Are there any phonological differences between different Japanese accents?

5 comments

1. It is often said that the vowel /u/ is more rounded in Kansai region compared to Kanto region.If you look into traditional dialects, more extreme cases are in every corner of Japan. For example, in some traditional forms of Tohoku dialects, “clear” obstruent stops (which roughly corresponds to voiceless consonants in the standard Japanese) are voiced, and the “muddy” (roughly, voiced in the standard Japanese) series are prenasalized.

   Edit: Another thing often mentioned is that vowel devoicing is more prevalent in Tokyo than in Kyoto

2. Yes. Aomori dialect has quite a few

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   Yuki becomes Yukshi or Yugi dependeing on whether your in Nanbu or Tsugaru

   The い　sound is closer to a short i sound in English and ひ　becomes す　in many cases.

   ひこうき　→　すこうき　

   amongst other changes.

3. Check out the yotsugana. In Japanese classes for language learners, we’re typically taught that the pronunciation of ず=づ and じ＝ぢ but there’s distinct regional differences. Some parts of the country pronounce them all as the same sound, some consider ず and づ as two sounds while じ=ぢ and some (rarest) pronounce these as four separate sounds. So this won’t show up all of the time, just on some words like つづく or かたづける.

   My limited experience also has me thinking that the /a/ sound in Hokkaido is closer to an /e/ than textbook Japanese, so for example you might hear the word ふたり sound similar to ふてり

4. It is sometimes debated whether Okinawan is a language or a dialect (I consider it a separate language), but one thing I’ve noticed is there are sound shifts, namely from お in Japanese to う in Uchinaaguchi (大 is pronounced うふ in Uchinaaguchi, 心 is くくる, 言葉 is くとぅば).

5. Nasalization of g in intervocalic contexts comes to mind