Since I've heard so many sort-of-similar but conflicting opinions about it, and I don't really trust the "unconditionally hate NISA" crowd due to the misinformation they spread - is it okay for me to ask you how Gonta speaks in the JP version, exactly?
I know it's not a Tarzan speech, but I've heard anything ranging from "polite and formal" to "informal and casual" to "like a typical teenager" to "eloquent and almost poetic" to "stiff but grammatically correct".
Obviously those don't add up, and there's so much agenda and self-righteousness behind this discussion, that I'd rather just ask someone I actually trust.
These posts say Gonta talks like a polite kid. Not just in 3rd person, but uses simple vocabulary too. x.com/bossu_osu/status/2052960734338764836 x.com/bossu_osu/status/2052962395685892512
And to me it makes more sense than most. OP is someone who I trust more as well, since they debunked some "mistranslations" gossip regarding Kaito.
I think I also saw a claim that Gonta's lines are mostly written in hiragana and avoid kanji to convey that simplicity? That'd be really interesting writing technique, but take my words with a grain of salt, I can't find it and I'm worried I must be misremembering.
But if that's not a trouble, I'd like to know your opinion, even if based only on a selected scene (asking about the whole game would be too much, haha)
Right off the bat, "informal and casual" "like a typical teenager" or "eloquent and almost poetic" are not words I'd use to describe Gonta's Japanese speech pattern. Not even close lol.
It's true that he doesn't use complicated words (the times in English he struggles to pronounce something are all from the Japanese version), but is still polite and uses proper grammar. So him talking like a "polite kid", as 22fuka22 says in that screenshot, is pretty apt. Also, 22fuka22 is an actual native speaking Japanese person so I'm going to take their word on it above all.
Grammar aside, Gonta also just has some cutesy vocal mannerisms that you'd expect from a child, like calling bugs 虫さん/mushi-san (roughly Mr./Ms. Bug), while in English he calls them "bug friends". Using this example, I feel like the overall vibe you get is that JP!Gonta is childlike but in a polite, earnest way, while ENG!Gonta's way of speaking gives off the vibe of being, well, kind of slow. This doesn't really contradict the thread's point though, which is about Gonta being infantilized; which, I believe even if the translators leaned harder into the JP version's vibe of childishness, of course you'd still have people treating him like a child.
Also, the amount of people I've seen acting like if you just played the Japanese version of the game you'd never get the vibe that Gonta's naive or easy to manipulate is ridiculous. His being raised in the woods by aliens wolves and therefore incredibly gullible doesn't mean he's stupid, but it's a canon character trait. I've seen plenty of comments from Japanese fans where they fully blame Ouma for Chapter 4's events and see Gonta as his victim, for the record.
TBH I think where a lot of this misunderstanding of Gonta's Japanese speech pattern stems from (other than how the fandom likes to play telephone about the localization and exaggerate what they hear with every phone call) is due to people that are only beginner-intermediate at Japanese failing to recognize "simple" speech when they see it. If a few months ago you were using children's books to learn Japanese, then childish speech is going to look like the norm to you.
