I’ve just seen the That Japanese Man Yuta talking about the differences in dialects and I don’t understand why people are so fascinated by learning 関西弁. I understand that for Japanese people is important to know and also it might carry some cultural issue.
But, for me, a moron learner, the slight different inflection or adding a sound at the end of a sentence doesn’t seem to be a big deal. I think it is interesting for learning to be aware of these nuances, but I want to understand why people talk too much about it.
TLDR: am I a moron to not finding Japanese dialects a big deal?
9 comments
You’re not a moron. For most of us Japanese is a hobby, so the only thing that matters is what you enjoy.
Understanding the Kansai dialect is important to me because I like reading manga that are dialogue-heavy, and I want to understand what the characters are saying in stories set in Kansai.
People are morons for liking different things? What? Maybe stop focusing on why other people enjoy things you don’t, and more on things you yourself enjoy.
Don’t understand mindsets like these honestly.
Maybe better to see them as accents rather than dialects?
The actual dialects like Tsugaru-ben, and Satsuma-ben, and taking it a step further Okinawan, and all the gradually more distant ones on the islands leading to Okinawa proper. Those are not intelligible to someone born and raised in Tokyo, though a native speaker could probably learn them without much study.
There’s more than intonation. There’s a set of word choice and other things which go into a dialect that intern inform the listener on a huge wealth of cultural and social information about the speaker. An older person who has family that lived in New England for generations sounds distinctly different than people who have more recent ties to the area.
Also, I doubt most language learners go into it this far (beside some broad generalities), but studying dialects help preserve it as the standard language takes over. For example, The various regional Irish accents of English and dialects of Irish (Gaelige) are dying because of standardization and outside influences (e.g.: mass media, American films and television).
Dialects just kind of…are. As in, they’re there. I don’t get the obsession with guys living in Tokyo or elsewhere who simply *must* speak in kansai-ben all the time, but whatever dialect exists where you live will have some impact on the people who live there that’s worth understanding.
Case in point, I spent a year and a bit living in Fukuoka, and the people there use the level of dialect to gauge familiarity. You speak to people you like in hakata-ben, and distance yourself from people you don’t like with hyoujungo.
This has the interesting side effect of making interactions with people from Tokyo very difficult, since as far as the Fukuoka side is concerned, Tokyo people are all-distant, all the time.
They’re not a big deal and you can skip learning it if you’re not interested. It’s like if you’re learning English and wanted to learn how Texans speak. Useful for comprehension but not needed for everyday interactions unless you regularly interact with people from the region.
what on earth would be highly rated? i can’t imagine how rating a dialect is meaningful in any way. is the brooklyn accent better than a southern drawl? is british superior to australian or american? is the existence of australian “a big deal” to americans? this is a very confusing concept.
I think Kansai-ben specifically gets represented a lot in media, which peaks a lot of people’s interests. Other (just as interesting imo) dialects that get less media attention therefore get less interest from learners. Kansai-ben is also a big unique in that it’s a pretty actively used dialect. Others, like Hokkaido-ben, are generally only used by the elderly.
With Kansai-ben specifically, a lot of comedians are from Kansai, so Kansai-ben has kind of taken on this “language of comedy” vibe. It’s so present on variety shows that my students, who are all born and raised in rural Hokkaido, regularly throw random Kansai-ben into their everyday speech.
Not a moron, for Japanese people it’s just something you grow up with or you don’t.
Dialects are very rich in meaning and important to those who speak them, and it’s cool and kind of funny when someone moves to Japan and picks up the local accent/dialect. And some shows and manga feature 関西弁 a lot, so I can see how a lot of people would want to at least understand it.
However, like in any language, there are people who tend to look down on dialects and accents that are not their own, or not 標準語, the implication being that people with heavy accents are less educated and refined.
So because a) it’s a matter of regional culture and pride b) people who speak dialects have usually had to deal with discrimination on some level, it can feel a bit patronizing when foreigners learn a specific dialect without ever having spent time in the region. Reminds me of meeting Americans who insisted on speaking in a Cockney accent all the time because they were “so good at it”.