This was yet another great installment of "Comes the Cold Dragon."

After reading it through I noticed a few things...

Most importantly Nabiki's English.  It's horrible.  And I'm sorry to say that it sounds more like Master Yoda than a Japanese highschool student trying to speak English (which MOST can't unless they've lived abroad for a little while).  The Japanese grammatical structure may be somewhat backwards compared to English, however...nobody actually tries to speak English by using Japanese syntax.  Rather they miss the obvious "R" and "L" plus "V" and "B" difference... "TH" sounds like "S" and unlike American English they sound...staccato.  Regular missing or unneeded gramatical elements are articles, incorrect number/gender, plural/singular...to say the least.

Given that.  Privacy is nice, but when it's so important, and having a complete understanding and ability to negotiate and possibly leverage someone...Nabiki would not choose to speak to Cologne in English, where Cologne has the obvious advantage.  She'd be able to hold better control of the situation in Japanese.

I'd hate to say it, but.  Most kids are not going to try and use English like Nabiki did in this chapter.  Even today most class time is spent on learning grammar and translation, there is some speaking practice with a native speaker, who may and may not be a trained professional.  As I understand the texts are too simple (I haven't taught so I can't say for sure), and culturally...especially high school girls would not want to be noticed for something like that... being the nail that sticks out (gets hammered down).

So, if you decide to still have Nabiki use English, particularly to this extent, that's fine...I can accept the possiblity (though it seems to be more of a fanfic cannon).  However, you've got to re-word her speech, in parts I had to re-read it a couple times to get what she was trying to say, and it still sounded like Yoda.

J
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