Ok, silly title, but my point is this: once I started learning REAL Japanese, I started coming across little things that I just couldn't quite understand. I tried looking them up in the dictionary, but they weren't there! The more and more I saw them, I finally started to realize that what I was seeing/hearing was various 方言 (ほうげん: dialects).

Now I am reading a book called 夢をかなえるゾウ where ガネーシャ, the elephant god from India (one of the characters) speaks 関西弁 (for some reason)... This has been like getting hit in the face in terms of realizing that this whole time I have been learning a language that is not actually native to anyone (標準語), and I am coming to realize how different each dialect of Japanese actually is.

Think about it: every time you hear すげえ！, you are hearing dialect. That is a pretty obvious example, but other stuff is actually very difficult to understand.

Post here if you have learned an expression from a dialect of Japanese, and if possible, translate its meaning to 標準語.

Mine:
(関西弁）: どないすんねん
(標準語）: どうしましょうか
This expression may be exclaimed by a サラリーマン who just missed a train and has is going to be late to an important meeting "What should I do!??!?"

Variations:
どうするねん
京都で：どないしましょ

Well, it seems you learned how to see wich one is the dialect wich is not. Way to go!
If reading one piece will lead me to learn bad japanese, too bad. I won't drop it.

すげえ is not a dialect. It is the cool Japanese that young people tend to use, but is used throughout Japan.

I lived in a small town for a year in Shizuoka and as such can speak 遠州弁. I didn't find it so hard on the whole. The biggest problem was に which they sometimes use as a sentence ending particle, since it isn't in standard Japanese. It's kind of like half よ and half ね. I still find it hard to use.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Well, it seems you learned how to see wich one is the dialect wich is not. Way to go!
If reading one piece will lead me to learn bad japanese, too bad. I won't drop it.

I didn't mean to say it is bad Japanese, just that knowing the difference is a big part of understanding the language. In fact, Japanese with dialect is REAL Japanese.

Also, it was my understanding that すごい -> すげえ (also many others, such as いきたい -> いきてえ) was from 関東弁 which is used in Tokyo, and thus appears on television quite often so perhaps has spread throughout Japan. Vowels changing is a big part of differing dialects.

Edit: (from wikipedia):
このほかの東日本方言共通の特徴として、/[ai]/（アイ）が/[ɛ:]/（エー）に、/[oi]/（オイ）も/[ɛ:]/（エー）になる。（例）「甘い」→「あめえ」、「よくない」→「よくねえ」、「遅い」→「おせえ」、「太い」→「ふてえ」

Another example: ending a sentence in わ seems very feminine for Tokyo speakers, but in 関西弁 is used by both male and female and means something similar to よ.

But do you ever see older people using いきてぇ even in Tokyo? I have heard this kind of Japanese in both Nagoya and Shizuoka and generally every anime or drama I have watched before. It is also used a lot by yakuza apparently (according to my extensive knowledge from watching dramas *cough*).

I think the わ thing is the same. My male friend from Shizuoka said to me in an email the other day "アリスタに頼んでよかったわぁ。"

Another example is pronuncing です as えす, which cool guys tend to use when speaking politely.

Maybe some of this started out as a dialect, but if it spreads all over Japan then I don't think you can say it is part of a dialect anymore. Kind of like "man" as in "Hey man". It maybe be more popular in certain cities or countries, but it has pretty much spread everywhere and couldn't be called American dialect or anything. Maybe someone who can been in Japan a long time can clarify this stuff for us.

I find that as I learn the "official" language more and more, I effortlessly understand more and more dialectical/slang/slurred stuff. I don't think dialects are "the bane of AJATT" at all. Anyway, there's nothing stopping us from putting dialectic Japanese in our SRS decks


As for specific things. The card I got from a geisha, on the back, says her 好きな言葉 (favorite word) is "なんくるないさあ". I have no idea what that means, but a Japanese college student at a youth hostel told me it's from one of the really obscure dialects from some community outside Japan...


I dunno whether it's dialect or slang or what, but I noticed some people slur ですか into "ska" (can't even kana-ize it since there's no kana for "s"). "nanska, kore wa??"

I read your edit. Interesting. I would love to know if this Japanese is used in the 関西 area.

thermal Wrote:I read your edit. Interesting. I would love to know if this Japanese is used in the 関西 area.

Almost definitely among young people as you say. But dialects of course are evolving and spreading as time goes on. In 関西 area, there are also other vowel changes, like 寒い -> さむう, (lengthening certain vowels), and also shortening other vowels. As for your friend, he easily could have picked that up from a 関西弁 speaker, as Osaka has many famous people who often are not afraid to use 関西弁 on television/in comedy acts, so it too is a often-heard accent (I read this off of the English wikipedia).

snispilbor, I would say that your example is indeed dialect. Much like accents, dialects have many different aspects, from changes in how things are pronounced, to completely different words and intonations. The contractions like you mentioned are different as well. It is these kinds of things that, while not necessary difficult to understand, were hard for me to categorize as to "where does this fit into Japanese".

thermal Wrote:But do you ever see older people using いきてぇ even in Tokyo?

I've never been to Japan, but I think older people probably use this kind of thing, especially among family and friends, which is when dialects show up the most. I know what you mean though.... maybe young people are just not as polite and so don't restrain themselves as much to 標準語 as much as older people in public?

snispilbor Wrote:I dunno whether it's dialect or slang or what, but I noticed some people slur ですか into "ska" (can't even kana-ize it since there's no kana for "s"). "nanska, kore wa??"

I think that's an extension of the habit of contracting です to っす, which I see written in manga all the time, and the standard drop of the う sound.

Gotta agree with snispilbor on the whole 'studying standard makes everything easier' thing. I'm not exactly super-far in or anything, but the further I go, the more unfamiliar things just make sense intuitively.

But, Japan is in the same information age as the rest of us, and things really do spread around. I mean, I'm an East Coast American who has definitely drawn from the various parts of the US to create my speech patterns, and I also tend to write things in the British spelling. So while the Japanese dialects are more divided than the English ones (or so it seems), I imagine people are progressively incorporating whatever elements they please into their speech. And, I think all of the slurring and mutations among young people are a result of the same thing, as they are in English. It's a strange combination of insular groups creating insider-lingo combined with mass media that manage to propagate it everywhere, where it rapidly get assimilated by the young population - even if the older generation is just left confused. It's amazing how much of the crap we say every day now came from the 'valley girl' subculture. Seriously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valspeak#Vocabulary

(Also, while I haven't been actively paying attention, I have made a mental note that I seem to hear エー conversions less in kansai-ben. But I could be crazy.)

Actually, じゃねぇ, つまらねぇ, うるせぇ, すげぇ etc. are 江戸弁. Also, in 江戸弁 there's often a confusion between ひ and し sounds. I always ear 江戸っ子 pronouncing 人 as しと more than ひと or 東 as しがし more than ひがし etc. There are also contractions like てぇ instead of という, ぁ instead of は and so on. If you watch doramas or anime, you'll ear 江戸弁 all the time.

As far as I know it is spread among young people all over Japan and it is the "official" language of 落語. It is used almost by male speakers in very informal situations, but even women use it when they want to be rude or aggressive (if you've seen ごくせん, there ヤンクミ uses it when she speaks like ヤクザ, even in シバトラ there's a ?rude? girl that uses it extensively).
江戸弁 is the dialect of the 下町 (台東区, 千代田区 and 中央区) and is very similar to old Japanese spoken in 江戸 (former 東京). It was opposed to the aristocratic 山の手言葉, the Japanese spoken in 新宿区 and 文京区 (山の手).
江戸弁 also influenced a lot of dialects all over the country, so some 江戸弁 expressions can be found in other dialects too.

That's what i know.

From what I know, the sugoi -> sugee is part of the ら抜き言葉 style of speaking (the idea that instead of saying taberaremasu you say taberemasu) and that you say tabeteru instead of tabete iru). It's just cool modern japanese.

Really though, 方言 is something which comes automatically with Japanese ability, especially if you live in Japan. I have never studied any dialects directly, and I still understand the basic stuff from Kansai dialect simply because of having seen it in situations I would understand perfectly in normal Japanese.

I think that if you know standard japanese and is going to live for a while in a place with heavy dialect, it's worth studying. Other than that, just wait and it will come naturally.

snispilbor Wrote:The card I got from a geisha, on the back, says her 好きな言葉 (favorite word) is "なんくるないさあ". I have no idea what that means, but a Japanese college student at a youth hostel told me it's from one of the really obscure dialects from some community outside Japan...

It means "Look for today, but look forward for tomorrow". I think it is from okinawa, since I saw it in an anime that has okinawa as background. Btw, the anime is Blood+.

I found an article in Japanese about なんくるないさあ here:

http://www.kwuc.ac.jp/longlife/pdf/sinia...inia-6.pdf

It explains how it's a word from Okinawa meaning なんとかなるさ which I think we all have heard sometime

I didn't feel like reading the whole article, but if the word is really Okinawan, that means it isn't even Japanese.

LordGolem Wrote:Actually, じゃねぇ, つまらねぇ, うるせぇ, すげぇ etc. are 江戸弁.

Thanks for the clarification! Another interesting fact, before Edo became central to Japan, an old form of 関西弁 used to be what was considered "standard" Japanese.

As for dialects coming naturally through studying, I think that is true to a certain extent, but the fact remains that certain dialects throughout Japan drastically alter the qualities of the speech. A person from Osaka probably understands as little as 50% of what a person from Aomori-ken is saying if they are using their dialects (a Japanese guy from Osaka told me this). The other thing is that if you are interested in spicing up your speech by throwing in accents, wouldn't it be better to know which phrases came from which dialect? It might sound funny if you threw together an amalgamation of different dialects "わけわからへんけど、そんなとこいきてぇわ！"

danieldesu Wrote:A person from Osaka probably understands as little as 50% of what a person from Aomori-ken is saying if they are using their dialects (a Japanese guy from Osaka told me this).

I think this is true, maybe even less than 50%. A japanese friend told me she can't understand her brother's wife from Aomori-ken when she uses her dialect.
This happens not only in Japan: here in Italy too dialects are really different and I cannot understand other regional dialects other than mine and standard Italian (that is Florence dialect, almost ).

As for 江戸弁, I think the situation is different. This dialect has strong influence in the spoken language all over Japan, so to fully understand media other than news, you have to know a little 江戸弁. I don't mean you should speak like a native from 浅草, but you should understand it like the average Japanese does.

I have a friend from Aomoriken. There are actually two major dialects in use there. The one that is unintelligible is even hard to understand for speakers of the OTHER Aomoriben. It's a lot like Newfoundland in Canada I guess

じゃねぇ, つまらねぇ, うるせぇ, すげぇ etc are no longer regional dialects. They are now social dialects for youths and 不良やつ.

Aomoriben is the most badass sounding japanese I've ever heard. That's all I have.

Erubey Wrote:Aomoriben is the most badass sounding japanese I've ever heard. That's all I have.

I like a lot how it sounds

Aomoriben is feaured in the hilarious JDrama 山女壁女, though the main actress is really bad at mimicking it.