As many of you probably already know, Japan has a bunch of different dialects spoken throughout the country, so to make things a bit easier a standard version of Japanese called 標準語 (*hyoujungo*) is used in official settings like the news, but what if the casters used a local dialect instead? I found a video that shows you how a couple of them would sound, [here is the link](https://youtu.be/H43uQM6lHxw).
I’ll leave timestamp bellow for each dialect for easier viewing, and also for any curious beginners who may not know yet how to read the ones in the video, but still want to hear the dialects:
(volume warning btw, I don’t know why they made the intro cards with such a loud sfx lol)
[標準語 – standard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43uQM6lHxw&t=63s)
[福井弁 – Fukui-ben](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43uQM6lHxw&t=141s)
[津軽弁 – Tsugaru-ben](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43uQM6lHxw&t=224s)
[関西弁 – Kansai-ben](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43uQM6lHxw&t=301s)
[富山弁 – Toyama-ben](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H43uQM6lHxw&t=395s)
So, how was it? Kansai-ben was pretty comprehensible for me, but Tsugaru-ben definitely had me like ????? in the more dialect heavy portions.
5 comments
Tsugaru can definitely get less intelligible than that. It seemed more like there were a few words and phrases sprinkled in rather than being full Tsugaru.
Now do [Akita-ben.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kof7n9L9GKg)
I think I had the biggest problems with Fukui-ben.
That was fun, thanks for sharing! As an aside, there’s also a bit of a movement to move away from the term 標準語 and replace it with the word 共通語. The announcer in the video even used the term 共通語 to refer to “standard” Japanese. I first heard about this from a coworker who uses a dialect and he said that the 標準語 can be seen as look down on or delegitimizing dialects, so he prefers to use the term 共通語
for tsugaru ben i watch a movie called いとみち the other day. I thought she was speaking korean at first. average movie but worth to see.