In my last post, I reviewed Early Modern English in the original SNES release of Chrono Trigger and found that it was very bad. When you see an Early Modern English grammatical construction in that game, chances are that it’s ungrammatical.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was released a couple months ago, and past a certain point in the game, it’s loaded with Early Modern English. I’ll be reviewing a sample of lines from the game.
Before we begin, once more, a refresher on Early Modern English rules and how you can use modern English to understand whether sentences are grammatical.
The th/eth verb ending is the same as the modern English s/es verb ending, used for third person singular subjects. Simply replace with an s.
The t/st/est verb ending doesn’t have any shortcuts for modern English understanding, but it follows an easy rule. If the subject is anything other than “thou,” it’s wrong.
Replace thou with I, he, or she. Replace thee with me, him, or her. If the result sounds silly in modern English, then the original sounds silly in EME.
Replace thy or my with a. Replace thine or mine (as possessive determiners) with an. You might have to change the modified noun to singular.
I’ll once again caption images with these modern replacements so you can see whether they work, and mark with an X if incorrect and an O if correct.
First, a spoiler warning for an almost 40-year-old game. I’m going to set up the context for the game’s EME.
Dragon Quest 3 takes place in a world that looks very much like ours. The continents are in the same shape and locations relative to each other, and towns on the continents correspond to countries or cities in the real world. About 3/4 of the way through the game, the hero defeats what was portrayed as the game’s Big Bad. During the victory celebration, a new villain appears and declares that the previous Big Bad was just a puppet. The hero jumps into a giant hole in the ground and lands in Alefgard, the country in which the first Dragon Quest game takes place. (DQ3 is a prequel that takes place ~60-80 years before DQ1.)
Here’s where the large amounts of EME come in. There’s nothing special about how the Alefgardians speak in Japanese. But the English localizers decided to have them all speak Early Modern English, as a callback to the original NES release of the first game in the series. In that game, everything is in EME1.
So let’s have a look. Before we visit Alefgard, there’s one monster type that speaks in EME.
“May I help him?” O
“An honour.” O
Now for the Alefgardians.
“The town bids him welcome.” O
Two verbs with t/est verb endings, subject is “thou” in both. Apostrophe correctly placed (long version would be “sayest”). O
“An owner.” “Gluttony does my stomach punish.” O
“The Lord of the Underworld dines on despair, and quenches his thirst.” O
“Does he suffer…?” O
“So says the ancient rhyme.” O
You might have seen “sayeth” rendered as “saith” elsewhere. Both are acceptable.
Two verbs with st ending, subject of both is “thou.” O
Three verbs with t verb ending, subject of all is “thou.” O
“The castle of Tantegel bids him welcome.” O
“May the sacred light bless him.” O
est verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“Kol lies far to the north-east.” “A forest that stretches as far…” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” “A praise.” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“Gloom that Zoma has beckoned.” O
“Vanquish the foe who brings darkness.” O
Two t/est verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. O
The “thee” in that one is a little harder to substitute with “me,” “her,” or “him” due to the construction, but if you put it in a similar sentence, you can see that it’s correct. “He seeks him a sword.”
“Damdara does bid him welcome.” O
“A chill does envelop the town.” O
Something else that I haven’t discussed in other posts about EME. In antiquated English, people used to say “is,” “am,” or “are” where we would now say “has” or “have.” For example:
“I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
“The king is arrived.”
“He is risen.”
This line above uses the same construction. You can replace “are” with “have” to see that it sounds fine in modern English: “The regions of the desert have grown cold.”
st verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“He who has begat this child.” “Such indecision befits him not.” O
“He has even been asking…” O
Two t/st verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. O
“The bridge that greets him.” t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“It dances among the undergrowth.” O
“The water ebbs lower.” O
“Who does take my name in vain?” O
“The elder sneezes relentlessly.” O
In the above, she could say that her wrath “waxeth hot” against him instead. But you can find instances of Shakespeare mixing EME and modern English conjugation rules even within the same sentence. It doesn’t have to be completely consistent to sound genuine or grammatical.
“Till the Lord of the Underworld lies dead.” O
est verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“As a child tears parchment.” O
“Who stands before him?” est verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“An instrument.” “My harp languishes.” O
“The sound does seem to irk the monsters.” O
“It matters not what we do.” O
“He has been musing.” O
Two t/st verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. O
Two t/st verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. O
Another instance where you have to significantly change the sentence to compare to modern English. “She seeks her the Sunstone.” O
Two t verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. “Get him to the great Sanctum.” “A way.” O
“What I have imparted upon her.” t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
st verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“One such story concerns a group.” O
est verb ending, subject is “thou.” “The priest will be able to enlighten her.” O
“The wait till the next battle commences.” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” “Mother calls me home.” O
“An owner.” O
“This place has fulfilled its purpose.” t verb ending, subject is “thou.” “Get her to the citadel.” O
“Greetings to her.” t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“An item of great values lies among my belongings.” O
est verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
“There lies a secret stairway.” O
“It matters not whom I tell, for no man believes me.” It makes no sense to substitute “an” in front of this determiner, but “every” starts with a vowel sound, so “mine” is correct. O
The game also gets bonus points for using “wherefore” correctly. It means “for what reason” or “why.”
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
st verb ending, subject is “thou.” “The captive she sees before her.” O
“None shall defeat the Lord of the Underworld who does not first possess…” O
st verb ending, subject is “thou.” “Did the pitiless seas truly claim him?” O
“The auroral armor dwells in the tower where Rubiss does sleep.” O
“The Sacred Amulet serves as proof.” O
“And where has he now vanished?” O
“An effort.” O
“The sage’s stone does heal all wounds.” O
“Though the stone wears not, my patience surely does.” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
Two t/est verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. Apostrophe is placed correctly, condensing the long form of “sayest.” O
Two t/st verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. “May I yet serve her in any way.” O
“The master of the item shop claims to hail from Jipang. But none has heard of such a place.” O
“An ear.” O
Two t/st verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. O
Two t/est verb endings, subject is “thou” for both. Apostrophe is placed correctly, shortening “knowest.” O
“Does the water seem to her too cold?” O
“The fault lies with the darkness which smothers the land.” O
est verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
t verb ending, subject is “thou.” “Haste befits not the great.” O
st verb ending, subject is “thou.” O
I didn’t bother to capture any of the dialogue in the ending, or every line from every villager. (Some of them change after you do various things in Alefgard.) But this sample is plenty. In Chrono Trigger, I reviewed 75 screenshots, finding one to be ambiguous and 41 to be ungrammatical. Here, I’ve reviewed 78 screenshots, finding 0 errors. The EME in this game is impeccable.
To the localizers of this game: Well done. Know that at least one person noticed and appreciated this effort.
I have my issues with the game’s localization. They gave people around various parts of the world borderline racist accents, having them misuse English in ways stereotypical for ESL speakers in those various regions. For example, in the place roughly corresponding to India, people constantly misuse present progressive, saying things like, “It is allowing magic users to exercise their brawn.” In the place roughly corresponding to Russia, people misuse determiners, saying things like, “This place village of Mur” and “Significant while ago, brutish monster came and attacked village.” This isn’t unique to this game—other Dragon Quest games have done similar things. I’ve always found it off-putting.
Nevertheless, this part? Alefgard? This is A+ work.
1 They tried, anyway. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than Chrono Trigger’s.