Does anyone know the percentage of the japanese speaking population that speaks standard japanese, against the dialect or variant speaking population? Is standard japanese as wide spread as it seems?
since no one answered after 11 hours, I’ll share what info I know but I might be wrong
Basically everyone can use a dialect. There is no % of people who can’t use a dialect. It changes the vocab, the pitch accent, the idioms, and probably more.
Standard is what you use when using 丁寧語 and up. It’s pretty close to Kanto-ben which is the dialect of Tokyo but I’m told it’s not exactly the same.
When you go into informal friendly speaking, you use your dialect.
Some people can’t go into standard who are both really old and really rural. But basically everyone you are expected to interact with will be able to go to standard.
2 comments
since no one answered after 11 hours, I’ll share what info I know but I might be wrong
Basically everyone can use a dialect. There is no % of people who can’t use a dialect. It changes the vocab, the pitch accent, the idioms, and probably more.
Standard is what you use when using 丁寧語 and up. It’s pretty close to Kanto-ben which is the dialect of Tokyo but I’m told it’s not exactly the same.
When you go into informal friendly speaking, you use your dialect.
Some people can’t go into standard who are both really old and really rural. But basically everyone you are expected to interact with will be able to go to standard.
This.