>>6220631>Is Japanese as a language just incapable of speaking straightfowardly?mostly, there are "tones" in japanese that denote a number of things, and your sentence structure and words change meaning based on the tone. For example, if you're a superior talking to an inferior your use of words will be different from an inferior talking to a superior. anger/vulger speach exists as well... it's usually rude.
Basically the result is there are words that don't really have a set meaning in english in japanese. Similarly there are words that don't really exist in japanese but which can be said in a round about way depending on your tone. This is why translation is a bitch for Google. As tone is almost impossible to determine in writing for a computer; you need to be able to infer context.
A good example is the word "no". No is pretty unambiguous in English. Japanese has a couple of word that roughly means no, depending on the context; though in English I'm not sure no would be the right word for them. English has a lot of ways to express "no" so does Japanese. But their version of "no" is usually a hell of a lot more polite like which when translated usually work out to something more like "not now," "maybe later", "perhaps", of course a proper translator understands the meaning is "no" but the Japanese rarely say the two Japanese words closet to no (hilariously both words have different meaning depending on tone as well, but yes, in the right tone they basically mean no) in the tone needed to make it "no". I had a friend who was teaching me tone in Japanese and he famously jokingly said to me Japanese has 7 ways to say no, and doesn't have a word "no". Which i didn't think was right because i didn't understand context and tone at the time, and an English to Japanese translator or even dictionary will tell you there is a Japanese word for no.
but once you learn context you realize those words for no, only mean no in the right context/tone.
