- Site Map >
- Community >
- Sims Discussion >
- Sims 2 >
- General - Anyone interested learning Simlish language..?
- Site Map >
- Community >
- Sims Discussion >
- Sims 2 >
- General - Anyone interested learning Simlish language..?
#51
16th Mar 2014 at 7:39 PM
Posts: 7,361
Thanks: 2938 in 27 Posts
ahah! yeah..as I posted, I agree that some words would actually mean something, like nooboo, or sule-sule...but this would be just to add some consistency.
But this is not a complete language..you could not learn it. It lacks verbs and such. EA actually hire someone who does decoding languages, old forgotten ones and etc..as a living. Probably to make sure, Simlish would be proper and non-offensive to anyone.
Another thing is, if it would be a real language..then the same sentences, words, would then be using by all, regardless of their gender/age. Besides nooboo, maybe dag-dag..sule-sule ?..and even then, teen female uses "bloo bagoo", or "cuh-teek-a-loo" when they run into someone, or such, and this is only used by them. Of course, even in English, there are many ways to say HI, or How are you?..but still. We'd hear more of the same sentences and words, if they were all using a real language.
But this is not a complete language..you could not learn it. It lacks verbs and such. EA actually hire someone who does decoding languages, old forgotten ones and etc..as a living. Probably to make sure, Simlish would be proper and non-offensive to anyone.
Another thing is, if it would be a real language..then the same sentences, words, would then be using by all, regardless of their gender/age. Besides nooboo, maybe dag-dag..sule-sule ?..and even then, teen female uses "bloo bagoo", or "cuh-teek-a-loo" when they run into someone, or such, and this is only used by them. Of course, even in English, there are many ways to say HI, or How are you?..but still. We'd hear more of the same sentences and words, if they were all using a real language.
Advertisement
Scholar
#52
17th Mar 2014 at 12:43 PM
Posts: 1,415
Simlish is a word-by-word cipher; it replaces real words with invented alternatives. However, its grammar is essentially English, with case-by-case modifications to make it easier to mould the language to the gameplay. This is why Simlish looks like a language but isn't really one.
#53
19th Mar 2014 at 9:04 PM
Posts: 277
Ram sheep ne vunch - Everybody to the pool!
#54
22nd Mar 2014 at 5:06 AM
Posts: 7,390
Thanks: 4 in 2 Posts
Wish I could remember the movie (two angels come to Earth and have arguments); one of the characters was trying to catch up to another one, and clearly said "clarm woofum!" - it's what the animal trainer says when teaching "come here" - blew me away!
Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
#55
22nd Mar 2014 at 6:16 AM
Posts: 202
I suspect that someone involved in the creation of the Sim language was familiar with Russian- of course, that may be a case of everything looking like a nail to a hammer, but there are some pretty striking moments. For example, when a male sim is doing the attraction animation, he says something like "ooooooh, be-linka!" That "ka" ending sounds like a Russian diminuative form, i.e. the form of a name or word used to express affection. When parents are playing with toddlers, they sometimes say "boshinki, boshinki!" Again, the "shinki" sound is very similar to Russian diminutive forms. Again, I may be hearing what I want to hear, but there definitely seems to be a hint of Russian in there.
#56
22nd Mar 2014 at 9:58 PM
Posts: 1,972
Quote: Originally posted by ieta_cassiopeia
Simlish is a word-by-word cipher; it replaces real words with invented alternatives. |
I believe there is some such systematic process when English-language song lyrics are Simlified.
But the spoken Simlish in the game is, I believe, completely ad-libbed by the voice actors, except for a very few words that do have pinned-down meanings, such as nooboo. Except for those words, it's not clear the actors had any specific English words in mind. There are videos of them doing it, and it looks like it flows pretty freely & isn't read from a script.
Even for the song lyrics, I'll bet the translations are not stable from one song to the next -- except, again, for a small set of pinned-down words like voo.
For example, look at "Pocketful of Sunshine"...
Eu getta pocket, getta pocket, getta sunshii
Eu getta luub, ibba noo, dibba oomee yow.
From this we might conclude that the Simlish word for "pocket" is "pocket", but I think that will only be correct for this song.
Another very tempting conclusion would be that Eu (pronounced "Yoo") is the first-person singular pronoun. Having a word for "I" that's pronounced the same as English "you" is a little bit of a pain, but it is very realistic in view of other Indo-European languages like Italian "io", Russian "ya", Spanish "yo", French "je", and Romanian ... "eu"!
But after that, things fall apart pretty fast. There is no way to map Simlish getta onto the two different English phrases ("got a" and "full of") in the original lyrics, so the word-for-word approach doesn't survive to the end of the first line. At that point we have to admit that the supposed "translation" is not a word-for-word cipher, nor a true translation, but mostly an attempt to obfuscate the English while getting several of the right sounds somewhere into the result. Because the order of the sounds is reasonably well preserved by that process, the word order is too -- and therefore we might be tempted to think we see grammar underneath it somewhere, but I think the process is completely grammar-free.
Let me be clear that I love Simlish, even while I'm letting air out of the notion that EA has created a language or even a cipher. The Sims are my people, I dream in Simlish and I sing Simlish in the shower. I believe the processes that create Simlish, even ad-libbing by voice actors, are still basically human linguistic processes. I also believe that Sim culture, like that of humans, is capable of growing beyond its original story.
Project page for quantitative analysis of spoken Simlish
(disclosure: I'm the webmaster, so I'm not citing that page as authority for this post, which would amount to sock-puppeting.)
#57
25th Apr 2014 at 1:19 AM
Posts: 1,872
Thanks: 1088 in 19 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by BloodyScholastic
Just took a break from stressing out doing college thesis... then I saw THIS : SIMLISH | POSSIBLE ENGLISH MEANING Ah, van vesua! Cummuns nala | Hello, how are you doing? Arriba chandler | you annoying TV workout presenter Araganda | Move away baya su du karn, baya su du bwak, baya baybee ogaand donk donk donk! girbits, girbits vooooo GIRBITS! pass it to the left, pass it to the right, now get out there and figh fight fight! llamas, llamas gooooo llamas! UPDATE: for more go to Simlish Dictionary for original idea. Thanks Levera. Cannot post it here because it's too long |
I've often thought of translating Simlish - you've saved me the trouble
Who Posted
|