Two Peoples Separated By A Common Language
 

Love the game obviously, but has anyone else noticed how much confusion there is in BoP between British and American accents? During the BoB missions we constantly hear American accents in the radio chatter, then during the last Sicily missions we are flying as a USAAF pilot in an early Mustang with British markings and American accents flying around all over the place. Huh?

Is this is a product of the Russian/English language barrier? Was there going to be some explanation for this involving Eagle squadron or something that never got put into the game, or just another sign of the rush put on the devs by the publishers, that they did one set of english language voice overs?

Its not a huge deal, just kind of a weird oversight.

It does seem rather odd in places.

Sometimes i do find it hard to distinguish between american and british and who im fighting for. Ah well, i dont need to go back and play through so no big deal on my part :)

I kinda have that issue in on line too. I love the Brits, and my non-USA friends I fly with. There are several Britts, and one guy I think he is from Austria? But, sometimes, I have a hard time understanding their accents, even though I assume it is really considered to them that Americans have the accent, lol.. The guy from Austria, also one I flew with a couple times I think was a Chechavokian... I really do enjoy flying with them, and we do have allot of dialog, and allot of times, I just can't understand what he is saying to me even though he is speaking English. I think his native language is German and his English is pretty good, but still sort of broken, and terms he is not sure how to convey to to me. And I even taken German in school and used to speak it (however not fluently). That was 20 + years ago when I served in the USAF over in germany, so I am used to the dialog, but still today over the headset, I get tired and embarrased to keep saying "HUH?"... Not to mention American's accent and how we really do butcher the English language.. hehheh..

Your forgetting that the RAF in WW2 was a multi-national force. There were plenty of US and Canadian Pilots flying for them.

Very true.

The voice overs for this game though are shoddy at best. Though one particlur bit of raido chatter i do like (love it infact) is when you fly against a 109 and your in a spitfire... you get a round off and you hear the german say "achtung spitfire" or something along that line, but "spitfire" is definately said, making it sound epic lol.

No, I'm not forgetting, I asked in my original post if this was something having to do with Eagle Squadron that was never fully fleshed out in the game. While the RAF had multinational units, it was still primarily British, thus having mainly American accents on the radio in the Battle of Britain is a little odd. that needs explaining, or someone just goofed, and my money is on the latter.

from wikipedia article on Non-British Personnel in the Battle of Britain:

The RAF Roll of Honour for the Battle of Britain recognises 574 pilots from countries other than the United Kingdom, as flying at least one authorised operational sortie with an eligible unit during the period from 10 July to 31 October 1940, alongside 2,353 British pilots.[

I think Doktorwzzerd is right. Only seven Americans are recognized as having flown in the BoB, out of thousands of pilots. (Note that this number includes those pretending to be Canadian. Legally, Americans were not supposed to fight in foreign militaries at all.) The Eagle Squadrons didn't become operational until the BoB was well over.

Are these pilots speaking with "American" accents actually Canadians? That might make more sense -- except according to my aged high school English teacher who was alive at the time (I'm Canadian), most Canadians prior to WW2 spoke with British accents; during WW2 many might still have sounded British. It was probably the influence of American television (or perhaps radio) that caused our accents to gradually sound more American over time. Can any other Canadians confirm this?

the radio chatter hasnt really bothered me much at least they didnt make us brits sound like the normal cheesy spiffs eg oh jolly good old chap tally ho oh spiffing etc it really cheeses me off when games do that and the odd film :grin:

Voice chatter gives many lol moments. Though I get sick of hearing "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?" screamed through my speakers every two seconds.

LOL, there was one time one of the missions glitched on me, and wouldn't give me my next objective... Well, I keep hearing the guys screaming "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR" at me when there were no enemies... I was getting so choked... lol :-P

during the battle of britain as pointed out their were only a handful of americans (7) and not so many canadians (94)

Also the yanks were part of eagle squadron, well in game you dont play as eagle squadron. You play as some other random one and should in theory be hearing a british pilot, or the odd ozzie or kiwi maybe, wh oknows if your lucky you could get the czech, polish, jamaica (1 pilot).....

Point being, youre not in eagle squadron so for games sake you think you would be listening to an englishman. Not a mixture of both.

Brother I'm right there with ya. I flew with a super nice guy a few weeks ago (I think he was Dutch) and had the same problem. Being from the deep south in the US I know my accent sounded as alien to him as his did to me.

I Just found it funny shooting down Tuck
"What are you doing" "thats a friendly"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH"
lol

Well you need to stop waiting, obviously.:)

Considering that all the video "diary" segments were done by the same Russian narrator, it's not surprising. Also there's a recession going on, they probably didn't have the capital to find and hire voice artists from the UK and US. Not so easy to hire when most don't speak Russian.

Also, the radio chatter and wingman responses are a stock set of phrases, and they seem to just get randomized here and there. In BoB the garbled words right before the American says, "you're breaking up, say again?" sound like Russian if anything.

It's not unusual to find Russians who can do good American accents with short lines. I've seen a few Soviet-era movies where the American characters sound almost perfect. They probably just misplaced some of them.

Kinda like in the movie The Battle of Britain, where instead of a German accent. The German bomber pilot, shouts "SPITFIRE!" in an English accent. I think it's somewhere between the smoking Spit, and the Black Lab with the sad facing looking on; and the final showdown at the end?

The black lab belongs to the pilot played by michael caine. The part you describe is when michael caine takes up a squadron of reserves for a training flight and they get jumped by the 109's. In the ensuing fight all bar one spitfire gets shot down, michael caine getting blown up in the process by some german major.

Im not to sure how the voice acting works with the battle of britain film. The "HE111's" though to be honest the only notable difference in the word spitfire between english/germn would be (the way they say it) -

English - spitfire
German - Shpitfire


lol, best i could do.

Totally agree with you there Old bean... its just not cricket, is it?

I have to say that the Squadron leader during some of the RAF Campaign missions in Sicily did make me laugh though. Doesnt he have quite a strong cockney (East London, for those that don't know) accent going on? I never though I'd hear that in a WW2 Flight sim.

"C'or blimey Guv'nor, watch out for them 'Einkels!! They'll 'ave your guts for garters!" (or something to that effect)

I think its so funny that we are speaking the same language but with different accents and common phrases of dialouge,one of the most cryingly funny moments iv ever had online was on battlstations on x box,there were 2 americans and me(british)and another english lad from dudley in the black country,now i have trouble understanding people from dudley but the poor dudes from across the pond had no chance i spent the whole game translating dudley english to very confused americans!lol

Speaking of the Squadron Leader's cockney accent, it also bugs me a little bit that the game portrays members of the working class as officers. England still very much had a class system at the time and that system very much excluded all but the gentry from having an officer's commission, which was required to be a pilot. Generally speaking, the lower classes were restricted to serving as enlisted and NCO aircrew servicemen. I am sure there are exceptions to this, but generally speaking its true. See the BBC film "Piece of Cake" to get a sense of how rigid those social divisions within the RAF were.

Of course this has no effect on gameplay, but I can't stand it when games and movies attempt to graft modern personalities and social norms onto the people of the past, Brothers In Arms:HH being a game that particularly turned my screws.

Keep in mind that the game was made by Russians. They kind of axed class structure in Russia during the Revolution. What I'm saying is it's something that they might not have even thought about, rather than a purposeful injection of modern values.

Maybe he's just trying to pronounce it authentically? Like how I say "Perie" instead of Paris, since I've taken French. (I know, it was probably just a gaff and I'm being too optimistic.)

Now in the old war comics of my school days, German pilots and crews always shouted "Actung Spitfire", "Gott in Himmel", "Hifle", "Die Englander Pigdog" and other cliched banter.

War comic RAF banter was always "Wizzard prang, old boy", "Jerry on your six", "Spiffing", etc.

During WW2, Geordies (folks from Newcastle) we'ren't allowed to fly aircraft as they could have been mistaken for Hungarians when speaking and shot down in mistake of being a German ally.

Even in the 21st century, Geordies still haven't learnt to speak English properly.

I'd prefer the cliched RAF fighter pilot banter in the game.

Wizzard prang, old boy? I like that haha, what does it mean?

Oh yeah, I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, I think people just have a tendency to assume that the past was relatively like today, but it wasn't.



"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

Oh yeah, I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, I think people just have a tendency to assume that the past was relatively like today, but it wasn't.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

—L.P. Hartley

-New favorite quote!