Today, after living in Japan for a year, I realized that ほんま is actually Kansai dialect

Every day I hear people peppering their conversations with ほんま, and I just figured it was some advanced particle or grammar point that I haven’t learned yet. Only today, after living here for an entire year, did I realize it’s actually just the Kansai-ben version of 本当. I feel dumb that it took me this long to figure out lol. Dialects are hard!

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なんでやねん

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ええんちゃう?:relaxed:

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Try living in Kansai and thinking Kansai-ben words are actually the standard way of expression (excluding the most obvious ones, like なんでやねん). ^^;;

Also, the pronunciation intonation really sticks!

ほうやで

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This is relatable. Things I didn’t know were Hokkaido-ben until recently:

ごみを投げる (instead of ごみを捨てる) - literally to throw away trash.
めんこい - cute…I thought it was just a fancy word young people use a lot like “めっちゃ” (which I also found out has Kansai origins).
道産子 - Hokkaido-born

I’ve been living here for 3 years…

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大きに

Kansai ben is fun, Tokyo is so dull in comparaison…

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Earlier, I learned some other expressions:

あばばい–exclamation when the sun is bright and shines in your eyes
ほなけん–therefore (exactly the same as だから)
かく–to pick up ペンをかきてください。
まけまけいっぱい–extremely full to the point of overflowing

(I don’t know if there are kanji to go along with these, I’ve just heard them spoken

Also, some older people around here end sentences with け instead of ね: 今日はめちゃくちゃ暑いけ。

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It’s Ni No Kuni all over again…

(:heart: Shizuku!)

I’ve been working on a translation of a drama series called Teppan, and that features characters speaking in both Osaka dialect and Hiroshima dialect. It’s been… interesting, to say the least.

Still trying to work out how to subtitle まいど succinctly enough that it takes as long to read as it does to say.

Emm, 「まいど」ってどういう意味ですか。

Something like “Thanks for your patronage”. Shopkeepers say it to customers.

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“Come again!” or something? Arguably a bit liberal in translation, but if your criteria is to keep reading time and listening time roughly the same, that’s about as short as you can get while still being believable for a shopkeeper to say.

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s e y a n a

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Thanks! I have this book at home


and it’s pretty good, but I haven’t looked at it in awhile. And more importantly, I haven’t lived in Kansai for a long time.

Yeesh, who thought those drawings were a good idea.

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The language division of Tuttle publishing isn’t exactly known for their superb graphic design. Witness:

image
And I won’t even get into the creepiness of such titles as “Making out in Chinese”, “Making out in Tagalog”, “Making out in Korean”, etc. each one featuring a cringey black and white photo of a white dude hitting on an eager looking asian lady.

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