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si1v3rtr33s · 2 months

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bungo stray dogs bilingual/multilingual character headcanons, barring the obvious ones (guild members = english and japanese, rimlaine = french and japanese, fyodor = russian and japanese, nikolai = ukranian and japanese) and the extra obvious one (everyone speaks japanese)

(this is gonna be really long, almost 1400 words, so under the cut it goes)

akutagawa with french and chinese, because he used an oddly high amount of french in his stories and a lot of them had influence from chinese mythology. also i think it’d be sweet to see him learning french from gin who learned it from verlaine.

speaking of, gin and kyōka learning french from verlaine. i just think those three sitting in the basement together, teaching and learning, would be cute. and i wanna see atsushi and kunikida confused as to why kyōka can speak fluent french.

atsushi with chinese for similar reason as akutagawa. we’ve seen him reading in a library, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to say they had access to other languages. i also think that kyōka is teaching him french and lucy is teaching them english.

chūya taught himself some english in the sheep, which was reinforced by doc (who we are going to hear about later), and taught himself french after rimbaud’s death because he felt drawn to the language. a year later, he met his french brother and resented the language a little bit for a while but come meursault and he can actually talk to any of the locals they come across because he picked it back up after dazai defected.

ranpo speaks way too many to count. he got bored as a kid and they just stuck. english is most notable and most commonly used (mainly poe but also the occasional foreigner witness or run-in with fitzgerald), but i imagine him speaking some german, chinese, latin, french, and a bit of filipino. anyone can add on to this list with little to no reason and i would accept it.

the tanizakis are learning english in school because y’know. school curriculum. i think poe is helping them study and that would be cute.

dazai learned german in the pm just to speak very aggressively at mori. i think it’d be funny to see him and ranpo, slacking off and holding a conversation in german. nobody can understand them and think they’re making plans or discussing a confidential case, but they’re just talking about something trivial like cats or candy or just gossiping. they also know a good bit of english, enough for him to hold conversation decently well with poe (which is an achievement in and of itself; poe speaks eloquent english and dazai speaks old man japanese) (see the first few chapters of the manga to see what i'm talking about because they said some of the most grandpa-type shit to atsushi there). i think it’d be nice to give him some down time.

jōno knows braille and japanese sign language. neither are spoken languages, but sign language is a language of its own with its own grammar and vocabulary. and braille because... he’s blind.

adding onto that, techō knows braille for jōno and sign language because (headcanon) he’s hard of hearing. and because he goes nonverbal (autism) and still has to communicate somehow.

you know what, all five hunting dogs (yes even fuckcoochie) know sign and braille. because they are a family (yes even fuckcoochie, but only before the doa arc) and they accommodate each other. and they need something to do on the day off but that’s a discussion for another time.

sigma is a funny one since we don’t know their author, but their name is literally just a greek letter so they know greek and their dad is russian so uh nikolai’s teaching them russian so they can communicate with fyodor easier. have at thee.

ango knew a little english, enough to hold a half-decent conversation. dazai tutored he and oda (pre-t homo teaches their homo dads english) when they had nothing better to do.

hhh time for white people.

fyodor and nikolai know the other’s native language because russian and ukranian are similar enough and fyodor’s japanese sucks ass (and nikolai hits on fyodor in russian/ukrainian so nobody knows what the fuck they're saying). fyodor also knows latin and hebrew because he’s canonically orthodox and he’s just devoted like that. and latin is pretty.

bram, other than irish gaelic and japanese because yes irl bram stoker was irish mhm potatoes red hair (catch me drawing bram with reddish hair and freckles), i think he’d know english because british people (｀_´)ゞ (/pos) and a bit of french and german.

the younger guild members (minus lucy because parentless behavior /hj) know some spanish because of the american school system and i’m not going to bother looking up whether second language was required in the eighties and nineties. (future silver here, i asked my mom that went to high school in the nineties and it was but spanish was the only option so i had to rewrite poe’s section smh fuck the american school system’s history)

poe also taught himself french because they thought the language was pretty and got hooked and a pastime turned into passion and now they’re fluent ten years later. he’s silly like that. and they understand raccoons because karl is their son. yes raccoon is a language and poe, ranpo, lovecraft (see next paragraph), and kenji are fluent.

lovecraft knows irish gaelic because i’m pushing my (kuni)bramcraft agenda (multishipper behavior smh) and i think they’d know french because poe taught them and raccoon because karl was there too and i strive to put images of fluffy platonic domestic situations into people’s minds.

nathaniel hawthorn (that minister guy that akutagawa fucked up and shot sigma) knows latin and hebrew too for the same reasons as fyodor except he’s catholic.

you might think i’m gonna bring up fitzgerald and languages he knows but his entire character is what the fuck is a kilometer and capitalism (/j) so no he only knows 🦅🇺🇸american🇺🇸🦅 english and semi-fluent japanese with weird pronunciation because WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER RAAAAHHHHHHH (yes i am american and yes i am ashamed)

i think verlaine picked up a lot of different languages in his nine years of being the assassin king. english, german, italian, turkish, filipino, czech. you name it, he can probably hold a decent conversation in it. any time the pm gets a document they can’t translate for one reason or another, down to the basement it goes. he may or may not be teaching q his tricks…

and now dead people.

rimbaud also picked up a few languages, but forgot a lot in his amnesia. before the suribachi incident (in which they and verlaine were nineteen, aka not really adults, which not enough people know or talk about), he had english down fluently as well as a little german. rimbaud my beloved.

so the flags… a funny group that i’ve attached myself to despite them having about fifty pages of life. tragic. doc canonically went to med school here in the states, so he knew english fluently. i don’t think iceman knew anything other than japanese simply because i don’t think he saw any reason to. i’m on the fence with piano man and albatross because my brain says they didn’t know anything else but my heart says they knew something else as well. piano man is leaning toward latin because he’s pretentious and annoying like that and if he did then albatross knew it too just to fuck with him. i also think albatross, if he knew anything else, knew the languages of the surrounding countries because he was the head wheelman and often went on “excursions” with chūya. so korean, russian, thai, and filipino. maybe a little indonesian, as a treat.

lippmann gets their own section because favoritism. they were head of relations so they definitely spoke with foreign allies and enemies. they were also an actor, so i like to think they dubbed their lines themself. i’m thinking english, spanish, korean, and french because, again, they’re pretentious like that. and job requirements but whatever.

as for oda, i think he knew a little english but he was nowhere near fluent. he was a simple man.

shibusawa-sensei irl translated french works to japanese so add them to the list of french speakers. in real life he sucked in german class so no seltsam wütend language for them. and i think they’d speak latin because, and say it with me, they’re pretentious like that.

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