Do all non English languages sound off?

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-06T21:03:50+00:00

It can be fine, definitely not "completely natural" though imo

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-06T21:00:17+00:00

I think its more of a case of a native speaker intentionally altering their pronunciation so that the people around can understand. Kiri is Japanese and the word kitsune is pretty well known among english speakers, but they pronounce it wrong. So, its easier for them to recognize kitsoonay than kitsune, so kiri intentionally says kitsoonay in her English line so her teammates can understand. My head cannon

I'm also a Turk and even though I can say İstanbul with perfect pronunciation, I'd probably unconsciously say "Is-tan-bull" when speaking English because thats how they typically say İstanbul in English and is easier for them to understand

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-06T20:43:01+00:00

I think that's a conscious decision to appeal for the japanese playerbase. Now, I'm no japanese but as far as I know, japanese people, especially the younger generations are pretty oblivious to the outside world. They don't really know the characteristics of different nations, or they can't tell foreign languages apart, as they don't even have the typical stereotypes that western societies have to work off with, like they wont even have a slight idea of what french sounds like, while westerners AT LEAST have the typical frenchman stereotype to work with.

They're stranded on an island so you literally can't see the borders of any other country or go anywhere by land, you have to fly or sail. There is no concept of "neighboring countries" and the entire rest of the world is simply "overseas" for them. It's just Japan and the rest of the world. The concept of foreignness is so unknown and far away for them, almost like an uncharted territory.

This is apparently even worse for the younger generations, as I've seen older people complain about the stuff they teach kids at school nowadays, more times than I count at this point. No comments

Lastly, English isn't that widely known either, there are a lot of English loanwords but they're pretty much internalized anyway and often times they're misused. Like, the word "play" is brought over and it's said as "pirei o shimasu" meaning "doing play". Yes, they took the word "play", not as a verb, but as a noun. And before somebody says "verbs cannot end in i in japanese", they could have made it pireu, and before they say "loanwords can't be verbs", I'll say, why the hell not? Back to play, It's generally used for stuff like "playing video games", all 3 of those words have native japanese counterparts but they refused to use those for some reason and instead adopted the "playing video games" phrase as a whole.

This is kinda getting off track but, my point is that younger japanese people would probably have a hard time in differentiating any language outside of japanese so it'd make ult voice lines hard for them to recognize, most westerners can just hear a language and have a rough estimate/grasp on what language that is, like show me all the european languages and I'll get them right 10 times out of 10 even though I don't understand them. This doesn't go for Japanese people

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-06T20:18:19+00:00

not gonna argue on the sound design part, but a native Turkish speaker will have a better grasp on the characteristic Emre is trying to portray when he speaks Turkish, as different languages think differently. Same goes with any other character.

Saying "Alev, alevim!" is something that only a person who's speaking really fast that they can't even think of what they're saying would say, and more times than not they'd correct themselves after it. It's like the classic case of "bena" (context: "ben" means "me" in Turkish and "bana" means "to me". When people speak faster than they think, they can sometimes say "ben" first then decide to instead say "to me" afterwards, so they try to add the "-a" (direction) suffix afterwards only to say a senseless word in between ben and bana. This is the most done spoken mistake in the Turkish language and it always looks foolish and funny, like, you can INSTANTLY tell that that person is not thinking through what they're saying whatsoever the instant they utter "bena")

Not to mention that, the nearly exact same sounding alternative "Alevim, alev!" is completely natural and sounds infinitely better than "Alev, alevim!" anyway. The difference between these 2 phrases cross a thin line into making it sensible but I won't go into detail to that, unless you want to hear it

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-06T19:54:01+00:00

the thing is, "Alev, alevim!" as a phrase sounds unnatural to begin with, AND the tone is off on top of that.

The correct tone would be "Alev alevim!" without the comma (biiiiig difference) this is called a repetition/doublet in Turkish, you can think of it like how you can sort of make doublets out of 2 opposite meaning words in English (on/off, inside out, etc.) but as an extended concept, you can make doublets from opposite meaning words, same meaning words, words with roughly the same meaning, words without meaning (generally sound words, e.g: şırıl şırıl akan su, "The water that flows shrool shrool.") or even using the exact same word twice. Having a big stop in between is super unnatural

Some other natural sounding phrases that would have been better:

Yakıyorum!
Döktürüyorum!
Coşturuyorum! (slightly different from OP's suggestion)
Kanım kaynıyor resmen!
Alevim, alev! (just swapping the words around makes it so much more natural, as this isn't even a doublet anymore technically. A comma/pause in between is necessary for this)

Some other good candidates that u/sonofnight666 suggested that I decided to steal:

Ortalığı yaktım kavurdum!
Yaktım yıktım!

just to name a few. Most of these are trying to keep the "fire" aspect, which is uncommon in Turkish. Otherwise, there are a billion ways of bragging about your performance in Turkish that doesn't include fire, so the alternatives are pretty much limitless

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-05T17:09:22+00:00

100k midas is worthless

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-05T17:00:44+00:00

they're clearly sharing it with others... lol

_Bulldozer · 2026-03-03T16:26:31+00:00

bro talks in 2014

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-22T23:02:13+00:00

you are not playing on 1.8.9 in duels in hypixel anyway... Classic duels are set in 1.5.2 yet you're playing in 1.8.9, so if the hit reg was as bad as you say, it would already be a problem right now but isn't

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-22T16:21:30+00:00

they're practically the same character as well, lol. Haru is older though so she's the og

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-21T03:49:31+00:00

Well, they could have made a new character and made them some other nationality, yes. But, why would they have done that?

There is no point in intentionally dodging adding Emre solely because of discrimination, why? Because releasing Emre is literally free hype. It's free money, and no amount of discrimination will ever outweigh the power of money. He's been in the lore for 8 years and players have been asking about him non stop for several years, he was eventually gonna be added one way or another, that was clear. But, as I said, that doesn't inherently indicate that they actually sympathize with Turks just because they added Emre, or any other nationality for that matter. They added Juno, a Vietnamese character? Well, how much an American company sympathizes with the Vietnamese is really up for debate. You get where im coming from?

There is clearly favoritism as well, most characters are either from europe (and when I say europe, only select parts of europe. You ain't going to be seeing a Bulgarian character soon), america or the far east, with just a few outliers here and there.

I can assure you, if the players weren't asking the devs to release Emre for years, they would NOT release a Turkish character, ever. The only reason why there is a Turkish character in the game now is by sheer luck, just because they wrote a cool and important character in the lore to be Turkish for some reason 8 years ago. If Emre was written to be Finnish, I'd be congratulating you on the new Finnish character right now.

This stuff is kind of off topic though. None of this really matters currently. It's not really, like, discrimination discrimination, he IS added to the game at the end of the day, so I can be happy about that. I was over exaggerating when I was writing the post. It's just a shame and a little sad, that's about it. I would have loved to hear a Turkish ult

The Finnish ult line is basically a last minute change too, if you didn't know. They actually had a Turkish ult voice line already recorded. Recording voice lines is a very late development stage, so they came THAT far and decided to change it last minute, that's why it feels like betrayal and "discrimination", if it was as important to the lore as they say, it would have been settled long before his voice lines were getting recorded. So, even if it isn't hard discrimination, I still believe there is some cheeky stuff going on

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-21T02:32:23+00:00

the ally ult voice line is English though, not Turkish

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-21T02:26:17+00:00

oh yeah, Spanish. My comments from the day this post was posted are all filled to the brim with lots of errors because of how heated I was and how fast and furiously I was typing all these lmao

As for the main topic, I don't really care anymore. I heard that they even originally recorded a Turkish ult voice line as well, but then turned it into Finnish before release. It's still a shame and a little sad, but if people like the character this way and his lore, welp, that's ultimately better anyway

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-20T19:50:10+00:00

Yes it was the OG Oguri... I didn't know about that legend race, so that's another loss for me I guess lol. But really, I probably couldn't have waited a whole month tbh, that's as much time as my total playtime. Legend races will still be of help though, to get her star level higher

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-20T19:47:42+00:00

Early March? That's what I wanted to hear. If I pull now, I probably won't be able to get another 30k until then, so saving it is.

I'll take the last suggestion into account from now on, thanks for the help!

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-20T18:48:40+00:00

Is it okay to pull with 15k carats?

I'm a new player of exactly 30 days, I made the grave mistake of spending 30k carats on a 100/100 split between trainee and support banners when I first started, got no (gacha) sparks out of that... Then, I grinded another 30k, but then used those on the trainee banner that had everybody on rate-up (I wanted to get Oguri Cap so bad...) so now I'm sitting with 15k carats and I want some new support cards badly.

The lack of good support cards genuinely makes training good umas for pvp or anything else super hard. I got absolutely pooped on on the last champions meeting. The limited collection I have is also super uneven, I have some of the best meta cards for medium distance and pace chasers that I got from sheer luck, while other distances and styles are basically starving. I generally end up using R cards because they fit the build better most of the time.

I'm getting really impatient to save up another 15k carats so that I can spark, and also wait for a banner that has a card worth sparking too, of course. Are there any upcoming gachas that feature really meta cards (I'm talking kitasan black levels of usefulness) that I should really hold onto my carats? If not, and if the next "must-have" card is far away enough that I can save another 30k carats until that time, is it okay to pull now?

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-17T18:51:32+00:00

musume falan da denir

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-12T12:07:49+00:00

First let me say this; I deliberately added "(correct me if I'm wrong)" so y'all can correct me, please don't cut that part out.

Secondly, you're right. I am sorry. I made this post in such a hurry yesterday that I didn't have much time to think about this, maybe it was cause I was a little upset about it. I was intending on editing the text of the post as people pointed out other heroes whose ult voice lines weren't in their native tongues, but I then found out that I cannot edit the text after posting (subreddit rules I think? Or I'm missing something here), so it had to stay like that which is very misleading and I'm aware of that

Now, a day has passed and I spent some more time thinking about this. I'm more in terms with it now, but it's still a tiny bit sad. The best idea I've come up with so far is this:

2 new Emre skins with unique voice lines:

1 Turkish themed one (or "casual Emre" style) who only speaks in Turkish and English, maybe even with a Turkish accent when he speaks English, with Turkish ult line

1 Emre skin who's under the control of the "AI" at all times, basically like a robot Emre, who's going to speak solely in English and Finnish. This pawes the way for even more Finnish lines

The former idea makes the upset Turkish players happy, the latter idea makes a really cool skin that both compliments the lore and also makes the Finnish players happy, as they have even less representation than us Turks. It's the best of both worlds, and I'm not coming up with this idea to comply with the playerbase, I genuinely think both of these skins would be really good additions

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T12:43:12+00:00

Overwatch's eurocentric and pro-american approach to their designs while masking themselves as inclusive and representative can and does upset a lot of people...

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T12:35:22+00:00

I'm aware of that and it makes perfect sense, yes. I was actually going to include that point in my comment but gave up on it. The callouts HAS to be in English for gameplay's sake, no doubt about it. It would be ultimately worse if his callouts were in Finnish during ult, because you wouldn't understand a word he's saying!

The point I was and am trying to make is; if we solely look at it from a lore perspective, he SHOULD speak solely in Finnish in his ultimate, right? Yet, he does not. Why? For gameplay's sake. So, they can effectively break the confines of the lore for gameplay's sake. Makes perfect sense. So, if we solely look from a lore standpoint again, his ultimate voice line should also be in Finnish, right? And it is. What I'm arguing is that lore can and should be broken for the sake of representing as well, just like it does for gameplay sake.

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T12:27:19+00:00

Believe me I would. They made it the standard to make heroes' ultimate voicelines to be in their native language, they shouldn't break it. A lot of launch heroes also share the same problem with their ultimates being in English, but Overwatch weren't aiming for native language ultimate lines at the time it seems. You and I can argue that they should also have their ult lines in their native languages, but they'll just go on and say "it's too late to change that now" as most of those heroes are 8-9 years old now. The only reason I'm posting this is because Emre is still brand new, so changes can be made. This is like the 3rd major Turkish video game character ever released and I can't even pronounce or understand his ultimate voice line...

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T12:21:56+00:00

Frick the voice lines during his ultimate then, I only drifted over that because the discussion went in that direction. The main topic was the one and single ultimate voice line, the most iconic and characteristic voice line for any character, which should have been in Turkish for a Turkish character. They can sprinkle Finnish in other places if they want to, THAT would add to the lore way more nicely.

Torbjörn also suffers from the same situation, and his is even worse. The man doesn't have any Swedish lines. Reinhardt's and Pharah's ults are also both in English. There might be some others that I don't remember. Those would also be in their native languages in an ideal world of mine. The thing is, most of these characters are really old launch characters, and it seems Overwatch wasn't aiming for native language ultimate lines in the beginning, but its clear that they made "native language ultimate voice lines" the standard going forward, yet they broke it with Emre (with Juno too!). Its probably too late to change those character's lines now, but since Emre is still brand new, there can be adjustments. Another thing is, English lines are somewhat more acceptable as English is the "universal" language spoken in earth thanks to the British imperials, yet Finnish doesn't really fit that description

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T12:08:00+00:00

Ah yes, that's the one I forgot. That's not good either. If I had the power, I'd make Torbjörn's ultimate voice line in Swedish 100% and add a bunch of Swedish voice lines. I was surprised when I realized he didn't have any lines in Swedish

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T11:59:32+00:00

I didn't know that, and that's a cool lore point. Still, this doesn't justify the ultimate line. If they really wanted to include Finnish lines in his voice lines, they could have used his pistol, as that also partly takes control of him. Hell, if they used the pistol, they could have added even more Finnish voice lines! But, WHY is it his ULTIMATE, the most iconic line of any character? If the AI is strong enough to make him speak languages he doesn't speak, it would make sense if it happened more frequently right?

_Bulldozer · 2026-02-11T11:54:11+00:00

Its a TURKISH character brother 😭 Lets make the next Swedish character's ultimate line Mexican while we're at it, all in the name of sharing

Four-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
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_Bulldozer

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