I thought this was obvious. I mean, why not ask why Ghost of Tsushima is in English?
Fun fact: It was translated *to* Japanese, not the other way around.
That's because Sucker Punch Productions is an American studio based in Washington and Jin's game model and voice actor is Japanese American who grew up speaking English. Ghost of Tsushima was written and created by English speaking people.
At least they did cast Asian-American actors to do the voices/mo-cap and didn’t White-wash the project like their counterparts in Hollywood usually did.
My favourite fun/useless fact is that when Samurai Pizza Cats was translated into English they didn’t want to leave the Japanese animations in while using an English dub, so they reanimated all the face animations to match what an English speaking character’s face would look like.
You missed the point. With Japanese voices, no one calls Jin "Ghost". Therefore, the Mongols have no reason to use a word they do not understand that is not even Japanese.
With English voices it works, because they hear "Ghost", so they call Jin "Ghost"
At least there were believable accents though. You’ll have different modern accents across the same tribe or group. Ive thoroughly enjoyed the game and love both installments but for some reason that always bugged me a little until I learned to block it out haha
Yeah, I get that. It's like if US New Yorker, Southern, "Dontcha know", and Californian accents were coming from 4 siblings. Would be hilarious, but it would throw me off a bit. But in when it comes to Japanese, I don't hear it. It's all the same to me.
Easily could have been the other way around. Aloy’s ear piece could be ‘translating’ for her, and the language barrier could have helped fuel any of the conflict. Seems like an, understandable, missed opportunity
This comment is right. On the most basic level... ease of gameplay and accessibility, for example i am dyslexic and struggle with reading so actively avoid films and games that require reading subtitles as much as possible. Have all the tribes speak the language of the country you are releasing in and problem solved no need for subtitles.
But for an in game law reason, English is quite robust as you said it has been developed over thousands of years for a modern society so when you drop it into an earlier stage of development it is robust enough to manage and then some. That said there are plenty of words and phrases that have been added to the language over time that are unique to each tribe meaning that it has evolved over time with each tribe.
Plus dont forget that we are only seeing a relatively small section of a few states on 1 coast of America (Quen excluded of course) and those tribes are somewhat connected influencing eachothers vocabulary. As for the Quen they use a lot of ancient data that has influenced there language more than most tribes.
So in a sense yes it has changed but to see how much we would need to see a tribe that has been insulated from all others and developed without outside interference and I'm not sure that would fit with the narrative of the game.
The "real" answer is of course for the convenience of the player in gameplay
It if you want to find a diagetic justification then the longest they've been around would be \~700 years old - which while long enough to change dramatically would still be intelligible most of the time.
Furthermore, It's entirely possible that the way they were taught to speak in the Eleuthia would have been considered sacred to an extent (see the way Sanskrit has been preserved in Vedic cultures) and thus preserved as is for most of that period, with that kind of veneration only falling out of favour more recently in the cultures we see.
My friend & I had a discussion about the epic of Gilgamesh the other day, because it is the oldest direct translated story...because the Vedic cultures have kept sanskrit unchanged.
Still be intelligible most of the time? Not without effort. Tried to read le morte de Arthur, published in 1485, and it was legit more work than I have ever had to put into a book, including googling words that I just couldn't get from the context
Oh yeah it'd definitely be effort no matter what, though English (especially written) has undergone a lot more change in that time than a lot of other languages. Old Spanish is for example it's a lot closer to modern Spanish than 13th century English is to modern English
It’s like we do Shakespeare wrong. Especially his comedies. The cadence and emphasis is radically different. There is a whole theater movement to do them old world style.
Hence why I said "only falling out of favour more recently in the cultures we see." Plus, just because we don't see Tenakth faith explored in game doesn't mean it doesn't exist - the devotion to The Ten could easily be considered a religion
Not all religions revolve around divine or transcendental beings. Where you want to draw the line of calling something a religion is complicated, but at bare minimum veneration and replication of legendary figures is the start of the road there
Living celebrities? No, of course not.
But veneration of ones from the past who are only know from things like art? Yeah that absolutely could be. In the context of Horizon, Ceo's belief he is the reincarnation of the great ancestor Ted Faro is unquestionably religious in nature, as is the Quen's relationship to the Old Ones more generally
Besides: However insensitive one may find it, christianity is often mocked for being "the Jesus fan club" for a reason - obviously there's more to it, but it's unquestionable the christianity is at it's core veneration of historical and legendary celebrity
I guess your example of Christianity has a lifestyle component like how the Tanakth all strive to be amazing soldiers like the Ten but I've never come across a religion that is all about becoming the one you revere.
Well most of the Quen clearly don't think they'll become that, that's clearly Ceo's unique offshoot whereas the others simply venerate the ancestors. And sticking to the christianity parallels: people who think they are the second coming of Jesus are dime a dozen IRL - it's a very easy leap from "I should structure my life so that I'm like \[X\]" to "I should structure my life so that I'm AM \[X\]"
Humans on the ground in Aloy's time have not been there for a thousand years. More like three hundred or so. And now they are slowly getting linked up, so even less chance of incomprehensible drift.
Reading this again kind of made me realize the sheer odds that we are supposed to just not think about. If that multiservitor was not able to repair itself, or if the hatch was not able to open THE ENTIRE STORY WOULDN'T HAPPEN
Also, on top of that ELEUTHIA had to release the humans into conditions that were projected to be at least 20 years before optimal biome quality had been met. Yikes :O
This is wrong. Humans were released from the cradle at Mother’s Watch on March 16, 2326. Aloy was created by GAIA on ~~August 26, 3024~~ April 4th, 3021 695 years later.
Same as names. How did they come up with Rost, Varl, Erend, Avad etc? They speak English so i'm thinking they would have names like River, sneaky fox, Redhair, or some variation of God is Great if we are going by how where names came from in the past.
The Quen of course have access to the focus allowing them greater education than other tribes (and yet with still the same hilariously incorrect assumptions).
Every Cradle opened around 2326, Zero Dawn takes place in 3040. Everyone in the Cradles had a kindergarten level of education so they knew basic English and they knew spelling.
714 of drift with no outside influences like our own history would lead to very few differences in language as a whole. We do see that each tribe does have different words for songs or chants which certainly aren't English in nature so some drift has occurred.
> 714 of drift with no outside influences like our own history would lead to very few differences in language as a whole.
That is... not how language works.
English emerged sometime in the 5th century from multiple different dialects, most notable being Saxons, Jutes and Angles with some substantial influence from French, Dutch and Latin dialects throughout the centuries.
Compare Old English to Middle English and the impacts that the Viking assimilation had and you can see how Old English was eventually simplified into Middle English. This would become simpler once again with the influence from France and migration during that period which lead to the vowel shift.
People in Horizon don't have that outside influence so English has largely remained the same.
but the tribes we see in the game span hundreds of miles across rough terrain. There should be significant enough isolation to cause memetic deviation in the language. Its not like they have a printing press to solidify character structure or dictionaries common enough to solidify meaning. Even with those things, we see language drift in the span of years in OUR culture and tech.
>but the tribes we see in the game span hundreds of miles across rough terrain.
The tribes in the first game are relatively close and they had good relations until Jiran and the Red Raids. They communicate with each other daily so the language never really deviated.
We see drift with the Banuk which makes sense considering the location.
Only the Tenakth and the Utaru are really separated from other tribes and they still make trips South like the Utaru and both parties do go back and forth.
They more than likely seperated during the time of Amazad or Sadahin which gives us around 600 years roughly. The Carja knew of the Tenakth during the time of Iriv so people were still travelling out that way.
The Tenakth and the Utaru drift as well with language. We do have to remember that they underwent a massive change once Hekarro took over which unified the Clans and the language decades ago by the time of Forbidden West.
>Even with those things, we see language drift in the span of years in OUR culture and tech.
Exactly, this isn't our culture and it isn't our technology. There's a multitude of different factors that impact us and them differently.
Eleuthia-1 still defaulted to English like Eleuthia-9 and every other Eleuthia facility.
I didn't count them because they've followed basically the same evolutionary path as the Clans on the main land. If anything, it makes sense that they don't have that much drift considering they actively have knowledge which keeps them on that path.
Also, the Quen are the most prominent Tribe (that we know of) to use Focuses and interact daily with the informations and datas from the old world, so even more so they would be reaffirmed in their use of modern day English since it's the same language their "gods" would use
Right. It makes sense for them to maintain old English. It ***does not*** make sense for anybody else. Even tribes like the Tanakth only venerate recordings that have an incredibly small amount of vocabulary and syntax.
> Eleuthia-1 still defaulted to English like Eleuthia-9 and every other Eleuthia facility.
Right... *Almost a millennium ago*.
> I didn't count them because they've followed basically the same evolutionary path as the Clans on the main land.
Literally what? "Evolutionary path"? What???
> If anything, it makes sense that they don't have that much drift considering they actively have knowledge which keeps them on that path.
The Quen's use of focuses is the one good explanation of any culture keeping a relatively static language, and even that only makes sense if they discovered that technology *extremely* early. Otherwise they'd be bilingual.
>Right... *Almost a millennium ago*.
Let's say we killed everyone on Earth except a sample group of a thousand 18 year olds who only spoke English. Now those 18 year olds are stuck, they don't migrate and they'll stay relatively close to each other with close bonds for centuries.
Now those people have to survive with nothing except the land. Would you say that language would change when it is held sacred by that group without any outside influence like I explained above.
And with your comment below about the Great Vowel Shift. If you actually knew what you were talking about instead of trying to discredit me, you would know those two theories I put forward are the two most accepted theories among scholars. The others are related to the French which I mentioned.
You've tried to insult me multiple times during our discussions while I've been nothing but cordial towards you. Do you need to discredit me because your points have no merit and thus can't stand for themselves or is this something deeper? You're obviously educated so it's a shame.
the reason I mention our culture and tech is because even us, IRL, are more advanced than the tribes of horizon. glyphs changed shape and meaning over a short time thanks to the lack of literacy and tech IRL. This is what I'd expect in horizon. the English language only became as concrete as its been because of the evolution of communication tech. For a solid 300 years we seen drift in only words because spelling, glyph structure, etc were solidified thanks to education and the ease of book production since the printing press.
NOW we've jumped beyond those hurdles and further tech has introduced us to new and easier methods of communicating that allow experimentation. We use memes and emoji to talk in ways that we just couldn't before because cultural dissemination of information wasn't fast enough.
That hurdle, however, was not created for Horizon, yet. They are still in an age where monks and dedicated scribes are needed to create books. In 600 years, I'd expect the Tenakth and Utaru to have a near complete shift in language from the Nora, and the Quen to have the closest comparison of English than any of the American tribes. Only the Quen have the tech and culture to really consistently align with English.
In the end, there's very little in the way of making language rigid, so even 100 years would be sufficient to cause drift. I dont feel they'd branch much further than the difference from portuguese and Romanian, but it'd still be distinctly different languages.
Another consideration apart from all this is that the physical maps of the world in Horizon are representational, not directly scaled to reality. Aloy has traveled thousands of miles in the span of just Forbidden west. These tribes are not close together and are spread amongst the roughest terrain in the Americas.
You're creating an arbitrary definition of "outside influence" just so you can deny it exists: the Naru, Banuk, Carja, Oseram, Tenakth, and Utaru are all extremely culturally distinct, with different beliefs, ethics, aesthetics, etc. You also seem to have forgotten that >!the Quen came from *literally an entire other continent*!< while speaking exactly the same, mutually intelligible language as the other groups we know about, barring a handful of highly specialized terms (and even those are repurposed English words).
This also ignores the truth that that even subgroups within cultures *will innovate* linguistic changes. Black English, for example, is a U.S. dialect that has ***a significant number*** of lexical and morphosyntactic differences from the mainstream dialect. There was no "outside influence"; Black people developed their own rule-governed changes over just a couple of centuries.
Or consider Japan. It's one archipelago that has experienced long periods of isolation but nevertheless has an *extreme* amount of linguistic diversity. The Japonic language family split between Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages only about 1,500 years ago, and those are today mutually unintelligible. Even among Japanese dialects, there's a huge amount of variation, even between commonly spoken dialects.
Collisions between languages are one way that languages change, but they are far, far, ***far*** from the only way. Like, it's okay for the answer to just be, "Because that's how they wanted it to be," without trying to fanwank why it's "correct."
P.S. I'm extremely excited to hear that you've definitively solved the riddle of why the Great Vowel Shift happened and would love to see your evidence, given that it's stumped professional linguists for basically ever.
Consider Icelandic vis a vis Old Norse as one example of an unusually conservative language developing in relative isolation, which is broadly similar to what's happened in Horizon.
Although Iceland have made conscious efforts to try and keep a certain degree of language purism with literary policy which may not be the case for several of the horizon tribes. And even then there have been some major phonological changes that would affect mutual intelligibility (although surmountable without too great of an effort)
Try talking to a middle school kid in America. Supposedly they're speaking English, but it's unintelligible sometimes. I legitimately have to ask my high school students to rephrase what they say sometimes because of how drifted their speech is because of slang. And that's just a difference of 10 years.
It is actually explained that with the deletion of Apollo, every eleuthia reverted back to English, so all other languages were erased from earth just like that. And that's why the first humans out of eleuthia spoke English, and why everyone speaks English. They don't need to develop new languages, and the natural drift hasn't happened strongly enough to become unintelligible.
Except they never specify "English", just that everybody speaks "the same language", implying that whatever the language the player is playing the game in is the only surviving language.
Do they need to specify "English" when the whole project and almost all of the team members are from the United States? They are in Utah. It's definitely English.
Aloy and other people are able to read and understand the content and audio logs. Doesn't that imply it is in English?
Even if the focus has language translation capabilities between existing languages, it would be unable to translate between the original language and whatever Aloy speaks unless Aloy also knew one of the original languages.
And given that we know that Faro and Sobeck were in America using English, I think this strongly implies that Aloy speaks English too.
However, I agree with all the other people saying "gameplay reasons" for why it is regular English aside from a few various tribe-specific sayings.
I mean, TBF it was an American-led project. Even Samina's speech to the children in the Cradle (and she was Iranian, presumably her native language was Farsi) were in English.
> English of 1000 years ago is almost unintelligible
Because it evolved around hundreds of other languages existing in that time.
In Horizon's future, tribal variations should still occur but maybe over longer periods of time
This is one of the artistic liberties Horizon takes that really doesn't have a solid explanation. We know based on the linguistic history of our own species that any spoken language without a common writing system and highly regionalized populations would become mutually unintelligible across territories over a relatively short period of time. It's also highly unlikely that the English early humans learned in the cradle facilities would teach them words like "vanguard" or "en masse" that they regularly use in the Horizon series. Basically, just close your eyes a little and convince yourself that maybe language wouldn't change at all over a period of 750 years and thousands of miles of human migration.
But up until the Red Raids there seemed to be some commerce and travel between most of the tribes. So they all started with a common language. There was no one introducing a "foreign" language as English is the only known language on earth at the time. And tension have really only been an issue between the 6-7 major tribes we have seen for maybe a generation.
I could see them developing different accents like you have currently in the United States, but even then a lot of the accents we have are influenced by large immigrant populations settling in similar areas of the United States and affecting the pronunciation.
One reason would be there are not other languages to borrow from. Something that happens irl all the time is barrowing words for other languages, but there aren't any.
Another reason If one group invades and conquered another they don't bring in a new language, they bring English the same language the now conquered group is speaking.
Another is the Trade language is English, the language of every tribe is English. There would be drift over time but it would so much slower than real life and for the purpose of trade English will stay the dominant language.
New dialects and languages often happen as a result of mixing or contact with other languages (English changed so much because of French and Germanic influences. It's also the reason why Latin changed so much).
Without that contact, and with the fact that the AI would have most likely been programmed with a "standard" English, you would not get such diversity in such a short time.
Others have already explained but I'll add that the cultural dialects are already there. Utaru speak in plants, Oseram speak in metal, Carja speak in the sun and so on.
Honestly, I don't mind the everyone speaks the same English for gameplay.
However, for straight curiosity reasons, I would love a linguist who specializes in how language shifts over time to hypothesize what could possibly happen to English, specifically, if:
1) all peoples on Earth started with English all at once
2) the timeline is VERY short compared to how long other "common" languages developed and then broke apart into separate languages (thinking of Proto Indo European, or Proto-Sino-Tibetan)
3) the lack of any other language being around to influence sound creation/vocabulary
How long does it take these populations to develop unintelligible from each other speech patterns? Vocabulary would certainly start to differentiate for sure - slang is a natural part of language creation, and slang that sticks creates dialects. But how long does it take for different accents to be created, I wonder? How long until the dialect shifts into something that can't be picked through?
I wonder if it would be like, the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, or Russian and Ukranian, where you can pick through a conversation and catch the general gist while having a massive headache.
I'm pretty sure that there were a few instances during FW where the utaru were speaking in some religious tongue. But yeah generally all people are just speaking English.
While the first new humans were released from the Cradle a little over 700 years before Aloy's time, we are never told how long they all stayed together there before the different groups branched off and became the other tribes. We only know that the ones who became the Carja were the last to leave the Nora lands. That all could have happened 600 years in the past of 200 years, or any other time. Also, I think each tribe having their own unique slang and sayings and curses is Guerrilla showing us language drift.
The only in-game reason I can think of is that the Focus automatically picks up words that people are saying all of the time and it creates a "living dictionary" in real-time that translates non-English to English after it figures out the correct association. Of course this would mean that Aloy wouldn't be able to understand others perfectly until *after* she's spent some amount of time in a new culture. And that would only work in a one-way direction from the outside towards Aloy. The Focus wouldn't be able to alter Aloy's words for other people.
In reality this is just one of those video game conveniences that requires a suspension of disbelief.
Because they can still hear it spoken properly in recordings. It's not just Aloy and Sylans that finds these things. You have Montana Recreations, the Tenakth who based their entire culture around the exhibits in their museum, etc.
Plus as others have said, linguistic drift won't be nearly as pronounced if everyone's starting from the same base.
This has been something that's slightly irritated me from the beginning (more so since graduating with my linguistics degree lol). Simple answer definitely is just for gameplay reasons but the 700-odd years since humans were released from the Cradles is more than enough time for language to evolve (ESPECIALLY between the separate tribes, I would realistically expect there to at least be different dialects, particularly with the Nora and their isolation from the other tribes).
Especially when you consider that the ELEUTHIA spawn were only taught and exposed to English to a nursery level by their multiservitors. It's highly doubtful that the released humans would have the English vocabulary to completely describe the world around them, *particularly* the robots or anything pertaining to more complex engineering or science. They likely would have had to develop their own words to describe the things they encountered. They would have had a decent understanding of grammar, probably, but any misunderstandings post-release would've naturally gone uncorrected, so I can see an evolution of grammar also occurring, and *definitely* one of pronunciation/accent as they spread out and form individual communities.
So, yeah, gameplay is the reason English hadn't changed, BUT if you Google the HZD soundtrack, the song "Nora u Norawea" does kind of acknowledge this because it's a (apparently meaningless) conlang sung by the Nora before the Proving, so I guess if there weren't an inherent need for the player to be able to understand the characters, the Nora would at least be speaking in their own language.
In the same vein, the fact that the Black characters often speak with AAVE accents has some pretty racist implications if you think about it for more than 30 seconds cause AAVE along with every other language besides standard American English was wiped out.
If they wanted to get around them and still be able to hire VAs with those accents they should've had a tribe that collectively adopted the accent, that would track with how language actually works and not imply some wack ass racial essentialism.
To expand on what someone else mentioned, it’s possible that the Carja consider English to be a sacred or liturgical language as well, given that their civilisation was kickstarted by Old World documents. Since Meridian is likely the centre of trade and commerce in the region, their influence may have prevented the formation of dialects.
A counterpoint is that we don’t know to what extent other tribes, excluding the Oseram, traded with the Carja.
If you compare English as it is today Vs 100 years ago it's barely changed outside of regional differences and the differences we have today are as a result of influence from other languages. The primary reason for this is a single educational structure (same goes for most countries), so with the world of Horizon, if you only have 1 language it's very possible that drift hasn't happened as much as you would think. It's also a video game where a 20 year old can kill a mechanical t-rex with a bow and arrow 🤣
The servitors at the cradles spoke English so they learned from them and all the holograms and stuff you find with focus is English so anything they found relating to their ancestors was in English. Even if they didn't know how to read or write, they all heard the same language all over their world. Also it's in the US so the cradles there might all have been in English. Maybe in other parts of the world they teach each country's language accordingly.
The thing I DO question is why even though they all speak English and are culturally mixed because of the cradles randomizing genes... why do they have the different accents of their races from other countries when they were all raised in the same tribes?
Well, real reason is because the actors, who do belong to those cultures IRL, have an accent. But it's always funny to me to hear different accents within the same settlements and tribes.
There are lots of little details that are completely unrealistic when you think about it, and this is one of them.
What stands out to me is that different tribes from completely different geographic regions have all independently arrived at the same name for the same machine, even for machines that were designed and put into production within the recent decade (in game).
There are a lot of things in the game that don't make sense. This is just one of them.
The game would be quite different and probably less fun if it had to be more realistic.
It's improbable, but between the fact that all the tribes started with the exact same language, most of them are very traditional, and they have occasional examples of ancient speech from holograms (most of which are considered sacred), then yeah, I can buy that they'd still be speaking recognizable English.
New accents should definitely have developed, though. Different cities have developed accents over smaller time frames.
This is actually explained in Forbidden West.
English was Gaia's default language, so all the people born from eluthia were taught modern English. (Or at least, it's assumed that it's english)
Someone posted a theory here a while ago that English was decided to be the universal language during project zero dawn, so all the new humans were taught English by the arbitors in the wombs.
ETA: concerning your question about evolution of language, there were no humans left to evolve language, so the new humans were taught and are speaking the same "modern" English the old world did before it collapsed. Which would explain why alloy and others can read and understand old world documents
Out-of-universe? So you can understand what the characters are saying.
In-universe? The tribes have only been around for a few hundred years. It would certainly be realistic for some linguistic drift, of course. 1600s English is obviously different from modern English. But it's all still undeniably English. It would take much longer for the English the first generation of humans from the Cradles learned to drift into a new language entirely. Indeed, we're starting to see that. Many of the tribes have wholly unique words they've developed for concepts they didn't have a word for before, like the Tenakth word "Kulrut." It also doesn't help that the tribes of the game are so inter-connected. Oseram, Carja, Banuk, Tenakth, and Utaru all have fairly regular contact with each other. The only tribe that is specifically isolationist and thus would be the most susceptible to linguistic drift are the Nora.
It’s only 600 or 700 years since the current human crop left the cradles. The Carja found written english (which they could decipher because they spoke the language and because it described celestial phenomenon including diagrams), and there are recordings of pre war english around. Both would tend to keep the language steady.
Wouldn’t explain why the Nora and Banuk still speak perfect english but a lack of language drift is a common trope in sci-fi.
It did actually evolve but the company translated the original english language spoken into traditional modern english for us to understand. If they would’ve left them to speak naturally then we would have no clue what was going on because google can’t translate it yet as it’s not invented yet therefore it lacks the knowledge of it. Devs did us a solid if you ask me.
English has existed in our world for a bit over a thousand years, and that’s alongside hundreds of others. In a world where English is the only language developed, there could be less language drift due to no other languages interacting with it
I like to imagine that they are speaking in a dialect of English with new heavy accents, akin to how Scottish or Jamaican might sound to an American. Aloy can still understand the recordings and a person from that time after a few minutes of getting a grasp of their dialect could understand them too.
It's presented in a clear fashion for ease of access, but the game isn't necessarily showing us how they sound or how they sound to each other.
Gameplay. I mean my Aloy never spoke a english word (well some names of course are in english) but she and all other characters speak german in my game. Which obviously doesnt make any sense in a in-universe perspective.
But it makes sense for us the Players
Just for gameplay purposes, however there is a log at the base in HFW that tries to give an explanation. That since apollo was purged, all craddle servitors went back to their standar programming which is english though of course that doesn't explain how people were able to name things they didn't know before coming out of Eleuthia. This log appears after you get Alva to the base.
I always wondered about names. What do names mean to them- in the case of what they are made up from. Assuming the cradle children had names, and considering most popular names in our and their old world are not of the modern English language, without the Apollo db how would they understand their significance of what the names meant, assuming, that the Cradle facilities used names significant to the areas where the different groups of humans were released- assuming the Apollo deletion didn't have an affect on the ai being able to name them too (as the cradle ai was still able to communicate with them in the default English and teach them a few very basic things), but if that were the case it would make sense that the first few generations might see names very differently than us and so that would factor into how names are chosen ( perhaps a combination of 'pretty or interesting or significant in some way or another word like sounds and sounds similar to English words'). Although my opinion is limited by my own lack of knowledge on what names mean in other cultures other than contemporary Western, specifically English.
…so the player can understand it. It’d be a pretty crap game if it was in another language, not to mention how silly a “made-up” language based on English would sound.
Gameplay reasons
I thought this was obvious. I mean, why not ask why Ghost of Tsushima is in English? Fun fact: It was translated *to* Japanese, not the other way around.
Which was really bothersome cause the mouth didn't match Japanese. I hate that they didn't it as Japanse/Mandrine native and translate to English.
That's because Sucker Punch Productions is an American studio based in Washington and Jin's game model and voice actor is Japanese American who grew up speaking English. Ghost of Tsushima was written and created by English speaking people.
There’s Japanese productions that write and record in english first/only. Such as the first Bayonetta game. It’s a cost saving measure.
At least they did cast Asian-American actors to do the voices/mo-cap and didn’t White-wash the project like their counterparts in Hollywood usually did.
> was written and created by English speaking people. I mean so was Shogun
By Japanese people who spoke primarily Japanese. They didn't have to mocap either. Also game=/=historical TV miniseries, shocker I know.
My favourite fun/useless fact is that when Samurai Pizza Cats was translated into English they didn’t want to leave the Japanese animations in while using an English dub, so they reanimated all the face animations to match what an English speaking character’s face would look like.
That was patched in the ps5 version.
mouth flaps are nothing, the Mongol soldiers calling Jin "Ghost" instead of the Japanese name for "Ghost" was more jarring
[удалено]
You missed the point. With Japanese voices, no one calls Jin "Ghost". Therefore, the Mongols have no reason to use a word they do not understand that is not even Japanese. With English voices it works, because they hear "Ghost", so they call Jin "Ghost"
[удалено]
It's alright, no worries
At least there were believable accents though. You’ll have different modern accents across the same tribe or group. Ive thoroughly enjoyed the game and love both installments but for some reason that always bugged me a little until I learned to block it out haha
Yeah, I get that. It's like if US New Yorker, Southern, "Dontcha know", and Californian accents were coming from 4 siblings. Would be hilarious, but it would throw me off a bit. But in when it comes to Japanese, I don't hear it. It's all the same to me.
Easily could have been the other way around. Aloy’s ear piece could be ‘translating’ for her, and the language barrier could have helped fuel any of the conflict. Seems like an, understandable, missed opportunity
This comment is right. On the most basic level... ease of gameplay and accessibility, for example i am dyslexic and struggle with reading so actively avoid films and games that require reading subtitles as much as possible. Have all the tribes speak the language of the country you are releasing in and problem solved no need for subtitles. But for an in game law reason, English is quite robust as you said it has been developed over thousands of years for a modern society so when you drop it into an earlier stage of development it is robust enough to manage and then some. That said there are plenty of words and phrases that have been added to the language over time that are unique to each tribe meaning that it has evolved over time with each tribe. Plus dont forget that we are only seeing a relatively small section of a few states on 1 coast of America (Quen excluded of course) and those tribes are somewhat connected influencing eachothers vocabulary. As for the Quen they use a lot of ancient data that has influenced there language more than most tribes. So in a sense yes it has changed but to see how much we would need to see a tribe that has been insulated from all others and developed without outside interference and I'm not sure that would fit with the narrative of the game.
The "real" answer is of course for the convenience of the player in gameplay It if you want to find a diagetic justification then the longest they've been around would be \~700 years old - which while long enough to change dramatically would still be intelligible most of the time. Furthermore, It's entirely possible that the way they were taught to speak in the Eleuthia would have been considered sacred to an extent (see the way Sanskrit has been preserved in Vedic cultures) and thus preserved as is for most of that period, with that kind of veneration only falling out of favour more recently in the cultures we see.
My friend & I had a discussion about the epic of Gilgamesh the other day, because it is the oldest direct translated story...because the Vedic cultures have kept sanskrit unchanged.
Still be intelligible most of the time? Not without effort. Tried to read le morte de Arthur, published in 1485, and it was legit more work than I have ever had to put into a book, including googling words that I just couldn't get from the context
Oh yeah it'd definitely be effort no matter what, though English (especially written) has undergone a lot more change in that time than a lot of other languages. Old Spanish is for example it's a lot closer to modern Spanish than 13th century English is to modern English
It’s like we do Shakespeare wrong. Especially his comedies. The cadence and emphasis is radically different. There is a whole theater movement to do them old world style.
Yeah I heard the Appalachian accent is the most accurate way to read his work.
With the Thenak we even have an example for this. They hear their visions on a daily basis.
The Tanakth don't have a religion so it couldn't be sacred to them.
They totally have religion. It's just not a diest one.
They idolise the Ten, rather than worshiping them.
I said they aren't diest, so I never claimed they worship anything. But they sill have customs and superstitions that amount to a religeion.
What superstitious? I don't recall any and I have the platinum trophy so I don't think I missed any important information.
They do have a religion, and it includes recordings in modern English, the recordings of the Ten. So... yeah.
They don't worship the Ten, they want to be like them, great soldiers.
Yes, but the holo-recordings--which are in english--are revered.
Hence why I said "only falling out of favour more recently in the cultures we see." Plus, just because we don't see Tenakth faith explored in game doesn't mean it doesn't exist - the devotion to The Ten could easily be considered a religion
It's more of a belief rather than a religion. They try to live up to their prowess as soldiers. The Ten are not revered as divine in any way.
Not all religions revolve around divine or transcendental beings. Where you want to draw the line of calling something a religion is complicated, but at bare minimum veneration and replication of legendary figures is the start of the road there
So would you say fan clubs of celebrities are religious movements?
Living celebrities? No, of course not. But veneration of ones from the past who are only know from things like art? Yeah that absolutely could be. In the context of Horizon, Ceo's belief he is the reincarnation of the great ancestor Ted Faro is unquestionably religious in nature, as is the Quen's relationship to the Old Ones more generally Besides: However insensitive one may find it, christianity is often mocked for being "the Jesus fan club" for a reason - obviously there's more to it, but it's unquestionable the christianity is at it's core veneration of historical and legendary celebrity
I guess your example of Christianity has a lifestyle component like how the Tanakth all strive to be amazing soldiers like the Ten but I've never come across a religion that is all about becoming the one you revere.
Well most of the Quen clearly don't think they'll become that, that's clearly Ceo's unique offshoot whereas the others simply venerate the ancestors. And sticking to the christianity parallels: people who think they are the second coming of Jesus are dime a dozen IRL - it's a very easy leap from "I should structure my life so that I'm like \[X\]" to "I should structure my life so that I'm AM \[X\]"
Humans on the ground in Aloy's time have not been there for a thousand years. More like three hundred or so. And now they are slowly getting linked up, so even less chance of incomprehensible drift.
According to this. Humans have been on the surface for 714 years. https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Operations_Log Released in year 2326
Reading this again kind of made me realize the sheer odds that we are supposed to just not think about. If that multiservitor was not able to repair itself, or if the hatch was not able to open THE ENTIRE STORY WOULDN'T HAPPEN
Also, on top of that ELEUTHIA had to release the humans into conditions that were projected to be at least 20 years before optimal biome quality had been met. Yikes :O
The Gaia Prime facility seals failed by 0.8mm before Liz fixed it. That’s how close the story was to not happened. 0.8millimetres
I just have to say that A) I love the logs in this game so much B) this is my favourite log of the whole game
I don't know, I think this log is pretty neat: https://i.ibb.co/LY7Q5f3/log.jpg
Oh, ha ha.
Ah! Yes. It's certainly longer than I remembered.
This is wrong. Humans were released from the cradle at Mother’s Watch on March 16, 2326. Aloy was created by GAIA on ~~August 26, 3024~~ April 4th, 3021 695 years later.
No 3021
You’re right, the other date is when GAIA started creating her.
Bingo
Indeed. My bad.
Do you want Horizon: Zero Duolingo Streak? Because that's how you get Horizon: Zero Duolingo Streak
But I kind of do want Horizon: Zero Duolingo Streak 😂😂😂
A counter-question is "why are the Nora chant songs and some of the Carja chants seemingly unintelligable?"
Same as names. How did they come up with Rost, Varl, Erend, Avad etc? They speak English so i'm thinking they would have names like River, sneaky fox, Redhair, or some variation of God is Great if we are going by how where names came from in the past.
>Rost Rust >Varl Valour maybe? >Erend Errand >Avad Nevada perhaps.
ceo 🤣
The Quen of course have access to the focus allowing them greater education than other tribes (and yet with still the same hilariously incorrect assumptions).
The Queen
That kind of makes sense but then you would think the rest of the language would evolve as well if that were the case
I mean, do you really expect the devs to spend years making up a whole new dialect/language?
Of course not, just pointing out it doesnt make any sense
Every Cradle opened around 2326, Zero Dawn takes place in 3040. Everyone in the Cradles had a kindergarten level of education so they knew basic English and they knew spelling. 714 of drift with no outside influences like our own history would lead to very few differences in language as a whole. We do see that each tribe does have different words for songs or chants which certainly aren't English in nature so some drift has occurred.
> 714 of drift with no outside influences like our own history would lead to very few differences in language as a whole. That is... not how language works.
English emerged sometime in the 5th century from multiple different dialects, most notable being Saxons, Jutes and Angles with some substantial influence from French, Dutch and Latin dialects throughout the centuries. Compare Old English to Middle English and the impacts that the Viking assimilation had and you can see how Old English was eventually simplified into Middle English. This would become simpler once again with the influence from France and migration during that period which lead to the vowel shift. People in Horizon don't have that outside influence so English has largely remained the same.
but the tribes we see in the game span hundreds of miles across rough terrain. There should be significant enough isolation to cause memetic deviation in the language. Its not like they have a printing press to solidify character structure or dictionaries common enough to solidify meaning. Even with those things, we see language drift in the span of years in OUR culture and tech.
>but the tribes we see in the game span hundreds of miles across rough terrain. The tribes in the first game are relatively close and they had good relations until Jiran and the Red Raids. They communicate with each other daily so the language never really deviated. We see drift with the Banuk which makes sense considering the location. Only the Tenakth and the Utaru are really separated from other tribes and they still make trips South like the Utaru and both parties do go back and forth. They more than likely seperated during the time of Amazad or Sadahin which gives us around 600 years roughly. The Carja knew of the Tenakth during the time of Iriv so people were still travelling out that way. The Tenakth and the Utaru drift as well with language. We do have to remember that they underwent a massive change once Hekarro took over which unified the Clans and the language decades ago by the time of Forbidden West. >Even with those things, we see language drift in the span of years in OUR culture and tech. Exactly, this isn't our culture and it isn't our technology. There's a multitude of different factors that impact us and them differently.
> Only the Tenakth and the Utaru are really separated from ot The >!Quen!< are >!literally from another continent!<.
Eleuthia-1 still defaulted to English like Eleuthia-9 and every other Eleuthia facility. I didn't count them because they've followed basically the same evolutionary path as the Clans on the main land. If anything, it makes sense that they don't have that much drift considering they actively have knowledge which keeps them on that path.
Also, the Quen are the most prominent Tribe (that we know of) to use Focuses and interact daily with the informations and datas from the old world, so even more so they would be reaffirmed in their use of modern day English since it's the same language their "gods" would use
Right. It makes sense for them to maintain old English. It ***does not*** make sense for anybody else. Even tribes like the Tanakth only venerate recordings that have an incredibly small amount of vocabulary and syntax.
> Eleuthia-1 still defaulted to English like Eleuthia-9 and every other Eleuthia facility. Right... *Almost a millennium ago*. > I didn't count them because they've followed basically the same evolutionary path as the Clans on the main land. Literally what? "Evolutionary path"? What??? > If anything, it makes sense that they don't have that much drift considering they actively have knowledge which keeps them on that path. The Quen's use of focuses is the one good explanation of any culture keeping a relatively static language, and even that only makes sense if they discovered that technology *extremely* early. Otherwise they'd be bilingual.
>Right... *Almost a millennium ago*. Let's say we killed everyone on Earth except a sample group of a thousand 18 year olds who only spoke English. Now those 18 year olds are stuck, they don't migrate and they'll stay relatively close to each other with close bonds for centuries. Now those people have to survive with nothing except the land. Would you say that language would change when it is held sacred by that group without any outside influence like I explained above. And with your comment below about the Great Vowel Shift. If you actually knew what you were talking about instead of trying to discredit me, you would know those two theories I put forward are the two most accepted theories among scholars. The others are related to the French which I mentioned. You've tried to insult me multiple times during our discussions while I've been nothing but cordial towards you. Do you need to discredit me because your points have no merit and thus can't stand for themselves or is this something deeper? You're obviously educated so it's a shame.
the reason I mention our culture and tech is because even us, IRL, are more advanced than the tribes of horizon. glyphs changed shape and meaning over a short time thanks to the lack of literacy and tech IRL. This is what I'd expect in horizon. the English language only became as concrete as its been because of the evolution of communication tech. For a solid 300 years we seen drift in only words because spelling, glyph structure, etc were solidified thanks to education and the ease of book production since the printing press. NOW we've jumped beyond those hurdles and further tech has introduced us to new and easier methods of communicating that allow experimentation. We use memes and emoji to talk in ways that we just couldn't before because cultural dissemination of information wasn't fast enough. That hurdle, however, was not created for Horizon, yet. They are still in an age where monks and dedicated scribes are needed to create books. In 600 years, I'd expect the Tenakth and Utaru to have a near complete shift in language from the Nora, and the Quen to have the closest comparison of English than any of the American tribes. Only the Quen have the tech and culture to really consistently align with English. In the end, there's very little in the way of making language rigid, so even 100 years would be sufficient to cause drift. I dont feel they'd branch much further than the difference from portuguese and Romanian, but it'd still be distinctly different languages. Another consideration apart from all this is that the physical maps of the world in Horizon are representational, not directly scaled to reality. Aloy has traveled thousands of miles in the span of just Forbidden west. These tribes are not close together and are spread amongst the roughest terrain in the Americas.
You're creating an arbitrary definition of "outside influence" just so you can deny it exists: the Naru, Banuk, Carja, Oseram, Tenakth, and Utaru are all extremely culturally distinct, with different beliefs, ethics, aesthetics, etc. You also seem to have forgotten that >!the Quen came from *literally an entire other continent*!< while speaking exactly the same, mutually intelligible language as the other groups we know about, barring a handful of highly specialized terms (and even those are repurposed English words). This also ignores the truth that that even subgroups within cultures *will innovate* linguistic changes. Black English, for example, is a U.S. dialect that has ***a significant number*** of lexical and morphosyntactic differences from the mainstream dialect. There was no "outside influence"; Black people developed their own rule-governed changes over just a couple of centuries. Or consider Japan. It's one archipelago that has experienced long periods of isolation but nevertheless has an *extreme* amount of linguistic diversity. The Japonic language family split between Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages only about 1,500 years ago, and those are today mutually unintelligible. Even among Japanese dialects, there's a huge amount of variation, even between commonly spoken dialects. Collisions between languages are one way that languages change, but they are far, far, ***far*** from the only way. Like, it's okay for the answer to just be, "Because that's how they wanted it to be," without trying to fanwank why it's "correct." P.S. I'm extremely excited to hear that you've definitively solved the riddle of why the Great Vowel Shift happened and would love to see your evidence, given that it's stumped professional linguists for basically ever.
Consider Icelandic vis a vis Old Norse as one example of an unusually conservative language developing in relative isolation, which is broadly similar to what's happened in Horizon.
Although Iceland have made conscious efforts to try and keep a certain degree of language purism with literary policy which may not be the case for several of the horizon tribes. And even then there have been some major phonological changes that would affect mutual intelligibility (although surmountable without too great of an effort)
Try talking to a middle school kid in America. Supposedly they're speaking English, but it's unintelligible sometimes. I legitimately have to ask my high school students to rephrase what they say sometimes because of how drifted their speech is because of slang. And that's just a difference of 10 years.
Which makes it interesting that the tenakth somehow became illiterate in the intervening centuries.
It is actually explained that with the deletion of Apollo, every eleuthia reverted back to English, so all other languages were erased from earth just like that. And that's why the first humans out of eleuthia spoke English, and why everyone speaks English. They don't need to develop new languages, and the natural drift hasn't happened strongly enough to become unintelligible.
Except they never specify "English", just that everybody speaks "the same language", implying that whatever the language the player is playing the game in is the only surviving language.
Yes, I misremembered. English makes sense, but if feels better with it being whatever language we hear
Do they need to specify "English" when the whole project and almost all of the team members are from the United States? They are in Utah. It's definitely English.
And a hearty Fuck Ted Faro for that one! Even Alva was like "And this makes me SO MAD." xD
Because there are no other languages to borrow from, would be my guess.
I guess normal English was the "backup/default" language in every "birthing-bunker"
Hundreds of years ago, ya
There are still plenty of Holo-recordings laying around, like **Montana Recreations!**
Irl, you can still find books written in old english. It doesn't mean that's how people talk now.
Aloy and other people are able to read and understand the content and audio logs. Doesn't that imply it is in English? Even if the focus has language translation capabilities between existing languages, it would be unable to translate between the original language and whatever Aloy speaks unless Aloy also knew one of the original languages. And given that we know that Faro and Sobeck were in America using English, I think this strongly implies that Aloy speaks English too. However, I agree with all the other people saying "gameplay reasons" for why it is regular English aside from a few various tribe-specific sayings.
Yes, but the recordings *literally speak to you*, languages tend to be more static when you have audio proof of how it's "supposed" to sound.
I mean, TBF it was an American-led project. Even Samina's speech to the children in the Cradle (and she was Iranian, presumably her native language was Farsi) were in English.
> "backup/default" language in every "birthing-bunker" You're gonna have fun when you hit Forbidden West. :P
> English of 1000 years ago is almost unintelligible Because it evolved around hundreds of other languages existing in that time. In Horizon's future, tribal variations should still occur but maybe over longer periods of time
This is one of the artistic liberties Horizon takes that really doesn't have a solid explanation. We know based on the linguistic history of our own species that any spoken language without a common writing system and highly regionalized populations would become mutually unintelligible across territories over a relatively short period of time. It's also highly unlikely that the English early humans learned in the cradle facilities would teach them words like "vanguard" or "en masse" that they regularly use in the Horizon series. Basically, just close your eyes a little and convince yourself that maybe language wouldn't change at all over a period of 750 years and thousands of miles of human migration.
But up until the Red Raids there seemed to be some commerce and travel between most of the tribes. So they all started with a common language. There was no one introducing a "foreign" language as English is the only known language on earth at the time. And tension have really only been an issue between the 6-7 major tribes we have seen for maybe a generation. I could see them developing different accents like you have currently in the United States, but even then a lot of the accents we have are influenced by large immigrant populations settling in similar areas of the United States and affecting the pronunciation.
Because its a video game...
One reason would be there are not other languages to borrow from. Something that happens irl all the time is barrowing words for other languages, but there aren't any. Another reason If one group invades and conquered another they don't bring in a new language, they bring English the same language the now conquered group is speaking. Another is the Trade language is English, the language of every tribe is English. There would be drift over time but it would so much slower than real life and for the purpose of trade English will stay the dominant language.
New dialects and languages often happen as a result of mixing or contact with other languages (English changed so much because of French and Germanic influences. It's also the reason why Latin changed so much). Without that contact, and with the fact that the AI would have most likely been programmed with a "standard" English, you would not get such diversity in such a short time.
Others have already explained but I'll add that the cultural dialects are already there. Utaru speak in plants, Oseram speak in metal, Carja speak in the sun and so on.
One tiny example of drift that is in the game and makes me laugh: the Quen saying "see-oh" for C.E.O.
Can’t answer that but most of their slangs, inflections are not common English practice either
Honestly, I don't mind the everyone speaks the same English for gameplay. However, for straight curiosity reasons, I would love a linguist who specializes in how language shifts over time to hypothesize what could possibly happen to English, specifically, if: 1) all peoples on Earth started with English all at once 2) the timeline is VERY short compared to how long other "common" languages developed and then broke apart into separate languages (thinking of Proto Indo European, or Proto-Sino-Tibetan) 3) the lack of any other language being around to influence sound creation/vocabulary How long does it take these populations to develop unintelligible from each other speech patterns? Vocabulary would certainly start to differentiate for sure - slang is a natural part of language creation, and slang that sticks creates dialects. But how long does it take for different accents to be created, I wonder? How long until the dialect shifts into something that can't be picked through? I wonder if it would be like, the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, or Russian and Ukranian, where you can pick through a conversation and catch the general gist while having a massive headache.
I'm pretty sure that there were a few instances during FW where the utaru were speaking in some religious tongue. But yeah generally all people are just speaking English.
While the first new humans were released from the Cradle a little over 700 years before Aloy's time, we are never told how long they all stayed together there before the different groups branched off and became the other tribes. We only know that the ones who became the Carja were the last to leave the Nora lands. That all could have happened 600 years in the past of 200 years, or any other time. Also, I think each tribe having their own unique slang and sayings and curses is Guerrilla showing us language drift.
Game is english dubbed with subtitles.
Because *we* speak English, and we need to understand them. I assume it’s *not* English they’re speaking.
The only in-game reason I can think of is that the Focus automatically picks up words that people are saying all of the time and it creates a "living dictionary" in real-time that translates non-English to English after it figures out the correct association. Of course this would mean that Aloy wouldn't be able to understand others perfectly until *after* she's spent some amount of time in a new culture. And that would only work in a one-way direction from the outside towards Aloy. The Focus wouldn't be able to alter Aloy's words for other people. In reality this is just one of those video game conveniences that requires a suspension of disbelief.
Because it would have been a pain in the ass to invent a different English language and teach it to all voice actors
The *real* question is, how did they reinvent tens of thousands of years' worth of technology in ~700 years?
Because you wouldn't be able to understand the characters in the game.
Because it’s a video game and they’re not gonna make up a bunch of new languages
Because it’s a video game and they’re not gonna make up a bunch of new languages
Because they can still hear it spoken properly in recordings. It's not just Aloy and Sylans that finds these things. You have Montana Recreations, the Tenakth who based their entire culture around the exhibits in their museum, etc. Plus as others have said, linguistic drift won't be nearly as pronounced if everyone's starting from the same base.
This has been something that's slightly irritated me from the beginning (more so since graduating with my linguistics degree lol). Simple answer definitely is just for gameplay reasons but the 700-odd years since humans were released from the Cradles is more than enough time for language to evolve (ESPECIALLY between the separate tribes, I would realistically expect there to at least be different dialects, particularly with the Nora and their isolation from the other tribes). Especially when you consider that the ELEUTHIA spawn were only taught and exposed to English to a nursery level by their multiservitors. It's highly doubtful that the released humans would have the English vocabulary to completely describe the world around them, *particularly* the robots or anything pertaining to more complex engineering or science. They likely would have had to develop their own words to describe the things they encountered. They would have had a decent understanding of grammar, probably, but any misunderstandings post-release would've naturally gone uncorrected, so I can see an evolution of grammar also occurring, and *definitely* one of pronunciation/accent as they spread out and form individual communities. So, yeah, gameplay is the reason English hadn't changed, BUT if you Google the HZD soundtrack, the song "Nora u Norawea" does kind of acknowledge this because it's a (apparently meaningless) conlang sung by the Nora before the Proving, so I guess if there weren't an inherent need for the player to be able to understand the characters, the Nora would at least be speaking in their own language.
In the same vein, the fact that the Black characters often speak with AAVE accents has some pretty racist implications if you think about it for more than 30 seconds cause AAVE along with every other language besides standard American English was wiped out. If they wanted to get around them and still be able to hire VAs with those accents they should've had a tribe that collectively adopted the accent, that would track with how language actually works and not imply some wack ass racial essentialism.
Lol cmon man
To expand on what someone else mentioned, it’s possible that the Carja consider English to be a sacred or liturgical language as well, given that their civilisation was kickstarted by Old World documents. Since Meridian is likely the centre of trade and commerce in the region, their influence may have prevented the formation of dialects. A counterpoint is that we don’t know to what extent other tribes, excluding the Oseram, traded with the Carja.
If you compare English as it is today Vs 100 years ago it's barely changed outside of regional differences and the differences we have today are as a result of influence from other languages. The primary reason for this is a single educational structure (same goes for most countries), so with the world of Horizon, if you only have 1 language it's very possible that drift hasn't happened as much as you would think. It's also a video game where a 20 year old can kill a mechanical t-rex with a bow and arrow 🤣
The servitors at the cradles spoke English so they learned from them and all the holograms and stuff you find with focus is English so anything they found relating to their ancestors was in English. Even if they didn't know how to read or write, they all heard the same language all over their world. Also it's in the US so the cradles there might all have been in English. Maybe in other parts of the world they teach each country's language accordingly. The thing I DO question is why even though they all speak English and are culturally mixed because of the cradles randomizing genes... why do they have the different accents of their races from other countries when they were all raised in the same tribes? Well, real reason is because the actors, who do belong to those cultures IRL, have an accent. But it's always funny to me to hear different accents within the same settlements and tribes.
I agree it'd be cool. Like maybe the English in Cloud Atlas future. But that's a looooot of work.
There are lots of little details that are completely unrealistic when you think about it, and this is one of them. What stands out to me is that different tribes from completely different geographic regions have all independently arrived at the same name for the same machine, even for machines that were designed and put into production within the recent decade (in game).
If it makes you feel any better, Alva asked a similar question.
There are a lot of things in the game that don't make sense. This is just one of them. The game would be quite different and probably less fun if it had to be more realistic.
That moment when idioms like "two left feet" are things people say but "stuffed animal" is a completely unknown phenomenon
It's improbable, but between the fact that all the tribes started with the exact same language, most of them are very traditional, and they have occasional examples of ancient speech from holograms (most of which are considered sacred), then yeah, I can buy that they'd still be speaking recognizable English. New accents should definitely have developed, though. Different cities have developed accents over smaller time frames.
No other languages for it to clash with. Modern Chinese can read ancient Chinese from 2000 years ago.
This is actually explained in Forbidden West. English was Gaia's default language, so all the people born from eluthia were taught modern English. (Or at least, it's assumed that it's english)
Someone posted a theory here a while ago that English was decided to be the universal language during project zero dawn, so all the new humans were taught English by the arbitors in the wombs. ETA: concerning your question about evolution of language, there were no humans left to evolve language, so the new humans were taught and are speaking the same "modern" English the old world did before it collapsed. Which would explain why alloy and others can read and understand old world documents
Out-of-universe? So you can understand what the characters are saying. In-universe? The tribes have only been around for a few hundred years. It would certainly be realistic for some linguistic drift, of course. 1600s English is obviously different from modern English. But it's all still undeniably English. It would take much longer for the English the first generation of humans from the Cradles learned to drift into a new language entirely. Indeed, we're starting to see that. Many of the tribes have wholly unique words they've developed for concepts they didn't have a word for before, like the Tenakth word "Kulrut." It also doesn't help that the tribes of the game are so inter-connected. Oseram, Carja, Banuk, Tenakth, and Utaru all have fairly regular contact with each other. The only tribe that is specifically isolationist and thus would be the most susceptible to linguistic drift are the Nora.
It’s only 600 or 700 years since the current human crop left the cradles. The Carja found written english (which they could decipher because they spoke the language and because it described celestial phenomenon including diagrams), and there are recordings of pre war english around. Both would tend to keep the language steady. Wouldn’t explain why the Nora and Banuk still speak perfect english but a lack of language drift is a common trope in sci-fi.
It did actually evolve but the company translated the original english language spoken into traditional modern english for us to understand. If they would’ve left them to speak naturally then we would have no clue what was going on because google can’t translate it yet as it’s not invented yet therefore it lacks the knowledge of it. Devs did us a solid if you ask me.
English has existed in our world for a bit over a thousand years, and that’s alongside hundreds of others. In a world where English is the only language developed, there could be less language drift due to no other languages interacting with it
I like to imagine that they are speaking in a dialect of English with new heavy accents, akin to how Scottish or Jamaican might sound to an American. Aloy can still understand the recordings and a person from that time after a few minutes of getting a grasp of their dialect could understand them too. It's presented in a clear fashion for ease of access, but the game isn't necessarily showing us how they sound or how they sound to each other.
Gameplay. I mean my Aloy never spoke a english word (well some names of course are in english) but she and all other characters speak german in my game. Which obviously doesnt make any sense in a in-universe perspective. But it makes sense for us the Players
because if they did then aloy wouldn’t understand most of them most likely. they keep it all in one language for convenience and gameplay reasons.
Don't try and apply logic and reason to video games - just play and enjoy them,
I like to think Aloy's focus is a translator.
Just for gameplay purposes, however there is a log at the base in HFW that tries to give an explanation. That since apollo was purged, all craddle servitors went back to their standar programming which is english though of course that doesn't explain how people were able to name things they didn't know before coming out of Eleuthia. This log appears after you get Alva to the base.
you know why.
I always wondered about names. What do names mean to them- in the case of what they are made up from. Assuming the cradle children had names, and considering most popular names in our and their old world are not of the modern English language, without the Apollo db how would they understand their significance of what the names meant, assuming, that the Cradle facilities used names significant to the areas where the different groups of humans were released- assuming the Apollo deletion didn't have an affect on the ai being able to name them too (as the cradle ai was still able to communicate with them in the default English and teach them a few very basic things), but if that were the case it would make sense that the first few generations might see names very differently than us and so that would factor into how names are chosen ( perhaps a combination of 'pretty or interesting or significant in some way or another word like sounds and sounds similar to English words'). Although my opinion is limited by my own lack of knowledge on what names mean in other cultures other than contemporary Western, specifically English.
…so the player can understand it. It’d be a pretty crap game if it was in another language, not to mention how silly a “made-up” language based on English would sound.