Katawa Shoujo Forums

Caesius wrote:

The Commissar wrote:Likely not. English isn't really a very common language there (well, correct, grammatical, English). Dutch and German I think are actually more common there.

Dutch? You mean that bullcrap language with all the a's and o's and e's and shit? Really?


I honestly can't imagine a Japanese person trying to speak Dutch.

The Dutch actually have a long history with Japan, being one of the very few nations they were willing to trade with before Commodore Perry opened up trade routes in the 1800s. So really, it's not all that unusual in my opinion.

But German... huh... ich bin ein Tokyoer.

I meant that it's not really a widespread language compared to English or even German, and that it's difficult enough for speakers of European languages to learn Dutch (speaking it anyway).

For English pronunciation the worst that a Japanese person would have to deal with would be l's and some consonant clusters in words like "strengths." Languages like Dutch and Russian are even worse in that regard with words like "slechtstschrijvend" and "vstryetit'," not to mention the complicated vowel phonology; considering the largest consonant cluster the Japanese usually have to deal with is in "tsu," the idea of a Japanese person trying to speak such languages is hilarious.

Though, Dutch has much better orthographic consistency and a smaller vocabulary than English (like all languages do), so it would at least be easier for them to learn to read, assuming they didn't confuse themselves by trying to pronounce the words in their heads as they did so.