tl;dr: what random local language do you use out of necessity?
I’ve seen threads on various subreddits about learning local variations of Japanese and it made me think… I have two phrases that are very much Kansai/Kyoto I use every single day.
One word なおして is so much freaking easier to use than 片付けて. This is possibly laziness but at my work, I need to say this so much, and everyone is either from Kyoto or has lived in Kyoto for awhile so it’s a non issue.
The other is みがはいってる。 I don’t think I’m spelling that right as I’ve never written it before but as my work is in a gym I ask people about muscle soreness a lot. So I ask using 筋肉痛はどうですか？ and elderly members respond as I wrote above.
When I lived in Yamaguchi I used 読んじょる and other forms of that conjugation because it’s literally where I learned Japanese. I don’t now but it is a fun parlor trick after that NHK drama that everyone still remembers 知っちょる from.
So my question is just for fun, what dialectical word do you just use everyday whether for fun or because old people speak that way and they’d be super confused if you didn’t use it?
Edit: I can’t edit titles, sorry it should refer to dialect not accent.
18 comments
When I first moved to Japan, I lived in Shiga for a year. I moved to Tokyo and occasionally had to receive or make calls from our office if the Japanese secretary wasn’t available.
I would ask 誰々様おられますでしょうか？ and did this for months before a native speaker amusedly asked me where I’d picked it up, not realizing おられます is just polite Kansai-ben for いらっしゃいます。 I just thought it was a normal polite speech since I always heard other staff around me using it in Shiga 😅
I feel like it’s easy for the city folk to have this discussion. But for us smaller community living folk (who btw have some gnaaarrly town-to-town differences in dialects), it would be impossible to give examples without instantly doxxing ourselves.
I think you meant ‘dialect’ rather than ‘accented language’.
I try not to use any dialect at work. I have a friend from Aomori, and I sometimes jokingly imitate the Tsugaru dialect when talking to him. I studied in Western Japan for a while, so I sometimes imitate a fake Kansai dialect to tell a joke, etc.
If you actually meant to say ‘accent’ and not ‘dialect’, then I do a fake heavy American accent to make fun of Americans (or Westerners to some extent) when speaking Japanese, and my coworkers seem to love it 🙂
I don’t know if it is a dialect or normal grammar, but I’m always in trouble when my wife uses とく
like エアコン消しとく and I stand there and don’t know, is she turning it off or should I? I asked her later, and she wasn’t sure either, but when I Google it now, it seems to be a request to do something.
She’s using とく a lot. やめとく
I’ve essentially lived in one prefecture my entire time in Japan so I’m curious to see what people think of me once I go elsewhere. Pretty sure I speak mostly Tokyo dialect because I took Japanese classes and my teachers were from Tokyo.
I live in Hiroshima for work then I’m back in Tokyo on the weekends in my family home.
The folks in Hiroshima, especially the rural area where I have a house apparently didn’t like me because using Tokyo dialect as they felt i was speaking down to country bumpkins. I started using “じゃけ” instead of だから recently and they have accepted that I’m trying and now invite me to their mid day beer festivities.
But I used “じゃけど” in a call with our heads in Tokyo the other day and they laughed at me lol. Dialect and perceived levels of intelligence stemming from it are funny things
Lived in the mountains during my time in Japan. Most people have to do a double take because I have tendencies to sound like grandparents of my friends. I live in Iwate but often go to Akita and they tend to shorten words (because of the cold?). So if friends are over for a drink, instead of “座って”, I’ll use “すっ” to say ‘have a seat’ “まずすっ”. Or I tend to use “んだ” as I’m listening or confirming something someone else said. It threw my wife’s friends off at first but they got a good laugh once they realized where I’ve lived.
> みがはいってる
Never heard of it but I think you got it right. A dictionary shows “身が入（って）る” as muscle being fatigued, stiff and hurt.
It’s sad how little dialect I use. This is probably because my husband, while a local, for some reason speaks mostly in standard Tokyo dialect (he speaks this way with me, his family, and coworkers. Only speaks local dialect with his old hs and college friends. Anyone have any idea why that could be? He says he doesn’t know why😂)
When I was dating a guy from Osaka the Kansaiben had really rubbed off on me more than I realized at times. I had people still asking me if I had lived in Kansai for months after we broke up. Now I’d have to think long and hard to try to string together more than a couple kansaiben phrases 😂
I’ll never forget when I jokingly said いらちやね！to a staff member at my Japanese school talking about another student and the staff member just looked at me like “what did you just say..?” And my Japanese teacher laughed and told me here in Kyushu just say せっかち. いらち is kansaiben. My ex used that word all the time and I never had a clue it was dialect. 🤔
It always makes me a little sad that Gunma-ben has sorta died out; only the oldest of the grannies and grandpas still use it
We have Gunma-ben karuta though, which is a fun introduction to various phrases or words that some locals don’t even realize isn’t standard Japanese, haha
Like having the kids at school do 水くれ当番 while the rest of Japan calls it 水やり当番 or そうなん for そうなの, etc.
I’ve been trying to incorporate more Kagoshima-ben into my speaking and it’s been tough.
The words that I use the most are 「おやとさぁ」for お疲れ様, 「わっぜ」for すごく, 「あいがとさげもす」for ありがとうございます, 「きばいやんせ 」for 頑張って, and 「だれっせえ」for 疲れて.
I always thought なおす for tidying was a Kyushu thing. けん for (だ)からis handy here.
I had the complete opposite problem when I lived in Shizuoka.
I speak in a very good but unaccented and bog standard Tokyo-ben. When I was stationed in a factory in Shizuoka staffed mostly by people who had lived their entire lives in rural Shizuoka and got local jobs right out of high school, they always pointed out how 標準語 my Japanese was.
Luckily for me, the random ら that gets added to the end of sentences in Shizuoka-ben basically doesn’t have any actual meaning, so once I figured that out I had no problems. It never found it’s way into my speech though.
The other funny phenomenon that happened years ago was when I became friends with all the exchange students at my home school in the US after I did study abroad in Tokyo, and they were all from Kansai. My Japanese stayed 標準語 but I had multiple Kanto people say that my intonation was slipping heavily into Kansai-ben.
To be honest I really dont know
I have only ever lived in the same inaka town since I moved here, and I didnt speak much when I got here
I learned from talking to people not from a book, so anytime I meet someone not from the town I live in I always get told that I speak with a really heavy dialect….but I have no idea what words Im saying that arent normal
I have a friend who uses け
To say eat and to say get over here. Guess how he says get over here and try this.
>Wakayama
しか = のほうが
・チョコしか美味しいで。
・チョコのほうが美味しいです。
やん = 〜ない
・読めやん = 読めない
・できやん = できない
Everyone around me speaks in a really strong Osaka-ben so I’ve just picked it up.
おる、おらん = いる、いないやで、やね、ねん, へん, それな、せやな etc…
instead of using だ using や e.g やと思うほかす instead of 捨てるほんませなあかん = しないといけない
The more comfortable I’m with someone, the more it slowly shows.Coworkers and in-laws I literally couldn’t understand properly until a few months in.
よういわん。
知らんけど。
なんぼ？
ほんま？
ほなー