Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-8876442-20130815013405/@comment-53539-20180211201951

Actually this should be know surprise... Despite there being so many French words in the English language, English is a Germanic language and many of its sounds are closer to Dutch or German then French for this reason. Aside from some sounds ("ch" as in "loch" for example) many of the core sounds for German are in the English language.

The English language borrows sounds from French, Roman, Viking, Saxon, Dutch, Asian Indian and Celtic. French was due to 1066, when William took England and made its main language French for about 400 years. Dutch was due to farming revolutions coming in over time. Indian came in the 1800s (Pyjamas is an Indian word). Celtic is a distant influence and is a left over handful of sounds from the pre-Roman era. The Romans gave use sounds related to words like "Chest". Vikings gave us sounds related to words like "We, Were, Where, When".

Japanese is very farfetched from European languages, so tends to have little in common with them.