Talk:Tho Fan

"Distinctly Asian" ?
Tho Fan sounds to me like backwards Russian more than any truly Asian language I've ever heard. And this is coming from someone who is at least weakly conversational in Japanese and Thai, and who has heard plenty of Mandarin. I suggest this appeal to aesthetics be removed from the article, since it's totally subjective what it does or ought to "sound like". Or, better yet, delete the article entirely, unless you want to make articles for every fake language that's ever been in a movie or video game. --76.209.58.121 05:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Er...go ahead? _> MonstaPro:Talk:Contrib. 22:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It was designed to sound "Distinctly Asian" by a linguist who specialised in the sound structure of Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai. That said, it also borrowed heavily from the sound structure of Mongolian. However... All of the dialogue was recorded without any training for the voice actors, against the advice of the linguist to have training sessions. What you hear is 'Dialect B' of Tho Fan, which basically uses only sounds that occur in English, albeit in non-English patterns. 'Dialect A', which you don't hear in the game, featured retroflexes and various other interesting fricatives which would have sounded much more like a mish-mash of Mongolian and Mandarin. Also, don't underestimate the achievement. This 'fake language' is productive, unlike most gibberish systems used for movies and video games. BioWare wanted something on par with the philology work of JRR Tolkien, and they got something far more sophisticated and scientifically accurate than his work. However, there just weren't the time and resources to implement it like a real language. Hence, its use is gibberish-like. Given time, every line of English dialogue could have been translated into 'Dialect A' and spoken by trained voice actors. But would that really have made the game better to the average player? Probably the linguist would have got some kicks out of it. But the linguist hasn't even ever played the game, on account of he doesn't have an X-box and didn't even get a free copy of the game from BioWare. Unchiland 05:18, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Jade Empire not just on Xbox
Will change... _> MonstaPro:Talk:Contrib. 22:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)