The Dialects of Japanese language reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Dialects of Japanese language

The Japanese language has dozens of geographic dialects in addition to standard Japanese, which grew out of Kanto's dialect.

Table of contents

1 Kansai dialect 2 Other dialects 3 External Link

Kansai dialect

The most well-known, Kansai-ben (関西弁, ben dialect) is a dialect spoken in the Kansai region of Japan, and most notably in the city of Osaka. Most Japanese people from outside the region find the dialect to be rough-sounding.

Kansai-ben contracts several words—chigau "wrong" becomes chau, omoshiroi "interesting" becomes omoroi, and hontō "really" becomes honma. It replaces others entirely—suteru "to throw away" becomes hokasu, and totemo "very" becomes mecha.

Common phrases unique to the Kansai dialect include:

• akan - a mild expletive
• aho - idiot
• donkusai - stupid (literally "stupid-smelling")
• honnnara - in that case
• makeru - to discount a price (literally "to lose")
• tanomu - please
• yaru - to give (elsewhere in Japan, it is a vulgar form of "to do")
• nan yan nen - what are you doing?/ what are you saying?

Other dialects

• Hokkaido-ben
• Fukui-ben
• Kawachi-ben
• Kobe-ben is a variation on Kansai-ben, most notable for conjugating verbs with an ending -ton (nani shite iru? "What are you doing?" becomes nani shiton?)
• Kyoto-ben is a very soft and melodic Kansai dialect variation. Where Kobe dialect would say -ton, Kyoto dialect uses -taharu or -teharu (e.g. nani shitaharu no?). The sentence endings -yasu and -dosu are also common in Kyoto.
• Hakata-ben is the dialect of Fukuoka and is notable, amongst many other idiosyncrasies, for its use of -to? as a question (e.g., nani shite iru? "What are you doing?" becomes nanba shiyotto?)

External Link

• dialect maps of Japan
• 関西弁講座 (in Japanese)

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