Shōgun 2024

Yeah it's baffling. Maybe they were afraid it would turn people off from watching it if it was all subtitled.

@JL0017 17th century (1600-1700), not 16th!

@superkloton True, 1600 (00-99 years dictate the century) already counts as 17th. Thanks.

@jl0017 WELLLL the year 1600 itself actually still belongs to the 16th century (because there was no year 0, it went straight from -1 to 1) but because the story starts in 1600 and only goes forward from there I thought it was more accurate to say 17th century. All in all just a crapload of smartassery, really :hugging:

@superkloton Oh, I see. So it catches one year of 16th century, but the bulk of the story is the subsequent century (so it makes sense to consider it on the 17th one really). No, no, not smartassery at all. :joy: Quite the opposite, I love learning these nerdy and interesting details and I don't see getting corrected as an annoyance, but as a great chance learn. Thank you :smile::heart: In this particular case, it's even something quite useful that can easily come up in day-to-day conversation.

@jl0017 The English is Portuguese on the show. It's not rocket science, it's just so we don't have to watch 10 episodes of subtitles with actors from Portugal.

@jl0017 Yeah, that's how english market shows work.

Weirder bit is that English represents more than one language. The main dude is at least speaking English and Portuguese at different points, but they're both spoken as English so it's unclear which is which in conversations.

@kuuzo What's not rocket science is understanding that you either go 100% English and have the Japanese characters also speaking it or 100% native, not this half-measured nonsense. What exactly would be so wrong with having 10 subtitled episodes with Portuguese actors???
So 10 episodes of subtitled Japanese is "no problem, okey-dokey :thumbsup:", but Portuguese is where we draw the line :raised_hand:? Are subtitles a foreign and somehow very painful concept to people? Is reading hard? Can they only handle 60% of subtitled runtime before headaches? Non-native speakers have been consuming content for years with them just fine. It certainly beats cryptic foreign, mumbly/low diction accents and grunts in terms of clarity and intelligibility.

@kuuzo And actually the English is English AND Portuguese simultaneously on the show, which makes it even sillier, specially when they say they are speaking another language and continue in the same manner.

@jl0017 Convince an American production company to finance a 10 episode series with all foreign actors and no Americans, based on a book written in English based on an English pilot. I'll wait. Every time a production comes out that uses some English so that it can be produced, people come out of the woodwork to whine. This is such an old, whiny argument. Just enjoy it.

@kuuzo I agree. By the logic that everyone in the movie should speak their own language, then the book should have them speaking their own language, and that's just silly.

@jl0017 well, let the Portuguese make that show. I want to have enough time to look down on my plate and eat my dinner while I watch the show.

@sech11 Come on, buddy. I manage to do it. You goor guy needsl to look at his plate, while guiding your fork, because your fear it may spontaneously move places on the table? Real #FirstWorldProblem I guess the subtitles for Japanese appear written down on the table, though, or just sparse enough to give time to eat so there's no problem with those haha

@kuuzo I don't have to convince anyone or anything. I don't know if you're a Japanophile or part of the weeb community, so as to explain the double standard, but you seem to have no problem with Japanese in your American production, but all of a sudden Portuguese on a historical show about languages, missionaries, political schemers, translators and clash of cultures and religions, where that's the entire point of it, you're here advocating for less quality and immersion, like it's some secondary thing and not the entire "Portuguese and catholicism being the línguas francas and point of conflict of the show" goal. I imagine, in hipocritical manner, you'd be displaying "whiny" arguments about how it's lessening the content if "made-up" languages like Elvish and Dothraki (that didn't need no American convincing or "subtitles are bad" either) were removed from LOTR or GOT, e.g., however the very real Portuguese, the 5th most spoken language in the world, and the lingua franca of foreign relations in South Asia (India, China, Japan, Formosa, Indonesia, etc.) in the Discovery Age is a big no :thinking:

@kuuzo you don't have to engage with my comment if this doesn't bother you by the way. You don't have to act like a paid shill by the showrunners and come here all defensive if it doesn't bother you. You don't need to convince me of anything and can just move along. That's great that you're happy the show. Enjoy. I usually like accuracy in a show that portrays itself as historical. If I was watching a show about thr ukelele and it didn't say it derived from the Portuguese cavaquinho, but instead made-up some pretend factoid like it derived from magical harps from millennia ago, instead, yeah, it would be off-putting for me

@jl0017 I get it, you're edgy and want to look cool by talking about how English shouldn't be used in an American production about an English Sailor written by a native English speaker on American TV. You're so cool. Tell that to the producers who funded this.

@jl0017

1) It's an American produced show, if it was Portuguese produced then this would make sense.
2) If they spoke Portuguese, the entire show would be in subtitles which would turn a lot of American viewers off from watching the show.

@jl0017 they acknowledged in the podcast they make some concessions for simplicity (e.g. Portuguese speaking people speak English for the viewers)

@jl0017 use your imagination a little, he's trying to learn Japanese... he already knows Portugese so we get to understand a little bit of what he understands....

@jl0017 wouldn't that make his struggle learning Japanese a little less obvious if everyone spoke English????

@jl0017 Yeah, the Portuguese Catholics would be burning everyone on the stakes for being heretics.

@jl0017 I think you all are also missing the fact of actor urgency. If it were actually in Portuguese, they would need to find various actors who can speak a degree of both Japanese and Portuguese, especially for the more demanding characters that are meant to sound fluent in both (Mariko, for example) it'd increase the standards needlessly high during casting. When really, English is a big part of Japan, so asking that in the case of speaking English is much less demanding. Not just casting, but in terms of overall production member qualifications (like assistant writers for example), those who qualify for both Eng/Jap are much more common.
Seriously, it's not just a creative decision, but a very large decision that people seem entitled and spoiled for thinking they deserve.

@cyber_tech This is exactly what they're going for. I don't know why contrarian edgelords always come out of the woodwork to complain about languages every single time there is a show with multiple languages along with English.

What bothered me isn't that modern English is used as a stand-in for Old Portuguese—that, I get—it is that the Portuguese are supposedly speaking in their native tongue, yet are the ones with "an accent" while the Englishman speaks a fluent, seamless "Portuguese" for reasons that are never even disclosed. Fake accents are a massive pet peeve of mine and cheapen any show, but in this case are poorly done and not even narrative appropriate.

By the way, you all seem oblivious to the fact the languages spoken back then are dead forms of those spoken today, and no one alive can wield them. Modern Portuguese did not exist back then, so it wouldn't be historically appropriate to hire Portuguese speakers for those parts anyway. Plus, the main character and his crew would have conversed in a form of Dutch between themselves, not English.