Quote Originally Posted by Mitruya View Post
How do you decide which "r" to roll when writing Mithran dialog? Does it depend on the character?
Are the Mithran accent and Tarutaru speech pattern represented in a similar way in Japanese?

I'm not sure if this next question is outside of the topic, but -
Are any characters based on famous personalities? Or, has the dev team ever thought of any actors/voice actors that would represent some of the more colorful characters of Vana'diel? (I vote Tom Hiddleston for Lehko...)
Which "r" to roll with mithras largely depends on what we feel sounds good and flow better with the sentence. I know that sounds a bit flaky, as localization if more of an art than a science, but we do have several guidelines:

* We try to roll the Rs on syllables that are stressed.
* We avoid making multiple Rs rolled in the same sentence.
* We avoid rolling Rs on any syllables that would end up making the Mithra sound like a pirate.

For accents in the Japanese, occasionally Mithra will make cat noises depending on what the dev is going for in Japanese, but randomly having Mithra meow is rather...weird. When that come up we usually make puns about shooting fish in a barrel, or describing something as the cat's meow...something that evokes cat imagery without mimicking cat sounds.

Tartaru do not have any racial inflections in Japanese like they do in English, barring a couple of iconic characters (like Koru-Moru). Having them talk differently in English was a decision made long before my time. I'm not convinced I would have made the same decisions were I at the helm. Due to things like linguistic drift, I'd prefer to have a Windurst accent, a Bastok accent, and a San d'Oria accent. But if we did it that way, we wouldn't have the cute Tarutaru accents we do today! There's definitely arguments to be made for both sides.

I'm not sure if the devs have in mindany specific voice actors for particular roles, but I'm picturing Cree Summer as Shantotto and I'm not laughing...