I’ve always found the Kansai dialect beautiful sounding, but, like most learners of Japanese, I’m currently learning the Tokyo dialect because its simply more popular.
I was just wondering what is the best way to get used to that dialect, if you simply have to get better at Japanese and then Kansai becomes easier to understand, or do you actually have to study some differences ?
I think a good comparison to that would be the Canadian French accent with Metropolitan French (French French). Natives understand both dialect easily, but most learners (they learn Metropolitan French 95% of the time) have trouble with Canadian French.
I guess I was also wondering if Japanese natives have trouble with Kansai/Tokyo dialect ?
Anyways, thanks for reading this post.
Good luck in yours studies.
Not to say your opinion is “wrong” or anything, but this made me chuckle, because my Kansai-speaking wife is almost embarrassed when she goes especially hard into the Kansai-ben. The first image that comes to mind for the rest of the country is comedy, so to hear you say it sounds beautiful just wasn’t what I was anticipating.
There are actually a bunch of workbooks and things designed to teach Kansai-ben to people who are natives of standard Japanese. So if you consider your Japanese level high enough, you could go that route.
Do you means that as in, understanding it or as in using it themselves?
Kansai-ben doesn’t seem all that difficult tbh understanding-wise and it’s featured extensively in media (as the go-to dialect besides Osaka-ben for non-Tokyo dialects). There are however some incredibly thick Japanese dialects out there that are very hard to parse. ^^ I bet Japanese people also have trouble then (that happens in other languages as well)). So, comparatively, Kansai-ben is pretty straight-forward I feel.
I’m also remembering listening to “Free talks” with voice actors, talking about doing roles in Kansai-ben, as an extra difficulty. The melodic lilt to it, going up and down, is easy to get wrong if it’s not your natural way of speaking. So, speaking-wise, it requires some practice - then again, that’s true for any other language as well (you don’t intentionally switch your own dialect, only comedians and actors do that).
