Quote Originally Posted by Stunt View Post
Which is all that was needed. Thanks for the info. I can only assume that the Japanese express phrases slightly differently than us English speaking folk. I'll make a note to watch Slayers, Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop.
Yes, I believe it's a combination of the grammatical structure, and also their different tones of politeness - for instance, the way you address a friend vs a family member vs a superior vs some random person you meet in public. And then of course there are the various dialects which add their own unique subtleties and flavours. The most obvious of these is the Kansai-dialect, which is so radically different that I still can't understand it.

In the end though, the language itself fascinated me to the extent that I started studying it, but I'll go on record as saying it's one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to pick up - probably even more difficult than Chinese.