Dialect 方言

Japanese Language Questions
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This is a two part post.

一つ: Has anyone found useful resources, links, etc. for dialects? For example, the word with its “default” counterpart with the region it’s from?

二つ: Anyone find an interesting dialect word or have a funny story involving a mix up? Here’s mine: I’d learned the Tokyo dialect, but studied abroad in the Kyoto/Osaka/Nara region. If we used いえ instead of うち for 家, we were told we were wrong. So when my host family asked if I wanted to do something, I responded はい, いいです (yes, that’s good). Apparently, that had the connotation of “No thank you.” We quickly figured that one out though (exact same thing happened to a friend in the same program at the same time as me).

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There’s kansaiben.com.
It’s much more than a list, but there is a list in the “index” portion of the site.

I don’t have any personal stories, though maybe I will after eventually visiting my former exchange student in Osaka. :slight_smile:

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I don’t really know for the first part, but your mistakes are not from dialect :slight_smile: いえ and うち are different words using the same kanji, and いいです when replying to a question has the same connotation as “I’m alright, thanks” does in english.

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I live in Hokkaido and I love the word “tagomaru”. It means when you put your jacket on and your shirt sleeve gets pulled up inside the jacket sleeve :smiley:

For more “hokkaido-ben” check out page 8-9 of this issue of Polestar, the magazine for ALTs in Hokkaido.

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Oops. Well…that’s what we thought at the time :sweat_smile: >w< :sweat_smile:

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aaaaaaaaaahhh, Kansaiben - my favourite dialect (I’m not even a bit biased, since I’ve lived in Kansai xD)

Kansai was the first place in Japan I stayed for an extended period of time, and as I was even living with 3 girls from the region, I soon became unable to differentiate between what was common language and what was not. People started commenting on my use of the dialect, to which I’d reply: “oh? Ahh sorry, I didn’t know that was kansaiben too :sweat_smile:”

I fell in love with the word ぬくい (means warm, comes from 温もり) , as it sounded so adorable.

Heard a lady passing by complain to her friend how 気持ち悪い it was when foreigners spoke using dialect (not me that time - I had stayed quiet… but still… internal chuckles at her and the poor chap her comment was directed at).

One time at work (bartending, all in Japanese) we were talking about kansaiben with マスター (how an owner of a bar is addressed) and he taught me this:

あれ、チャウチャウちゃうんちゃう？
Meaning: That’s a dog, isn’t it?

Breakdown:
チャウチャウ = dog
ちゃうんちゃう？ = に間違いじゃん？
so in human terms, it’d be: あれは犬に間違いじゃないですね

Seems to be older-generation slang, though, as my university friends didn’t recognize the phrase.

Good times… n__n

PS. This makes me want to go back there:

the last 2 lines:
「はー、はよ大阪帰りたいわ」
「やぁ、ホッマそれな！」