I’m Norwegian, and I’ve noticed that the pronunciaton of vowels and consonants are fairly similar in Norwegian and Japanese (in comparison to American and Japanese for instance). However, there is a lot of freedom when it comes to articulation and pitch when speaking in Norwegian, and it seems to me that this isn’t the case in Japan to the same extent. I would imagine some East-Asian countries can transition more easily to japanese, but I’m curious as to whether someone has any interesting insights on this topic.
