well most Japanese people who speak the standard japanese (tokyo) can't easily imitate the accent from other places (depending on the place it could sound really different from standard or even really hill-billy like akita-ben). For example I've heard people say on talk/variety shows nani yanen (popular phrase in kansai-ben) but it sounded terrible since they can't speak kansai-ben. the intonation is opposite or something and the intonation is closer to english than standard japanese apparently  (the host on shindoumoto kyoudai said that.. I' m not sure if he was that serious about it. )

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2012 August 29, 8:34 pm)

howtwosavealif3 wrote:

For example I've heard people say on talk/variety shows nani yanen (popular phrase in kansai-ben) but it sounded terrible since they can't speak kansai-ben.

This is wrong. You wouldn't be able to tell a Kansai-jin from a Tokyo-ite by how they say なんでやねん.  The intonation of なんでやねん is easy to imitate because it's a set phrase.

It's hard for people from Tokyo to accurately speak like a person from Kansai would, but it's really easy to mimic a specific phrase, especially one that doesn't even exist in Tokyo dialect.

JimmySeal wrote:

Tzadeck wrote:

This is wrong. You wouldn't be able to tell a Kansai-jin from a Tokyo-ite by how they say なんでやねん.  The intonation of なんでやねん is easy to imitate because it's a set phrase.

It may be easy to imitate, but I have also heard people say that Tokyo-ites often fail to say なんでやねん convincingly, by putting the accent on the な.

I still don't buy it.  I feel like people are more likely to say this because they are pround of being from Kansai rather than because it's true.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 August 30, 1:34 am)