Let's talk Japanese dialects!

[AdalwinAmillion]

This is the first topic I open on this wonderful forum; you guys, girls, and nbs actually seem to be really chill, so I am not as shy to post anything on here.

I want to open it in the first place is because, as it turns out, one of my native Japanese friends actually speaks Kansai-dialect (Spoken around Osaka and Kyoto). He rarely gets to speak it aside from when he is talking to his mother.

I read the Wikipedia page for the dialect, and I offered him to use it when talking to me (I am a little more advanced than my level might suggest…).

One of the interesting things about Kansai is that they use や instead of だ (です) in casual speech. I think it makes a sentence sound a lot softer. It really makes me want to read about Japanese linguistical history.

Do you know of any cool features in other dialects? Which one do you like best?

[alo]

Kansai-Ben for obvious reasons. Although I do watch a lot of the Forsythe family and they’re originally from Hiroshima so that accent has grown on me.

[Leebo]

I live in Kansai, so I’m pretty used to it now, but it has led to me giving up hope of having a consistent pitch accent pattern, since I’m constantly exposed to something that isn’t standard Japanese.

[Belthazar]

I’ve been studying Kansai-ben and Hiroshima-ben.

One of the slightly annoying things about the latter is that だ becomes じゃ, which makes it look they’re negating everything.

Also, から becomes けー or even け, so だから becomes じゃけ, which looks like something else altogether.

[Zalathar]

I remember picking up some of these dialect differences in the Japanese audio of the Yakuza series games, of all places

That’s where I remember hearing things like や, 〜おる, しゃあない and so on.

[AmberMain]

Studied abroad in Shiga Prefecture. Homestay family commonly used the Kansai Dialect. I find the dialect to be easier on the lips. Hard to describe but I feel like it flows more naturally. In no way am I fluent with the dialect but I picked up some habits I can’t break like using ほんまに and replacing だ with や。Now that I live in Nagano, people laugh at me when it comes out lol.

[sagestruggler]

I met a Japanese woman from Kobe in my hometown, and when she talked about how much she loved Kansai, I ended up deciding to study here. 関西弁 is next on my list to start studying.

[AdalwinAmillion]

I think learning some dialect words can help improve your vocabulary in general!