So, Hanzo and Genji both have a specific sentence particle in their sentence:
Genji: 竜神の剣を喰らえ
Hanzo: 竜が我が敵を喰らう
If you’ll notice, they both have this symbol: を
Now, I won’t go into the specifics (it marks the direct object of a sentence if anyone’s interested), but what I noticed is the pronunciation. See, in many parts of Japan, the sentence particle を is pronounced “O” which is how Genji pronounces it. “Ryuujin no ken o kurae.”
However, in other, select parts of Japan, it’s pronounced “Wo.” This is how Hanzo pronounces it. “Ryuu ga waga teki wo kurau.”
This alone means that these two brothers, who grew up under the same roof, speak different regional dialects of Japanese.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make a big fuss. It’s honestly not a big deal. But I do know that Blizzard is always making efforts to properly represent the cultures and backgrounds of their characters—i.e. the very recently-added Portuguese voice lines for Lucio or how upset they were when they accidentally had an Australian sign call take-away food “take out”—so I figured that it might as well be something to point out to them.
I’m an American, so I have poor geography skills (jOkE BtW), but based on what I know about the Japanese language:
The Tokyo dialect is by far the most spoken, widely used, and widely known dialect, and they pronounce the particle as “o.” Also, the areas of Japan that pronounce it “wo” are very select and specific, and typically are in the southern region of the country.
I always thought they sounded different tbh. Hanzo, especially, though I suppose you could attest that to his VA’s lack of knowledge of Japanese.
Also, according to the wiki, his Wolf line is
狼よ、我が敵を食らえ!" or "“ōkami yo waga teki o kurae!” - “Wolf, devour our enemies!” It’s been a while since I was in Japanese class, but this is an instance of different pronunciation of the same particle correct? If so, then this is another inconsistency lol.
Good pickup. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a minor thing that Blizzard overlooked when picking the voice actors, kinda like how some Russian speakers find Zarya’s pronunciation a bit odd because the voice actress is Ukranian IIRC.
If you’re wanting to find a lore explanation for it, Genji and Hanzo’s paths through life, despite being brothers, were pretty different. It could have been that during Genji’s playboy years, or when Hanzo was learning how to lead the family’s empire, their accent slightly changed.
Another thing to consider is what happened after Hanzo killed Genji. He ran away, so he could’ve spent his time off the grid in the country-side(s) of Japan. It’s possible the secondary dialect had an impact on his own dialect.
Genji on the other hand grew up in one place, then wound up in OW’s hands. So his dialect wouldn’t have had no other influences.
I think this is because of their upbringing though, as Hanzo was raised to follow tradition and probably speak like his elders, Genji found himself traveling or simply on the streets where proper language is far more globalized
I lol’d at this because it is not true at all. Yes some characters seem to be represented quite well… others though…yikes.
Mercy doesn’t sound like she is from Switzerland at all. She speaks highgerman which is only used in germany. She sounds like a german, more so than Reinhardt which doesn’t sound german at all btw.
Kids in Switzerland learn highgerman in school but outside of school, and some TV shows, highgerman is never used.
I hate how she speaks because it doesn’t represent her coming from switzerland at all. We speak swissgerman around Zürich (where she comes from and lives) which actually sounds really different to highgerman for anyone who knows any german at all. People from germany who aren’t from the southern parts of germany have a lot of trouble in understanding swissgerman. You could compare it to portuguese and spanish in that they are basicly two different languages which have some similarities. The only difference is that no one ever declared swissgerman as an official language unlike spanish/portuguese.
Mercy has literally one voice line under the ‘hello’ category which is swissgerman but the voice actress absolutely murdered that line horribly.
Tldr: I do not feel represented at all. I’d rather have no hero coming from my country at all than someone who missrepresents it.
(Funny side note: If you change the game to german, Mercy actually speaks some swissgerman, just not in the english version which boggles my mind.)
I was thinking something like this, but the other way around: Hanzo’s stayed where he was to rule his little empire, Genji’s been traveling all over the place with Zen or something.
EDIT: Goddamnit, I didn’t notice that 5 Month Necro! >.<