By Bismarck.Bloodrose 2013-03-09 14:28:56
What a lot of people are missing, is that with all the rules and exceptions found in Modern English (United States being the current standard) is completely backwards from the rest of the world.
Italia (now known as Italy) gave the french almost 70% of their language, not to mention Austria, Hungary, and Germany, among the various political states (political borders) received their language from what was formerly the Ottoman Empire, or an earlier existing political statehead.
Even with the minimal differences in dialect, it created heavy intellectual perceptions (some right, some wrong) about people from said political state.
Even looking at many of the existing names of cities and NPC's, regardless of some ancient myth or legend, are common regional names that would be found. Bastok has the turn of the century American/German/Polish/etc. tie-in, San d'Oria is quite heavy on the French-European scene, while Windurst is more of a twist between tribal (mithra) and some cutesy *** (taru). Even the Galka have a racial theme, which is probably the most unfortunate, as they get "settled names" like "Iron Eater" or "Roaring Mountain", as well as Zepwellian names like Gumbah, which reflect on the American Southwest's various indigenous tribes.
I've studied a bit of Japanese on my own, and while i may not be near as fluent as Jaerik, what he says is true. The other thing is, that each word typically has one meaning, while there can exist multiples words to express that meaning differently. (If i'm not mistaken, there are 7 ways to greet someone ranging from professionally, personally, generically, and variances in between, according to what time of day, and how formal it is)