Comments on: Much Ado About Dialects in Japan

By: MK

MK — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:13:53 +0000

I don’t get it ><

Is it hard to learn Japanese?

By: syxed

syxed — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:37:00 +0000

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.

By: mo

mo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:11:58 +0000

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.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:25:23 +0000

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!

By: Jesse LeFebvre

Jesse LeFebvre — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:33:10 +0000

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!