I asked people who have lived in Japan and in Kyoto and Osaka, and I spoke to them in Japanese. I was told I sound from Kyoto or Osaka, that I use traditional japanese from there, but when I search for the dialects in those places they sound very different. Is there a difference between dialects and “traditional”? What do they mean? They know I asked for a serious reason.
I told them I remember “ee” being used in words like sugee instead of sugoi but that I feel that was a bad way of speaking, I remember it as being corrected to not speak like that, so I’m confused when I see dialect videos and they use it casually. I do use it nevertheless but just when I’m thinking, mostly the feeling is “you can’t use this if you want to speak refined”.
I’m writing this because I’m searching for the place I used to be in as a small child, wrote more about that in my profile.
I also found [this video](https://youtu.be/wO3DGH6DLCU?si=o4uCeyv6OFwtWkIt) with all dialects, is this accurate?
I made a list and these are the ones that felt closest to how I speak: Akita, Miyagi??, Niigata??, Ibaraki, Gunma, Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Gifu???, Chiba???, Kyoto??, Nara?, Osaka? (The question marks is sounds ok but sounds weird too) I am honestly so confused.
by whitepasserine