Of the three (mostly) fluent Japanese speaking ALTs in my BOE out in this area in rural Tokushima, I’m the only person who speaks Standard Japanese.
I remember our supervisor at the BOE looking at us and saying in Japanese “it’s interesting, A-Sensei and P-Sensei both speak Awa-Ben quite well, but (my surname) Sensei, what’s up with you and *Hyoujungo?”* According to her, I sound like a cross between a mild American accent and someone from Saitama prefecture.
I do recall hearing about foreigners occasionally picking up the local *Hougen* when they’ve lived in a certain area for a bit, but I’m curious about the rest of you here.
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Only as a party trick.
I speak it with students because they find it funny, but it feels like I’m posing if I do it too much. Plus Awa is great, nice luck getting placed there!
Not a JET, but I mostly just speak Standard Japanese and 女子高生弁. Occasionally I’ll pick up a word or pronunciation from 鹿児島弁 and people will think it’s the cutest thing ever, but even the locals here mostly don’t speak it unless they’re old lol
Yeah I’ve been picking up some of my local dialect. A lot of the times i don’t even realize its a dialect tbh 😂
Yes and no.
Generally, my tutors have been/are from adjacent prefectures. They’ve also been women, and at one point, I had some obvious feminine features in my speech, so they definitely have had an effect on me.
I do have some local features in my speech, but not many and I generally aspire to speak fairly properly.
The end result is that locals seem to know I’ve been in my prefecture for a little while whilst also wondering if I’ve lived elsewhere in Japan.
FYI. I’m conversational these days, but I wouldn’t say I’m there yet. And I wouldn’t say I’m perapera yet.
I speak pretty much only the local dialect/ standard Japanese but with a slight local twist to it. As in, certain ways I pronounce words are indicators that I’m from this area lol I don’t mean to but since all the teachers speak with this slightly different Japanese, even without actually speaking the dialect, I can’t help it. And everyone encourages it too, they won’t correct me when I say words with that local twang.
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I live in Kansai and use kansai-ben quite a bit because I hear it so much and all the teachers and people at my BoE use it. I also have a lot of friends from kansai so just picked it up naturally. my kids laugh when I use it so it’s fun
Both. If you are living in a rural area while you learn Japanese you’re going to learn the dialect, and it’s going to be normal to you. You wrote that occasionally foreigbers learn local dialect, but every single person I know who lived in a rural placement picked up some of it, if only the alternative vocabulary, because that’s what everyone around you is saying all the time.
Your coworker should also be aware that you can find dialect in Saitama prefecture, if you look hard enough.
I’m a CIR so the situation is a little different to an ALT, but I’d lived in Kansai for 6 years prior to enrolling on JET and my placement is here in Kansai too. Being a fourth year puts me at almost ten years living in the exact same spot and all my Japanese learning/education started when I first moved here, so my spoken Japanese is 100% well and truly Kansai-ben.
That being said I did of course study hyoujungo when I was learning at Uni, and have studied/used Keigo a lot, so I’ll always do my best to use the appropriate forms in the right setting but it’s not always easy to avoid slipping! For yourself, predominantly speaking hyoujungo and not particuarly having a regional accent is never a bad thing! Regional dialects can be great or terrible depending on the context, but you’re always fine with polite desu/masu form spoken in regular ol’ standard Japanese.
Yes but only typically with younger kids who used it often and as a party trick with the office people lol. The most used was ちょう instead of ている so most kids said 知っちょう instead of 知っている and if i said it around adults no one really blinked an eye. It was pretty normal.
Yes
I occasionally use ゴミをなげる instead of ゴミを出す and てぶくろをはく instead of つける、 therefore yes I’ve become one with my region’s way of speaking and am accepted as one of their own
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Picking up on the local dialect is beneficial. It shows you are willing to adapt, also your co-workers will appreciate it. For myself, Tsugaru-Ben is not easy but I try to understand and use it when possible.
I depends on what you learnt, I learnt hyojungo at uni and now live in Kansai and I naturally speak hyojungo.
I learned standard Japanese in university before going and I still speak standard Japanese naturally. While still a student, I did a summer study abroad program in Tohoku and learned that Tohoku-ben means you replace all instances of “-ai” (eg. “umai” “tsurai”) at the end of adjectives with “ei” instead, so you say “umei” instead of “umai” and “tsurei” instead of “tsurai” When I went on JET, I requested Fukushima (and got it) so as a little party trick, I surprised my coworkers at my first enkai by taking a bite of food and exclaiming “Umei!” (they loved it)
Honestly, 99% of my daily life, I spoke standard Japanese and no one even batted an eye. I only ever pulled out Tohoku ben for party tricks or to impress my students. The only other aspect of local dialect I ended up picking up was for words like 言う or 行く you say ゆう or ゆこう instead. But that’s because it’s easier to say the latter version anyway. 😀