Pretty much the title, I found it in my notes and forgot I wrote it and of course didn’t write an example sentence.
It appears to mean that something is hopeless or useless.
But even living in Kansai area (the dialect it seems to be from, hence why it would be in my notes), I don’t recall ever hearing it.
Edit: after seeing these responses I have come to the conclusion that my Japanese skills just simply aren’t good enough to recognize it in use
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I believe it’s used in replace of だめ or よくない
I certainly hear people from Kansai saying it. I just never saw it written in Kanji before, though.
You can more or less think of it as the Kansai version of いけない, as in, やってはいけない.
あそこに行っちゃ、あかん。
You can’t go there.
こら、あかんな。
This ain’t good.
It means ‘no good’ ‘no go’ more or less. We do not usually write it with Kanji though, I didn’t even realize what you were talking about until I saw you wrote Kansai dialect. Just あかん or sometimes stylized アカン on TV.
It is pretty much Kansai dialect of いけない so we use in place of saying むり、だめ、いけない、etc.
Examples:
タバコはあかん / No smoking/smoking is no good. In standard Japanese タバコはだめ (no smoking)
こりゃあかんわ / There’s no way this will work. In standard Japanese これはだめだ / だめだこれ
仕事行く前にせなあかん / I have to do it before I go to work. In standard Japanese 仕事行く前にしなきゃいけない
それはあかんやろ / That’s not allowed. In standard Japanese それはだめでしょ
階段はあかん / I can’t take the stairs. In standard Japanese 階段は無理
Note: they also use だめ and 無理 in Kansai so they are not always replaced with あかん they just can be.
I live in Hyogo and hear it several times a day.
Don’t live in Kansai but any Japanese person or anyine reasonable famikiar with Japanese would know it, I just never seen the kanji before. Means, bad, wrong, no, etc. Equivalent to dame, ikenai, etc. Or as we say here in Kyushu, いかん!
Don’t live in Kansai but any Japanese person or anyone reasonably familiar with Japanese would know it, I just never seen the kanji before. Means, bad, wrong, no, etc. Equivalent to dame, ikenai, etc. Or as we say here in Kyushu, いかん!