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Kansai dialect series

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abdullahsiddeeq8409
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Posts: 1
Joined: October 31st, 2011 5:42 am

Kansai dialect series

Postby abdullahsiddeeq8409 » April 16th, 2012 4:37 am

It would be great if you introduced a Kansai dialect series. I watch a lot of Japanese variety programs (バラエティ番組) here in the US and this dialect is heavily used on them by the comedians and tv personalities . There really isn't a lot of resources available out there for learning this dialect and for comparisons to the Kanto dialect. I think there are enough pronunciation, grammar and word differences to keep the series going for while and would extremely beneficial for many. Thanks.

Javizy
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Posts: 1165
Joined: February 10th, 2007 2:41 pm

Postby Javizy » April 17th, 2012 2:49 pm

A lot of people request this, but I guess they can't find someone to do it. There's a good resource here that's worth checking out. It has a lot of audio comparisons with accompanying text, as well as stuff about grammar and vocab. It's fairly easy to pick up if you watch TV or have friends from Kansai. It's mainly the vocab that can throw you off, e.g. なおす meaning しまう 'to put away'.

If you wanted to use it yourself, I guess you'd need to study a bit, but the accent is so different to 標準語 that it might not be a good idea to get too carried away if you eventually want a standard one. You have crazy pitch patterns like LLLHL for ありがとう that don't exist in 標準語 (if the first mora is L, the second will always be H). There are young guys in Kantou who try to use Kansai-ben to look cool, but make errors and obviously don't get the accent right, so it ends up sounding pretty pitiful... そうやでね? :oops:

My favourite show at the moment is ホンマでっか!?TV, and it has a lot of 芸人 from Kansai. Check it out if you get a chance.
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