WANTED: Pahlavi voicemod actor

**Krusader** · 06-13-2007, 00:45

The EB team needs someone to lend their voice to the Pahlavi voicemod. This voicemod will be for the Pahlava faction.

What this entails:

*You need to have a microphone
*You need to be able to understand instructions given by the voicemod manager and follow those instructions as he says (pronounciation, microphone position etc)
*You have to be male.
*You need a good voice, which means:

Yes:
Anyone who can fluently speak Persian, whether Dari, Tadjik Dari (Parsiwan or Pahlewani), or Parsi, Gilaki, Baluch, Kurdish (Preferrably Kurmanji, which would be ideal), Ossetian or any other obscure indigenous Iranian language, heck even Armenian would be ideal. Western Indian people are also among the ideal target.

Less ideal, but still good. Anyone who speaks any Latin/Romance language, preferrably French, or another Indo-European language like Greek. Heck anyone else who can pronounce letters properly or make good use of the vocal register will suit.

No:
Any Sino-Altaic or Altaic languages - Anything from fluent speakers of Finnish, Magyar/Hungarian, Turkish (Azeri being the clear exception since many locals do happen to speak Persian fluently), Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, to Japanese. Then sorry nope.

Semitic languages - Arabic, Hebrew, Jiddisch, Aramaic, Chaldean.

Bantu, other African or remote Indigenous languages

---

If you apply and we pick you (after hearing samples) you will get in touch with the guys responsible for making the voicemod and also a pronunciation guide for all words. All recording will be done in group sessions with the voicemod manager to make sure the commands are properly spoken and audio files have proper quality.

And the EB team would be grateful for anyone who wishes to help us adding this awesome facet of the mod and making yours and others Pahlavi experience all the better

**Tuuvi** · 06-13-2007, 05:32

Just a question but why does speaking asian and semitic languages disqualify you? Is it because accents and such would get in the way?

**KARTLOS** · 06-13-2007, 05:54

Originally Posted by Lignator

Just a question but why does speaking asian and semitic languages disqualify you? Is it because accents and such would get in the way?

presumably they dont want those ethnic types to have anything to do with their lovely mod?

**abou** · 06-13-2007, 05:57

Er... no. The disqualified languages have strong conflicting elements with Pahlavi. That's it.

Plus, I don't see what a slave trade 1,700 years after our mod have to do with the point you made.

**QwertyMIDX** · 06-13-2007, 06:04

From the internal post about this:

Any Sino-Altaic or Altaic languages - Anything from fluent speakers of Finnish, Magyar/Hungarian, Turkish (Azeri being the clear exception since many locals do happen to speak Persian fluently), Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, to Japanese. The short, clipped vowels won't go well with attempted Pahlavî which commonly would be spoken with open, long, "warm" vowels and generally at a lower tempo. Hence the expression; A five-minute conversation will take an Iranian more then five hours to get through.

Semitic languages - No, just no. I'm one of the few oddballs who due to 1400 years of inbreeding ended up in a funky place in Iran where people spoke both Persian and Gulf Arabic, in which the latter at best is pretty botched with Aramaic, Mandaic and of course a lot of Pahlavî and New Persian aspects... Arabic in general is very guttural. A big no. Aramaeans or Chaldaeans however are more flexible to work with.

**keravnos** · 06-13-2007, 06:17

Because the sounds inherent in their language would make it VERY hard on them to record in Pahlavi. Simple as that.

**GMT** · 06-13-2007, 12:20

Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

Any Sino-Altaic or Altaic languages - Anything from fluent speakers of Finnish, Magyar/Hungarian, Turkish (Azeri being the clear exception since many locals do happen to speak Persian fluently), Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, to Japanese. The short, clipped vowels won't go well with attempted Pahlavî which commonly would be spoken with open, long, "warm" vowels and generally at a lower tempo. Hence the expression; A five-minute conversation will take an Iranian more then five hours to get through.

Semitic languages - No, just no. I'm one of the few oddballs who due to 1400 years of inbreeding ended up in a funky place in Iran where people spoke both Persian and Gulf Arabic, in which the latter at best is pretty botched with Aramaic, Mandaic and of course a lot of Pahlavî and New Persian aspects... Arabic in general is very guttural. A big no. Aramaeans or Chaldaeans however are more flexible to work with.

Just wondering, why don't you use this guy's voice for the mod?

**KARTLOS** · 06-13-2007, 06:14

Originally Posted by abou

Plus, I don't see what a slave trade 1,700 years after our mod have to do with the point you made.

no idea, i didnt realise that was included in my post until after i had posted, as soon as i saw it i removed it. it must have been a case of the forums acting up.

**abou** · 06-13-2007, 06:17

Ah, okay. I thought that was weird and I noticed you don't have an edit stamp at the bottom of your post. Must have been a forum hiccup, and I hope it isn't a sign that the ORG will go down for a day.

**The Persian Cataphract** · 06-13-2007, 15:35

As the one who primarily made the request in the first place, I think it would be in order to clarify myself on this issue which seems to have garnered some misconceptions.

Originally Posted by Lignator

Just a question but why does speaking asian and semitic languages disqualify you? Is it because accents and such would get in the way?

Correct. We speak of a concept such as lingual harmony, and Asiatic languages, in particular have a different profile altogether. Such languages are spoken with a different tempo, and sound differently when shifting tempo. Take for instance Spanish, I equate it to stress-resistance, because it still sounds cohesive when spoken quickly, whereas it will sound bloated and slow when speaking it at the slower tempo of Pahlavî. Same applies with Arabic, which is a guttural language, quite percussive, and may be spoken with other formalities. It is not impossible to train for instance a Chinese man to speak Pahlavî, however he has to be enthusiastic about it. The whole "Flied lice!" and "Sank yo verry match!" scenarios are quite frankly the worst starting positions when beginning to practice speaking at a lower tempo and not being afraid to give the vowels a stretch.

In other words, we are not being xenophobic jerks if anyone got that impression. We got criteria. Naturally one would actually find a Chinese man to do auditions on a cast, speaking Chinese (Let's not jump on the technicalities, I only brought up an analogy).

Originally Posted by GMT

Just wondering, why don't you use this guy's voice for the mod?

That would be me, of course... Well, there are many factors. Among the first is of course the "King Of The Fairies"-voice that becomes apparent when yelling without any good reason, mentally, but the most important issue is a lack of time and the fact that I both work and go to school. I usually get home late. I can't yell in my office, nor can I yell when I'm in a seminar. When I get home late and start yelling, that scenario alone speaks for itself. I would have loved to do the voice-mod myself if it wasn't for the fact that I just don't have the time nor space, unless I want a botched voice-mod. Due to a very clever solution one of our team members, Keravnos, has developed, I will be able to produce instructive audio clips focusing on pronounciation. There are other benefits with having multiple voice actors on board; Namely diversity.

I hope this further clarified the issue.