Much Ado About Dialects in Japan

Posted on 26. Jul, 2009 @ 2:34 pm by in Language, Travel Views: 914

I quickly threw together this post to answer the question, “What do you find most unusual, crazy or strange about Japan?” for the July Japansoc Blog Matsuri. One thing that comes to mind is the attention given to Japanese dialects.

HIS Kyoto

The relationship of this poster and dialects is in the text, which I’ll explain here as I have explained before on another blog.

「海外行き春？ キャンペーン」

「海外」means “overseas” or sometimes could be translated as “abroad.”

「行き」means “to go.”

「春」means “spring.”

You may be wondering, why is 「春」in there? This is a joke, or pun, on Kansai dialect, or more precisely, Kyoto dialect.

Kyoto-ben 「はる」crash course!

In Kyoto-ben, you can put 「はる」(haru) after a verb to make it polite. For example in this case they are making a pun with 「海外に行きはる？」which means, “You’re going overseas?” in polite Kyoto dialect… And replacing the 「はる」with 「春」which means spring and is also pronounced “haru.”

Get it?

There are lots of these puns on Kansai dialect, and other dialects around Japan. The fact that Japanese has so many homonyms makes it easy to come up with these puns, and the attitude towards the dialects make them completely (mostly?) harmless.

Of course we also have a variety of dialects and different ways of speaking in the United States. We have our accent imitations, and our southern drawl jokes and what not, but people would often find them offensive. I have rarely (if ever) seen someone take offense at a dialect joke in Japan. Am I wrong?

Maybe my interest in Japanese has just made me oversensitive.

Check out our Kansai-ben iPhone application to learn more about Kansai-ben. It introduces hundreds of Kansai-ben expressions!

- Harvey

  • syxed

    But really what’s unusual about Japan is not the attention given to dialects but why there are so many in the first place. In America we may have some local accents and a few words that change, but the difference between Tokyo-ben and Kansai-ben or Kagoshima-ben or Aomori-ben is more different than American English to British English. Words change, grammatical structures change.
    I don’t even understand how dialects in Japan can change so much within 50km when in any other country, even one not as standardized as America, like China, it would take 1000km.

  • http://makingmonks.blogspot.com/ Jesse LeFebvre

    Actually, Japan is not unique in the number or frequency of dialects and China is a great example of that. For example, the Fujian “Dialect” which is actually a collection of mutually often mutually unintelligible languages–even within distances as little as 10km (forget 1000km). In both Fujian and Japan this has a lot to do with geography. Mountains and rivers where signficant barriers to human beings until only recently and the separation they provided allowed small groups of people to have a huge impact on their languages over time. Think about it this way… the way you talk in your home with your family and friends with all your inside jokes, funny expressions, etc…. now imagine that you don’t go to school and neither do your neighbors and you all speak that way because you only know each and no one else so it isn’t a problem. That increasely the dynamism of language and results in marked potential for changes. Japan isn’t unique in having dialects and is probably a lot like other places where small groups of people lived in relative isolation for significant periods of time. If you looking for a situation like that in the Americas, you’d have to look at the Native American languages for a good comparison not British and American English. However, the historical British Isles were probably a great example of a similar environment for dialects before relative unification with Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland all possessing different languages and probably dialects as well…

    Anyway, sorry to carry on but, since I live in Japan, I get tired of hearing about totally unfounded claims for Japanese uniqueness which are usually supported by little more than ignorance and/or some variation on the game of comparing apples and oranges.

    On a different note, I am thinking about switching to an iPhone just to run that Kansai dialect application!

  • http://slashandburn.typepad.com/yakihito/ Adam

    Great post. I would never have understood the pun in that ad. I got the meaning right away, but not knowing Kansai ben made me ignorant of the subtleties. Yet another reason to get an iPhone!

  • http://mokudekiru.com mo

    Haaaa. Oh, puns. It’s true though, everyone I met in Japan LOVED to make jokes about different dialects. Kansai people particularly like to poke fun at Tokyo’s “normal” accent. Not sure if anyone would get offended though.

  • syxed

    Jesse, I’ve never heard an explanation for it before. That actually makes a lot of sense.
    I completely agree with you. I was not arguing for Japan’s uniqueness but was really inquiring as to why the dialects evolved this way. I don’t even think it’s necessarily a good thing to have so many dialects in such a small area.
    I live in Japan these days as well, and the belief in Nihonjinron is still waaay more prevalent than it should be.

  • http://mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com MK

    I don’t get it ><

    Is it hard to learn Japanese?

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