Japanese slang words

I personally like めちゃくちゃ, which means absurd. There’s also でかい, which means gargantuan. What are some cool slang words?

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I’m not sure if those are “slang” as much as they are just more common in spoken language, but yeah. When I imagine slang, I think of things the old folks wouldn’t be hip to. I encounter lots of fun phrases and words here in Kansai.

Can you give me some examples :smile:

なんでやねん! - what the hell?
アホちゃう? - are you stupid?
ほんまに? - kansai version of ほんとに?

Have you found yourself developing a Kansai accent?

Well, I guess it’s hard to say if I’m picking up on their intonation, but I basically don’t use kansai-ben much at all.

Kansai seems/sounds like a cool place. How’d you wind up there in the first place?

Completely out of my control… I’m on the JET Program and I got placed in Kobe. I didn’t request it, but it’s fantastic.

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I love Kansaiben. Used to learn it by accident all the time, because of immersion and locals who were eager to talk about it. Hence I don’t know much about “general slang”, if there is such a thing in Japan, but like @Leebo, I simply know Kansai-versions of things.

Also, there’s sub-groups of people who use their own words.
For example, you shouldn’t abbreviate です into っす, unless you’re a sports loving 男.
Another one, if I remember correctly, young/teen South-osakan girls don’t ask 「何してるん?」They use 「何しとん?」 (the ん at the end is actually also Kansaiben. The の at the end of a question gets replaced with it)

Last but not least:
心配せんといて - Don’t worry

I think adding 50 in front of someone’s name is a way of cheering for them: 50 scaryslender18.

Aw cool. I see a lot of people here on WK doing JET. What are the steps involved? I’m assuming you have to make some sort of application. How long had you been studying before JET, btw

oh yea, don’t know if this counts as what you actually meant in the first post, but as for sub-group slangs, there’s also ギャル語 … aaaand this video:

We laughed our asses off with my Japanese friends watching this, so unless you’re a ギャル or insist on using it as a comic relief (no offense to any actual ギャルs tho), I recommend you to NOT learn it. But it’s super interesting n___n

Too bad I couldn’t find the original clip anymore. This one is riddled with comments slapped on top of the video.

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Can’t say I understand everything, but I like it. Also, has already led to a few more similar ones - train announcement “語” version of Momotaro is pretty good.

Yeah, there’s an application window every year in October/November. It’s fairly extensive. You can find plenty of discussion here. I started studying Japanese about 2 years before applying.

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