So, background, I grew up speaking Japanese at home. I live in the States, and my family emigrated circa ~1947. My grandma (whom I was raised by/learned Japanese from) was born in 1928 or thereabouts and came from a small village in Hokkaido. (I tried looking it up but can't find it.)
So growing up, I was exposed to standard Japanese (through various sources) but have never visited Japan or spoken Japanese with anyone outside of my immediate family. I was pretty much raised in a language bubble, I guess.
Smash cut to earlier today. A neighbor is hosting a Japanese exchange student and knows I speak the language. Thinks it'll be cool for her to know me. I meet her (a college student) and just start talking. She's super silent, and I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Then she says, in English, "It's hard to understand you."
So I'm sitting there, confused. I'm speaking normal Japanese (or so I think), and she can't understand me. I try to use standard but I've grown up speaking this way and I've never really spoken it, only heard it on occasion. And I start to think that I actually don't know Japanese.
As it turns out, learning Japanese from a pre-WWII old lady from a teeny tiny village makes me sound like a pre-WWII old lady from a teeny tiny village. Her dialect has a lot of archaic words, grammar, that sort of thing. A lot of loan words from Russian that aren't used in standard Japanese too.
So… I'm wondering if learning standard (I keep calling it that but I'm not sure if that's the right word) would be easier or harder for me. I want to learn it, especially how to read and write, but I'm kind of scared that even if I do, I'll still be the old man out whenever I open my mouth.
Edit: Wasn't expecting people to be that interested in this lol. I'm going to try and record myself but I also might have videos of my grandma speaking, if that's better.
Edit, the Quickening: Got in contact with a Japanese department not too far away. They sound interested. They want me and my aunt to provide voice samples so I guess I'll share those here when I make them.
by [deleted]