka, in Terra's Narshe flashback, refers to himself as 僕様 (boku-sama) while talking to himself. This is good bit...weird. In rude, arrogant speech being directed at an inferior, males will sometimes use 俺様 (ore-sama) to refer to themselves, especially when taunting. It's literally "lord me [!male!informal!downward-directed]," but using boku in that construction is...off. Boku is softer, it's more...deferential? Kind of has a cute connotation that ore does not have, depending on the use.

Boku-sama!? That does sound weird. Sama, from my understanding of Japanese, especially in the context of martial arts, is used to respectfully refer to someone of a higher rank, distinguishable from sensei in that a sensei is someone directly instructing you on something. Boku, by contrast, is a term young boys use to refer to themselves. So "Boku-Sama" seems like a contradiction.

I can see your point about how this would be difficult to capture in an English translation, as English doesn't have nearly the same equivalent use of honorifics and particles to indicate status and manner of speech. Woolsey definitely gets a bad wrap, some of it deserved, but I personally think the guy did a great job and made the games more accessible to American audiences, especially in comparison to the translations that came directly before his arrival (FF IV) and directly after his departure (FF VII).

The only comparison I can think of to Kefka's speech, as you've detailed it here, is Totopato from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, which later was used as stock footage for the first season of Power Rangers. He was the incompetent minion of the main villain, Bandora, but occasionally he would stumble upon some form of power and get too big for his britches, taunting the Zyurangers. He often referred to himself as "このトットパット様と (kono Totpato-sama to").

"Kono" as you mentioned in another thread, just means this. Totopato uses it enough that I believe it's referring to himself. "This Totopato-master" might be a decent literal translation. I'm not sure how the "to" plays into it. That usually indicates a comparison or quote, right? As I was never able to parse out the rest of the sentence, I couldn't tell you how it went after that.

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Boku-sama!? That does sound weird. Sama, from my understanding of Japanese, especially in the context of martial arts, is used to respectfully refer to someone of a higher rank, distinguishable from sensei in that a sensei is someone directly instructing you on something. Boku, by contrast, is a term young boys use to refer to themselves. So "Boku-Sama" seems like a contradiction.

Boku-sama is weird. Sama is a suffix, like -san, but it's much more respectful than -san...except when it's not. You can use it ironically to mock someone whom it's clear you actually consider beneath you, for instance. Kind of like saying, "Oh, yes, Sir," or something like that in English when you don't mean it will suggest mockery all though the words technically don't directly convey it.

And young men, as I said before, can use boku if they want to soften their speech, but it's definitely a younger-person's word regardless.

Sensei is used as a suffix with someone's name when he or she is learned or in a teaching role. Sensei can also be used as a standalone noun that way. "Sensei said this; Sensei did that," and so on. Dono can also be used as a suffix for very respectful way of referring to someone, but it's got strong connotations of feudal flavor. (Its standalone, which you'll hear tons of if you watch samurai movies, is Tono.) Cyan uses it. I believe he refers to general Leo as Leo-dono, but don't quote me on that; I'll confirm it or disconfirm it when I get there in my current playthrough, as my memory is fuzzy. He also uses 'heika' as a standalone term of address for the King of Doma. Heika is often translated as 'Majesty' or 'Your Majesty,' and it works. It's not, as both Woolsey and Slattery's translations suggest, an equivalent for 'Excellency,' which is another form of feudal address altogether in English from 'Majesty.' Not one you'd use for kings, in any case.

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I can see your point about how this would be difficult to capture in an English translation, as English doesn't have nearly the same equivalent use of honorifics and particles to indicate status and manner of speech. Woolsey definitely gets a bad wrap, some of it deserved, but I personally think the guy did a great job and made the games more accessible to American audiences, especially in comparison to the translations that came directly before his arrival (FF IV) and directly after his departure (FF VII).

Yeah. Culturally, the Anglophone world has not really had (or, if you want to reference the feudal days, hasn't had in a long time) any particular use for the socially stratifying language thing in the same way Japanese does. Japanese culture, on the other hand, was driven very strongly by such things for most of its history, and the modern society retains that in ways that, say, modern America doesn't. Can't speak for the rest of the English-using world, but while we have our ways to mark social status, it's not the same, so it's hard to directly convert. You more or less have to aim at an idiomatic translation--something that, while it's not literal and word-for-word, accomplishes the same goal.

Woolsey does drop the ball in places, so I'm not trying to beatify him or any such thing. For instance, in Narshe when Tina is with the old man (the Japanese script there calls him 老人--roujin; old person) and trhe city guard track her to his house, they say, as correctly rendered in Slattery, that they want him to turn over the Magitek pilot. In Japanese it's literally 'the girl who rode the Magitek armor." Woolsey fudged this one and had them say they wanted the girl and the armor...only one of which the old man was hiding, the other having been destroyed by Valigarmanda/Tritoch. And there are other places, too, even in that same part of the story. Woolsey has the old man say there's a girl he wants Locke to meet. Actually, in Japanese (and in Slattery), he says that he met the girl.

Those kinds of things can come from simply fumbling, glossing over, or missing a particle or an article or misreading while skimming. If you look at my post about Kefka's flashback dialogue in the JP Dialogue Dissection thread, you'll see I edited it last night sometime after I first posted it. I did so because I realized I did the same thing--I fudged the particle 'ni,' which basically eliminated 99% of the ambiguity in the line for me, but when I first wrote the post, my misread made me sure I had found a secondary meaning. Today, I'm pretty solid on the idea that I pulled a Woolsey myself. It's easy to do.

But overall, Woolsey did a better job than a lot of people at the time, and from what I've read of him, he was still a student when he took the job doing FFVI--and he had 30 days to do it, and he was also required to do Secret of Mana concurrently. I know for a fact that if I had to deliver on that timeline I would screw some things up. So I can't hate him. I do see his errors in places, but I would not have been any better, I am sure, if I'd had the job. You'd all be hating on me twenty years on, and probably with very good reason.

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The only comparison I can think of to Kefka's speech, as you've detailed it here, is Totopato from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, which later was used as stock footage for the first season of Power Rangers. He was the incompetent minion of the main villain, Bandora, but occasionally he would stumble upon some form of power and get too big for his britches, taunting the Zyurangers. He often referred to himself as "このトットパット様と (kono Totpato-sama to").

Yeah, that usage is definitely arrogance. Sometimes, as in this case, it's to humorous effect: probably everyone but this guy knows he's a joke...so his arrogance is hilarious, because soon he'll be trounced by whoever he's challenging. Some legitimately capable villains and arrogant types do use it, too, and in those cases it's about them knowing how powerful they are and displaying some vanity and hubris. Distinguishing between the two is a matter of context--what do you know about the guy based on past exposure? You can intuit whether it's funny or scary as a result.

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"Kono" as you mentioned in another thread, just means this. Totopato uses it enough that I believe it's referring to himself. "This Totopato-master" might be a decent literal translation. I'm not sure how the "to" plays into it. That usually indicates a comparison or quote, right? As I was never able to parse out the rest of the sentence, I couldn't tell you how it went after that.

Dropping the 'this' would, at least in my book, be OK. Something like, "You dare to challenge the mighty Totopato?" or "You think to stand against Lord Totopato?" or something like that, again, depending on context, might produce a comparable vibe.

I'd need to see the rest of the line to get a sense of what 'to' is directed at. It literally means 'and', and it can sometimes be used to tag dialogue if I'm recalling correctly (I may not be, and my JP novel hoard is in a box someplace, but I can dig in if you'd like). [Edit: I need to stop drinking beer when I browse forums. ___________ to iu / ___________ と言う/ said _________ is a very common construct, and I should go do some penance or something for that brain fart. You'd think I haven't been in class in a dozen years or something. ] But in certain constructions, it can be read more like with--as in, battle with someone, travel with someone, etc. What may also be going on here is a bit of sentence order inversion for emphasis--but again, I'd need to see the whole line. Either way, it's not part of his name.

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 30th May 2014 23:13

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Regarding Japanese as a language, I find that once you punch through the sense of unnaturalness that native speakers of English will perceive (the word order, for instance, is Subject-Object-Verb to English's Subject-Verb-Object) and the writing system, it can be very regular.

Possibly that might depend on your background, though; in theory, you can flip Spanish around, although most speakers stick to the standard English pattern. Klingon is odder still than that in that it's strictly OVS: The torpedoes, fire them, you! German is where it gets really fun, because you can flip it forwards and backwards and all it does is change the subtlety of meaning; placing the emphasis on one particular word without resorting to italics, for example. Wir sind frei - we are free - versus Sind wir frei, we are free.

One line as an example that is one of my favorites of German poetry in action is the construction found in Rammstein's Nebel: "...Doch ihre Worte frißt der Wind."

A native German speaker will pick up the meaning quickly - I eventually did - but a student might have to take a second look at it. "der Wind" is in the Nominative; therefore, the Wind is doing the acting, while "Worte" is the object, stated without an article. However, the word order - read with an English eye - looks like it says that her words eat the wind; which, again, would confuse except that fressen is conjugated for third person singular: the Wind eats. As brutish as it sounds, German is remarkably poetic and beautiful once you understand how you can flip it around and change the subtleties of its meaning with but simple wordplay. Till Lindemann, in particular, is a master of German wordplay (See also: Du Hast and the subtle pronunciation of "hast" versus "haßt"; "You hate me; You have me asked").

All that really pointed out, though, was that German seems unique amongst the language families: you can write it Subject-Verb-Object, Object-Subject-Verb, or Verb-Subject-Object; any damn order you like, so long's your meaning comes across. "Du haßt mich (SVO) / Haßt du mich (VSO) / Mich du haßt (OSV)" all mean the same exact thing, but with varying subtleties of degrees and emphasis. Probably the most poetically constructed language by its default I've yet seen. 'Course, that's also the source of Yoda Speech; technically you can do the same thing in English, it just sounds so odd as to be comical. The word order doesn't factually have to be Subject-Verb-Object in English, it's just the most common construction.

How strict is Japanese on word order? I've read that it's an analytical language like English, and straightforward in its construction, whereas languages in the Germanic and Slavic families are inflected heavily enough that word order is almost an afterthought.

As an aside, I do like the construction of Finnish; agglutinative languages have such an alien, unique flair about them. =) Piruparka and Pirunkieli, for example, have such different meanings, where Piru- changes the meaning of the root word in such different, yet similar, ways.

For what it's worth, by the way, Klingon is by definition an analytical, agglutinative language; as far as I've seen, there are no inflections, only prefixes and suffixes. In that sense, it's like Finnish, but closer to English in its strict application of syntax and loss of inflection (Finnish is an inflected agglutinative tongue).

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If I'm recalling correctly, you can count all the irregular verbs in Japanese on one hand, for instance...which is a blessing considering how many of the things English has.

Actually, strictly speaking, English has only one truly irregular verb, which is a holdover from the old German: to be. And even then, it's only slightly irregular because it doesn't inflect for changes in gender in the third person or plural tenses: he is, she is, it is, we are, they are. A truly irregular verb inflects all over the place without respect to the original root, and doesn't resemble the root verb in its inflections; only the participle remains in certain tenses.

I'm an amateur linguist for fun. =)

At any rate, most "irregular" verbs in English are really only slightly irregular, and it's really a stretch to call them irregular.

Most of this I know, by the way, from constructing and studying languages, including a couple I'm building at the moment for a project.

"Senna jal Adevret... xu beryó ímaó?"
"Beraó so haleta!"

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And if you look at the way Kefka acts and what he finds funny, it's perhaps a look into what he himself fears, has experienced, and hopes to avoid.

Psychologically speaking, Kefka appears more to have developed a twisted sense of nihilism, borne from more of a self-loathing than anything else. He seems more to despise what he's become, having wondered about what he could have been, and wants to see everything around him reduced to nothing so that it can be as empty as he feels inside.

And yet, the nothingness amuses him, in that he has the power to affect the world about him; hence the spiraling ambition and glee he takes in causing destruction. It's also more primal than that: destroying is simply fun, if you've ever, say, stomped through cardboard box cities.

As a person, though, I never thought that Kefka really feared anything, the only emotions he truly felt were rage and glee. Psychologically speaking, he's actually pretty simple, but simplicity can be both beautiful and unsettling in its presentation.

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The best explanation I've encountered, and one I agree with, is that it reads as both scrambled in terms of 'proper' direction of speech and word selection. It's possibly also condescending and facetious in a way that might amuse the speaker, but will unnerve and/or piss off the listener.

Indeed. "I may be just a boy - or even a pile of s*** - but you're even lower than me, son."

What a subtle way to insult someone...

'Course in the case of Kefka, it sounds more like he's talking to himself, but sees himself as a boy instead of a grown man. Just another layer to the twisted madness that is Kefka.

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It's not, as both Woolsey and Slattery's translations suggest, an equivalent for 'Excellency,' which is another form of feudal address altogether in English from 'Majesty.' Not one you'd use for kings, in any case.

Sounds like they crossed up papal and Church addresses with their royal court addresses. This is one reason why I always refer to Spanish and German when cross-translating, to corroborate meanings; the Spanish will hearken back to Latin, and the German will give me a definite comparison for the modern English. Technically I could look to Russian, too, but I don't know my Russian as well as my German.

Now if you'll excuse me, you just forced me to turn on my NDH playlists...

This post has been edited by Zephir on 31st May 2014 02:38

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* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
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Lots of things I didn't know there, Zephir! Thanks for all of that!

I had four years of German in high school and four years of Japanese in my undergrad. I remember way, way less of the German, but I do recall that it agglutinates. I am probably misremembering graduate-level Anglo-Saxon and Middle English...but I tend to think I recall reading that AS agglutinated as well...which would make sense, considering that it much more closely resembled its Germanic-language roots, as it didn't contain the later influences that resulted from the Norman Conquest. Still, that was long ago and far away, so I could be wrong. Feel free to break it down if you know--I can always stand to learn something new.

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The word order doesn't factually have to be Subject-Verb-Object in English, it's just the most common construction.

That's quite true, and I was speaking in generalities before. All languages have their exceptions to their own rules, but if we have to generally classify English, it's more SVO than it isn't.

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How strict is Japanese on word order? I've read that it's an analytical language like English, and straightforward in its construction, whereas languages in the Germanic and Slavic families are inflected heavily enough that word order is almost an afterthought.

It's been almost fifteen years since my only collegiate level class in linguistics, so I may not be able to answer you as in depth as I'd like, but here's my best shot:

Japanese, while it does have the capacity for inverted sentence order and other deviations, is fairly regular--much moreso than English is, I'd say. And almost always, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. This is part of what makes trailing off sentences in, say, game text a pain--because the verb is often the most critical part of the sentence, and if the speaker just...



...then you have to guess or intuit what was meant. Usually you can do that based on context, upon which Japanese relies a lot, but not always.

Additionally, a complete sentence in Japanese need not contain all the components we require in English. For instance, if the subject is understood, it can be omitted, meaning a single verb could function as a complete sentence. But when all components are there, they far more often than not obey regular word order.

Japanese additionally doesn't have articles in the English sense, nor does it have grammatical gender. The gender of the speaker can be conveyed by a gender-specific word- or construction- set, but it's unlike in, say, German or Spanish, where every noun has a gender regardless of whether it would possess natural gender. Japanese nouns additionally don't pluralize in the way that English nouns do. You can tell by context, or if there is a specific number attached to the noun, or if, as in some cases, you get a -tachi construction or other 'and others' constructions. Watashi-tachi, for instance, would basically mean "us" or "we" (depending on whether it's a subject or an object) but literally means I+others. "Zephir-tachi" might be rendered as "Zephir and company" or "Zephir and friends" or something like that, again, depending on context.

Does that make any amount of sense? Apologies if I've fumbled some terms or concepts. As I said, it's been a few years...

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Actually, strictly speaking, English has only one truly irregular verb, which is a holdover from the old German: to be. And even then, it's only slightly irregular because it doesn't inflect for changes in gender in the third person or plural tenses: he is, she is, it is, we are, they are. A truly irregular verb inflects all over the place without respect to the original root, and doesn't resemble the root verb in its inflections; only the participle remains in certain tenses.

Fair enough--and yeah. German. Bane of my soul that way.

However, relative to modern Japanese, even slightly irregular English verbs are quite irregular, though it would contain a lot of internal changes that are, although regularly applied across most verbs, very different from English.

In polite, neutral register, for instance, the verb 'aruku' (to walk) plays out like this in the present tense:

Present: arukimasu (walk)
Present-negative: arukimasen (not-walk)
Present-possible: arukemasu (able to walk)
Present-possible-negative: arukemasen (not able to walk)

There are also constructions for 'made to walk [by someone else]', 'allowed to walk,' and others. Most of these patterns would apply equally to the past tense form of the verb, 'arukimashita,' with just a bit of variance--a few very minor vowel changes.

Additionally, there's no proper future tense in Japanese as we understand it in English...to the point that one of my textbooks back in undergrad simply referred to present tense as "non-past tense", since future-state is established with other supporting components of the sentence (or shared contextual knowledge) that indicate time.

Hm. So I suppose you could say its complicated in its own way, but at least to my perception, the patterns of change are applied regularly across the board for the most part.

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Psychologically speaking, Kefka appears more to have developed a twisted sense of nihilism, borne from more of a self-loathing than anything else. He seems more to despise what he's become, having wondered about what he could have been, and wants to see everything around him reduced to nothing so that it can be as empty as he feels inside.

And yet, the nothingness amuses him, in that he has the power to affect the world about him; hence the spiraling ambition and glee he takes in causing destruction. It's also more primal than that: destroying is simply fun, if you've ever, say, stomped through cardboard box cities.

As a person, though, I never thought that Kefka really feared anything, the only emotions he truly felt were rage and glee. Psychologically speaking, he's actually pretty simple, but simplicity can be both beautiful and unsettling in its presentation.

I could see that. I personally tend to view him as having been profoundly affected by his Magitek treatment (personal theory: partly due to the age at which he was infused), and I wonder at whether he's retreated into infantile types of behavior to insulate himself from that.

And yes, he does seem to enjoy destruction just for its own sake. My thinking there (again, wholly personal) is that it's a control issue. By destroying things, he exerts total control. Things become his toys or his puppets, to play with, break, and discard as he sees fit. And if Kefka resents what he's become and/or how he got there, it may be possible that these two things are related. If he resents having had his power over himself taken away, perhaps he compensates by usurping the control and agency of others. This probably wouldn't be a conscious choice on his part as in "I shall take away all of what was taken from me," but rather just an impulse.

Hm, good point. I'd say I agree on the rage/glee poles that seem to drive Kefka. Things either please him or they do not--which is, of course, also a fairly immature response to things.

So he's this package of childish impulses that's armed to the teeth and given enough political power to see his whims carried out. That does indeed make him frightening.

I have other thoughts, but I fear I'd just start rambling, so I'll leave it there.

Thanks again for the thoughts, especially on language!

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Quote (ChickenFriedChocobo)

I'd need to see the rest of the line to get a sense of what 'to' is directed at.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can provide you with both the written dialogue and a link to the video scene.

「今日こそお前たちを」「今日こそ」「このトットパット様と」「ブックバック様が」「倒してやる」「倒してやる」

For some context, Bukkubakku (ブックバック) is Tottopatto's equally incompetent sidekick. And as you can see, they are talking over each other in this scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQxOHO2mCI&t=2m40s

Quote (Zephir)

in theory, you can flip Spanish around, although most speakers stick to the standard English pattern.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The only thing I can think of is when using a direct object pronoun changes the order of the sentence. So for instance:

Yo tiré la pelota - I threw the ball
Yo la tiré - I threw it

It's SVO in both English sentences, and also in the first Spanish sentence. But the use of the direct object pronoun changes the second Spanish sentence to SOV.

Of course, in Spanish you usually omit the subject because it's implied by the verb conjugation, so the use of "yo" could be dropped in both of my examples, but I left it in just for the sake of comparison.

And just so that this doesn't go completely into off-topic territory:

Quote (ChickenFriedChocobo)

Japanese, while it does have the capacity for inverted sentence order and other deviations, is fairly regular--much moreso than English is, I'd say. And almost always, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. This is part of what makes trailing off sentences in, say, game text a pain--because the verb is often the most critical part of the sentence, and if the speaker just...



...then you have to guess or intuit what was meant. Usually you can do that based on context, upon which Japanese relies a lot, but not always.

Here's an interesting article on exactly that topic, from the same website that I linked to earlier in this thread: Sabin’s Strange Line in Narshe

This post has been edited by MetroidMorphBall on 31st May 2014 23:03

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All that really pointed out, though, was that German seems unique amongst the language families: you can write it Subject-Verb-Object, Object-Subject-Verb, or Verb-Subject-Object; any damn order you like, so long's your meaning comes across. "Du haßt mich (SVO) / Haßt du mich (VSO) / Mich du haßt (OSV)" all mean the same exact thing, but with varying subtleties of degrees and emphasis. Probably the most poetically constructed language by its default I've yet seen. 'Course, that's also the source of Yoda Speech; technically you can do the same thing in English, it just sounds so odd as to be comical. The word order doesn't factually have to be Subject-Verb-Object in English, it's just the most common construction.

I thought Latin (or at least Classical Latin), could do this too, thanks to using word endings to indicate all meanings.

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I thought Latin (or at least Classical Latin), could do this too, thanks to using word endings to indicate all meanings.

Any inflected language can, by way of indicating the subject and object through pronouns and verb endings. In theory English is actually an inflected language, but is considered analytical because it's lost much of the inflection in the de-evolution from the old Saxon.

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I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The only thing I can think of is when using a direct object pronoun changes the order of the sentence. So for instance:

Yo tiró la pelota - I threw the ball
Yo la tiró - I threw it

It's SVO in both English sentences, and also in the first Spanish sentence. But the use of the direct object pronoun changes the second Spanish sentence to SOV.

Even without pronouns, you can still invert the entire sentence and the meaning is clear. La pelota yo tiró, for example, means the same thing still - la pelota is clearly the object and yo is clearly the subject - but the construction sounds so odd that no one speaks that way. Tiró la pelota yo is also still clearly understood, but sounds goofy. Such is the way of inflected languages; they can all be flipped, it's just a matter of how odd it sounds.

German is simply unique in that such constructions are part of everyday speech. One phrase that comes to mind, for instance, is, "Hast du mal 'nen Euro?" In English, imagine someone walking up to you and asking, "Have you yet a spare buck?" It sounds strange in English, as if the person is trying to sound like a poet, but in German that phrase is actually extremely slang, and native speakers wouldn't bat an eye to it even though the most common word order is SVO.

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I had four years of German in high school and four years of Japanese in my undergrad. I remember way, way less of the German, but I do recall that it agglutinates. I am probably misremembering graduate-level Anglo-Saxon and Middle English...but I tend to think I recall reading that AS agglutinated as well...which would make sense, considering that it much more closely resembled its Germanic-language roots, as it didn't contain the later influences that resulted from the Norman Conquest. Still, that was long ago and far away, so I could be wrong. Feel free to break it down if you know--I can always stand to learn something new.

German doesn't agglutinate; not in the strictest manner, anyway. Complex words are simply crammed together, but the individual components don't necessarily change the meaning of the word. In linguistic terms, German simply assembles long words comprised of several words into one, which isn't pure linguistic agglutination; it's more a matter of grammar than language.

Agglutination is a mechanic whereby prefixes and suffixes are applied to words that change either their inflection, tense, or meaning. German doesn't factually have that; like all inflected languages, it simply changes the root verb or article to an inflected form. Other words are just long, runon words without punctuation to break them up, a mechanic of English grammar developed to show that the base word meanings haven't changed.

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Kefka notes

He's indeed very childish in his mannerisms and mental development; a big kid with a gun, really. And he has no moral qualms about ever pulling the trigger.

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That's quite true, and I was speaking in generalities before. All languages have their exceptions to their own rules, but if we have to generally classify English, it's more SVO than it isn't.

There's a few things about the academic linguistic world I don't quite agree with myself, and that would be one of them. English is really more properly categorized as a very slightly inflected language with analytical tendencies and two acceptable word orders.

German is also technically classified as an SVO language, even though it's often read and spoken in multiple ways.

I also forgot about the verb-last rule of German: for those who don't know, it's also the only language I know of where second and additional verbs always go last in the sentence order. E.g., Muss ich die Kugel greifen: I must the ball grab. Add even more verbs and even more complex sentences, and it can start to sound very odd indeed.

This post has been edited by Zephir on 31st May 2014 12:01

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* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

This is pending a move to General Topics. No real way to extricate the general linguistics talk from the original topic. Participants, feel free to proceed accordingly (or accuse me of being an evil moderator, or both ).

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Quote (Zephir @ 31st May 2014 04:00)

Even without pronouns, you can still invert the entire sentence and the meaning is clear.  La pelota yo tiró, for example, means the same thing still - la pelota is clearly the object and yo is clearly the subject - but the construction sounds so odd that no one speaks that way.  Tiró la pelota yo is also still clearly understood, but sounds goofy.  Such is the way of inflected languages; they can all be flipped, it's just a matter of how odd it sounds.

"La pelota yo tiré" might work on occasion. Usually, people will talk like this when they mistakenly put the object first while in the middle of telling a longer story. You'll see it in English too. Something like:

So the ball, I threw it, and...
Entonces la pelota, yo la tiré, y...

"Tiré la pelota yo" is not only a matter of being goofy, it's entirely incorrect and nonsensical, and I've never heard anyone speak like that. Subjects are linked to the verbs in Spanish except when separated by a pronoun. You usually only use the subject for emphasis anyway, most of the time you just drop it. "Tiré la pelota" is what you'd usually say. If you wanted to put emphasis you'd add "yo" at the beginning before the verb. Adding "yo" to the end of the sentence makes no sense at all because it lacks emphasis there.

Like you said, you can pick up the context in Yoda speech as well when using English. It doesn't make it grammatically correct though. Or is that your point?

Quote (Rangers51)

This is pending a move to General Topics. No real way to extricate the general linguistics talk from the original topic. Participants, feel free to proceed accordingly (or accuse me of being an evil moderator, or both

Did you like my Sabin suplexing a train meme? I made it just for you. Please validate my cleverness...

Moderator Edit

+1? -R51

This post has been edited by MetroidMorphBall on 31st May 2014 23:17

Quote (Rangers51)

This is pending a move to General Topics. No real way to extricate the general linguistics talk from the original topic. Participants, feel free to proceed accordingly (or accuse me of being an evil moderator, or both).

Makes sense to me. This one's gone rather off the rails. Move away, if it's best done!

Quote (MetroidMorphBall)

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can provide you with both the written dialogue and a link to the video scene.

「今日こそお前たちを」「今日こそ」「このトットパット様と」「ブックバック様が」「倒してやる」「倒してやる」

For some context, Bukkubakku (ブックバック) is Tottopatto's equally incompetent sidekick. And as you can see, they are talking over each other in this scene.

Aha! Makes tons of sense now. I love how Bukkubakku basically parrots what Tottopatto says. The subtitles do a good job. If you want a detailed breakdown, here 'tis:

今日 (kyou) is 'today' and こそ (koso) is a word that emphasizes the word it precedes. In this case, it'd like 'today--for sure!'

このトットパット様と and ブックバック様が are two parts of a single sentence that go together. It's basically, 'this Tottopatto-sama and Bukkubakku sama will'. と/to is functioning in its role as 'and' here, forming a compound subject: A and B, as a single subject, about to do one common action.

倒してやる is a rude little declaration that figuratively breaks down as something like 'kick your ass' or the like. 倒す/taosu means 'to defeat', but literally it means to knock over or knock down...which, incidentally, is the source of that wacko line from Garland, which is actually very similar: I, Garland, shall knock you all down!

やる/yaru just means 'do', and yes, it can indeed have that additional meaning, just as 'do' does in English...just not here, thankfully.

So taoshite yaru is something, literally, like 'do the thing of knocking [object] down."

Additionally, your typeup omitted the line お前たちを (omaetachi wo), which goes between kyoukoso and the kono tottopattosama line.

お前たちis 'you+pluralizer', and using any second-person pronoun in Japanese is considered rude, so depending on how much of a pottymouth you want to give this guy, it's perhaps either 'you guys' or 'you bastards.'

を (wo; pronounced o) is the direct-object marker. It lets us know that, even though parts of this sentence are inverted (of interest to you, perhaps, Zephir?), the words immediately preceding this particle are the sentence's direct object--that is, the thing that will have the sentence's verb done to it.

So putting it all together, shooting for an emphasis on how much Bukkubakku parrots Tottopatto, we could get this:

T: Today's the day...
B: ...yeah, the day!
T: ...that the mighty Tottopatto...
B: ...and the mighty Bukkubakku...
T&B: ...will kick your butts!

Quote (Zephir)

Zephir's profound linguistic wisdom!

I yield, good sir. You clearly know way more about linguistics than I. I'll enjoy learning from what you have to share!

Quote (MetroidMorphBall)

Sabin Train Meme

I choked on my coffee. That was amazing.

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This is a signature. You might think that there is something to it...but in fact it is just an ordinary signature.

I blame this thread for causing me to watch Zyuranger. Yes, I stayed for the whole thing. Yes, the Yellow Ranger is a guy. No, Rita-analogue's flunkies are just as incompetent...though Rita-analogue does say some things that might have been censored on US TV.

Anyway, back to the linguistics...

English does have its fair share of oddities. For instance, we usually talk about the word "not" as being the general negator, but we generally use not the word "not" alone, because it sounds funny. Instead we throw in an entire helping verb, and say we don't [whatever]. Not to mention that slang usage does all sorts of strange things with meaning ("how you doing" is an expanded version of what is considered a normal greeting...not to mention that "how are you doing" is weird enough as is).

That said, I can't think of something in common usage that doesn't do SVO, other than special cases where the emphasis is on the object (or object equivalent), such as "[information], that I don't know", or "there she is". That said, considering these constructions -- and the fact that Yoda-speak works -- it seems like in English the most important ordering bit is subject before verb.

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Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 31st May 2014 12:07)

I blame this thread for causing me to watch Zyuranger.

You're welcome!

I've watched 42 of the 50 episodes. If you think breaking down translation differences is fun, doing it with adaptations takes it to an entirely different level. The biggest difference is that the mecha in Zyuranger...aren't mecha at all. They are alternatively referred to as "Guardian Beats" (守護獣 Shugojū ) or "Gods" (神 Kami) [although my understanding of Japanese is that "Gods" is a common but inappropriate translation of "Kami," which is more properly "spirits"]. They are never referred to as robots. How prehistoric spirit beasts can shoot laser beams, combine like interlocking gears to form a bigger creature, be piloted by humans, and NOT be robots, is beyond me.

Trying to bring this back to the original topic again, did you see this link I posted ChickenFriedChocobo? If so, any thoughts?

Sabin’s Strange Line in Narshe

Quote (MetroidMorphBall)

Trying to bring this back to the original topic again, did you see this link I posted ChickenFriedChocobo? If so, any thoughts?

The page you linked has the right of it, and I don't think I could substantively improve on it, except that I'll add this:

Do you see the casting pose that Sabin assumes there, with his hands/fists together? I'm going to field a guess that this is intended to be him putting his palms together, or a similar gesture, which is Japanese body language for...pleading? No, maybe supplication is a better word. I seem to remember Lina Darkstar's analysis of this scene suggesting something similar.

If that's what Sabin is doing (which is limited by the sprite animation availability in the game), he's basically coming to Cyan and begging him to hold off on his notions of...well...gutting Celes and/or Terra, I suppose. Or at least that's what I've long gathered from what Cyan seems to intend to do here. He's pleading with Cyan to put it aside for the moment, and it's a very deferential gesture, and matches well with his suddenly very polite, very deferential language.

Sort of a "Please don't do this, I beg you. Just--please--defer to Edgar for the moment" sort of thing.

Which would make the exchange between Cyan and Celes make a good bit of sense in that he's essentially saying, "Don't think I trust you [just because I held off on killing you back there]."

ETA: I have no idea where "Oh, this is..." could have possibly come from. There's nothing I see in the original line that suggests this--at all. Maybe Woolsey was trying to dodge a censorship bullet by removing any potential reference--even implied--of violence among the party?

This post has been edited by ChickenFriedChocobo on 31st May 2014 20:58

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Like you said, you can pick up the context in Yoda speech as well when using English. It doesn't make it grammatically correct though. Or is that your point?

Except that Yoda speech is factually grammatically correct, it's merely considered archaic. Although an inverted construct in Spanish might sound odd, it's understandable and grammatically correct as long as it's spelled correctly and inflected properly; such is the way of inflected languages.

Only in analytical languages like English is word order explicitly enforced and important; in inflected languages, there's merely the way you're taught, and the way it's spoken. Spanish is one of the oddball cases where speakers quite universally adhere strictly to the established rules - like with Russian - while in German one can stray wildly off course and often will. But even then, the only real reason English is considered to have the SVO order is because of a conscious effort to teach it that way; in reality, one can flip the order around as they please, it'll just make them sound odd. Hence why English, in practice, acts more as a inflected language than a truly analytical one.

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"Tiré la pelota yo" is not only a matter of being goofy, it's entirely incorrect and nonsensical, and I've never heard anyone speak like that.

As a result of an odd confluence of circumstances that makes Spanish universally understood, regardless of accent, and with nearly identical vocabulary. Russian is the same way. In both languages, speakers strangely have grown to adhere strictly to the rules, though they don't factually have to.

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Subjects are linked to the verbs in Spanish except when separated by a pronoun.

The actual mechanic is that a verb is connected with the object which inflects it; a verb, when conjugated for a tense, can absolutely never apply to another noun that isn't of the same tense. And even if you were doing the action to yourself, there's a different case for the object, and you are both stated in the Nominative and Akkusativ, to use the German case terms, giving you two different pronouns: yo and mi.

Most of what you'll read in textbooks, by the way, is an effort to standardize the language, and often comes down from second speakers of the language. The evolutionary brilliance of inflected languages is that it's nearly impossible to cross the verbs and cases by a practiced speaker, making any possible arrangement clearly understood to a learned ear; that's the actual point here, norms of "grammatically correct" tend not to apply to inflected tongues.

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English does have its fair share of oddities. For instance, we usually talk about the word "not" as being the general negator, but we generally use not the word "not" alone, because it sounds funny. Instead we throw in an entire helping verb, and say we don't [whatever]. Not to mention that slang usage does all sorts of strange things with meaning ("how you doing" is an expanded version of what is considered a normal greeting...not to mention that "how are you doing" is weird enough as is).

The word "do" by itself as a construct is an odd one, because it only appears in English in some forms as "do you do it", "do not you", etc. Tun in German is "do", but it just doesn't have the other helping forms like the English to.

It actually makes translating into and out of English strange, just by itself.

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That said, I can't think of something in common usage that doesn't do SVO, other than special cases where the emphasis is on the object (or object equivalent), such as "[information], that I don't know", or "there she is". That said, considering these constructions -- and the fact that Yoda-speak works -- it seems like in English the most important ordering bit is subject before verb.

In common usage, one wouldn't use any word other than SVO except to make statements in a poetic sense, which is indeed what makes it sound so odd. All the same, "The ball threw I" is understood - though it be in OVS - it just sounds really strange. The reason? When you are the object, you are inflected into "me": "The ball threw me."

The truth is that what they taught you in school is only correct in that it's the way it's taught; you're not beholden to those rules in order to be clearly understood.

This same holds true, for instance, with math: by the time you reach third grade, you know all the math you'll ever need to know. Really. Calculus, trig, etc? It's all equations; all you need to know is the equation itself, and how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Just follow the instructions, be correct in the details, and you'll be fine. Your teachers lie when they insist you're learning something new; all you're really learning is a formula that you can always jot down or have a cheat card for.

Add, subtract, multiply, divide. Everything that you ever will learn and can possibly learn about math, because everything else is just a formula plugging numbers in, and following the four basic operations. You are, in essence, smarter than a computer can ever be in this fashion, because the computer can only add or subtract bits from registers; it relies on other means to, quote, "multiply" and "divide".

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Sabin's line in Narshe

The thread in the link seems to break it down nicely. Working off the script dump I have on my hard drive, it does look to me like Woolsey turned the line into something like Sabin turning to Cyan to introduce him, when the dudes barge in. It works for the English translation, it just looks odd to have him standing that way; unless you imagine him just being demonstrative for no real reason, which happens with folks sometimes in real life, too.

Honestly, the line kinda sounds out of place in the Japanese, if I insert it into the dump where I find the "Oh, this is..." line; although my dump may have things out of order.

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