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Post by Jade on Mar 28, 2014 21:50:31 GMT
So, an ISP combined their ads all into one video, and I figured it was interesting enough to share♥ |
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Post by chocopie on Apr 4, 2014 17:04:44 GMT
How cool! Do you (or anyone else) study any dialects?
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Post by Underlig on Apr 4, 2014 19:40:24 GMT
I don't study dialects really(but I love hearing different dialects and accents in different languages!!), but I'm really interested!! It's so cool how you can hear the differences! A girl I chat with use a little 関西弁 when she writes me, and that is really awesome!!^^ Thank you for sharing the video!!  |
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Post by Bokusenou on Apr 4, 2014 19:51:26 GMT
Great video Jade!
I tried studying Kansai-ben once but stopped for a while. Lately I've gotten back into learning it through immersion, using the Ni no Kuni and Yume wo Kanaeru Zou DS games though.
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Post by Jembru on Apr 4, 2014 23:55:50 GMT
Oh I forgot all about this thread. I'm so sorry Jade. I watched on my phone and then it got buried by translation threads and suchlike. >.<
Yeah, this video was really interesting. I don't personally think I'd study any dialects. I know the well-known differences of kansai that most learners come across at some point int their studies, but I can't easily recall it if asked.
It's one of those things I just sorta know, as in, if it comes up, I recognise it. The same is true of certain features of Niigata-ben, like how (I hope I'm right here) 'な' sometimes becomes 'け' (こんけ, あんけ, and so on), or.. I think 'おめさん' comes from Niigata dialect too(??) and it's maybe where 'ばか' means 'extremely'.or is that kansai too? No, baka is a harsh word in the kansai region isn't it? I think I knew bits of another dialect, but I can't remember the name. I think they said '行ぐ' instead of '行く' but that's all I can remember just now. If the name comes to me, I'll update.
Like I say, It's hit-and-miss, but I sorta remember things if they come up. However, I can't recall this knowledge actively. If I ever do master conversational Japanese (I really doubt it will happen some days >.<), I think my next goal would be to develop an accent!
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Post by Jade on Apr 5, 2014 2:12:52 GMT
chocopie: Nah, I don't study any particular dialects atm. I do think they're interesting, but considering I have a hard enough time remembering to use 丁寧語 most of the time trying to incorporate aspects of a different dialect is probably just going to mess me up a bit more lol I'm not sure if it was 愛知県 or just around Nagoya, but in that area some people tended to add ミャ/ニャ sounds. To be honest, I didn't notice it much at all, but the fact that they apparently did that was brought up (and made fun of a bit) multiple times by various Japanese friends so I guess it must have been true lol
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Post by Jembru on May 3, 2014 1:14:55 GMT
I've been meaning to mention this for days... I showed this video to a Japanese friend at the weekend because she'd asked me how I was with unfamiliar accents. It reminded me of this video and as I can only catch the the Tokyo (the first video) and saitama (practically tokyo) diects on it, my answer was a resounding, no, I can't handle dialects. I then played it for her and although it didn't help that we were in a noisy bar, I was really surprised to learn that she can't understand many of these accents either! She told me about how people living in parts of Northern Honshu have such strong dialects that people from other parts of Japan simply can't understand them.
It really amazed me. I mean, my local dialect is hard for some people to understand: (warning: contains 2 mild swear words. Also, I have no idea if he's actually from Newcastle or not. The words make me think not, but the accent is flawless), but dialects as strong as that are relatively rare in England. Between our boarders it can get tough. For example. I don't always follow strong Scottish accents, but otherwise, we rarely can't understand one another at all.
Btw, as I'm sure Jade, Abby and LittleGaijin will testify, I don't sound like the guy in that poem. I have a strong accent, but I don't speak dialect besides saying things like 'like' and 'aye' sometimes. Amazingly though, I met a German guy while I was over there, who spoke beautiful English and could speak proper dialect geordie with a perfect accent! I couldn't think of a single Geordie word he didn't know!
Accents truly are amazing.
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Post by seralt on Oct 9, 2014 22:42:43 GMT
How cool! Do you (or anyone else) study any dialects? I do! (sorta) I'm currently reading this book on the Ryukyuan languages, which is pretty different from any of the mainland Japanese dialects. (Technically, they're sister languages, like French and Italian, but being of the same government, are erroneously classed as dialects of Japanese.) The video is pretty cool. Theoretically, it's pretty normalized, since all speakers are female, of a similar age, and of a similar socio-economic status (I'm assuming). This minimizes any potential noise in the data, like male vs female speakers; young vs old; rich vs poor; etc. Of course, a perfect sampling would include multiple speakers from each geographical area, instead of just one per prefecture. Unfortunately, however, the Okinawan speaker was using Tokyo-standard Japanese, instead of 琉球語, much less, 沖縄弁. Given that fact, it's easier to believe that some of the others weren't speaking in dialect, but rather were simply speaking in their version of standard Japanese. |
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Post by chocopie on Oct 10, 2014 12:43:14 GMT
Unfortunately, however, the Okinawan speaker was using Tokyo-standard Japanese, instead of 琉球語, much less, 沖縄弁. 沖縄弁 is a slightly unique case though as due to the history of Okinawa, it is far more different from 標準語 than the majority of dialects. It can be seen easily in this image from here, which shows the difference between 方言. The thicker the line, the greater the difference.  I both agree and disagree with this statement. The video was made for publicity so the more accessible it is the better. The words 早い、快適and 繋げる appear in every version so I assume these are key words that they wanted to make sure everyone understood. Every video follows the same pattern お家ワイファイって（とても）早い（んだよ）。快適（だから）繋げてみ（てね）。With the bracketed words replaced by dialect so the message can still be understood. To say though that their speaking in their version of standard Japanese doesn't seem right to me though. Standard Japanese is basically a Japanese dialect that was chosen to become the standard one. All dialects are essentially different versions of each other. |
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Post by seralt on Oct 11, 2014 0:18:26 GMT
To say though that they're speaking in their version of standard Japanese doesn't seem right to me though. Standard Japanese is basically a Japanese dialect that was chosen to become the standard one. Given that the Japanese government has had an overt history of linguistic imperialism, it's a little hard to simply treat standard Japanese as just another dialect. Dominant socio-economic factors will always sway influence on the development of any subjugated language/dialect. To wit, local (eg prefectural) linguistic features (phonetic, syntactic, etc.) will still bleed into their adoption of standard Japanese in regular and predictable ways, which defines the difference between an individual's idiolect, and a regular dialect. True, over time, this blending might surpass the extant dialect, but until then, it's more productive to view their adaptation of standard Japanese as being a local variant (which is what I meant by "their version of standard Japanese").
Like I tried saying earlier, I'm just not sure whether the other samples represented local adaptations of standard dialect, or purely indigenous dialect. But as you wisely point out, it would make more sense to sacrifice linguistic integrity for communicability, which is definitely the dominant aim for advertising.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 11, 2014 0:21:42 GMT
I must say I agree with Chocopie. Where there are complely different words unique to an area, like my example of Geordie words like 'divent = don't' 'yem = home', I think that counts as dialect. It's true that Japanese is rich in slang, and you can argue that slang is often localised (like chav vs scally), but I think such slang is as much a part of a dialect as the older words. After all, when in formal situations, most people at least attempt to switch to more standard language.
You'll always find the majority of words are basically the same as standard language (just sometimes pronounced differently, like how we geories insist on 'film' having two syllables). Any more marked differences and you start moving away from dialect and into the 'related but seperate language' area. Anyone who knows German, can grasp a good deal of anything they read in Dutch, with a bit of educated guessing, but you wouldn't call Dutch a dialect of German.
So yeah, I think the girls in that advert are speaking dialects and not just standard Japanese with local slang. It's definitely a moot point though, so I'm not saying my opinion is any more valid than another.
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Post by seralt on Oct 11, 2014 7:45:07 GMT
Where there are complely different words unique to an area, like my example of Geordie words like 'divent = don't' 'yem = home', I think that counts as dialect. It's true that Japanese is rich in slang, and you can argue that slang is often localised (like chav vs scally), but I think such slang is as much a part of a dialect as the older words. After all, when in formal situations, most people at least attempt to switch to more standard language. I think I agree with what you're saying here. Local vocabulary definitely constitute part of the dialect. I'm not sure that this was ever in contention. (Purely out of linguistic curiosity) How would Geordies split "film" into two syllables? Is it like "filum" or "filmuh"? And does that extend to similar words like "kiln", "kern", "warn", and "warm"? (Similar in the sense that /l, r/ are liquids, and /m, n/ are nasals.) But unfortunately, the lines between "dialect" and "language" cannot be so easily demarcated. In fact, you could call Dutch a dialect of German. Of course, nobody actually would, for political and historical reasons. As the trite joke goes, " A language is a dialect with an army and navy". My question was never really "is it a dialect?" but more like "is this a JLo-type (completely American) or Madonna-type (Anglo-American) dialect to represent America?" (Actually, I'd love to get Madonna to say "Mary", "merry", and "marry" for me. The three are completely identical in North American dialects, but differ in most UK dialects. It'd be interesting to see how thoroughly she'd acquired British dialectic traits.)To edge away from the video, and towards the general topic of Japanese dialects, I think it's awesome that Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to describing the dialects of Japan. When I have more time, I'll go back and compare these notes with what I'm hearing in the video. ...maybe.  What's more exciting (for me, anyway), is the evidence in Ryukyuan languages for previous chronolects of Japanese. (The more dialects/sister languages you have, the more evidence you have to help reconstruct an earlier form of the ancestor language.) For example, it's generally accepted that the /h/ in Japanese used to be /p/. This justifies the "voicing" of ハ行 to /b/, and also why /h/ becomes /p/ after a small つ (eg やはり→やっぱり). And vocabulary in Okinawan gives additional evidence to this theory. "Praise" and "flower" in standard Japanese is /ho.me.r-/ and /ha.na/. But in Okinawan, it's /pu.mi.(r)-/ and /pa.na/. (The vowels do differ though; it seems that Japanese /o, u/ map to Okinawan /u/, and Japanese /e, i/ map to Okinawan /i/.) So this increases our confidence that in Old Japanese, words like "story" were actually pronounced as /pa.na.shi/ instead of the modern /ha.na.shi/. Hurray for dialects! |
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Post by chocopie on Oct 11, 2014 15:53:22 GMT
To wit, local (eg prefectural) linguistic features (phonetic, syntactic, etc.) will still bleed into their adoption of standard Japanese in regular and predictable ways, which defines the difference between an individual's idiolect, and a regular dialect. True, over time, this blending might surpass the extant dialect, but until then, it's more productive to view their adaptation of standard Japanese as being a local variant (which is what I meant by "their version of standard Japanese").
I'm sorry but there's a couple of things I don't understand. What is the difference between dialect and local (prefectural?) variance? How is it different from speaking with a strong dialect or weak dialect? Also what you mean by 'adoption of standard Japanese'. Does this refer to how children learn standard Japanese? |
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Post by Jembru on Oct 13, 2014 18:52:04 GMT
How would Geordies split "film" into two syllables? Is it like "filum" or "filmuh"? And does that extend to similar words like "kiln", "kern", "warn", and "warm"? (Similar in the sense that /l, r/ are liquids, and /m, n/ are nasals.) Yeah, we say 'fillum'. Kiln too usually changes to 'killen'. Kern and warn aren't any different but warm often becomes 'wahm'. I try to cover my accent when I'm speaking to non-geordies, but the word film is one I struggle to conceal. Moor too 'moo-ah' ^^ Luckily we don't need to say it often, but there is a famous area of farmland just outside Newcastle called 'the town moor' and once a year several traveling fairs come together there making it into a large amusement park for a week. We locally call the fair itself 'the hoppings' (pronounced hoppens of course), but you also hear people all around you talking about heading 'awa the toon mooah'. As Stephen Fry put it... 'They must go to school it's just ridiculous' We don't say 'fern' for phone btw, but we DO add a syllable to that sometimes too. lol |
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Post by seralt on Oct 14, 2014 8:23:06 GMT
What is the difference between dialect and local (prefectural?) variance? How is it different from speaking with a strong dialect or weak dialect? Yeah, I guess this is really just a difference in terms. The problem with "strong/weak dialect" is the inherent assumption that all dialects are deviations from some standard dialect, but that's not a linguistically (nor historically) accurate description (usually). But I suppose it's definitely more communicable than the terms I've used, huh. Rather, I meant the variety of standard Japanese that would be spoken by speakers of any given dialect. I suppose it's yet another attempt at a neutral term for "weak dialect". |
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