Accent

Alright, in America people in the south have a different accent than people in the North, and accents are so very different from coast to coast and in New England as opposed everywhere else.

I was wondering if it was the same in Japan...does the pronunciation and slang very a lot from place to place or no?

Of course! like any old country (have you checked England, France, Italy etc.?)Japan has a variety of regional accents. 2 of the best known are Osaka-ben and Tohoku-ben. If you had goggled your question you would have found: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_dialects
this is from "the Japan Times":
What are the major regional dialects? The ones most Japanese and foreigners who study Japanese are probably familiar with include the Kansai, Tohoku, Nagoya and Kagoshima regional dialects. Others include the Tosa dialect of Shikoku (in and around Kochi) and Hokkaido.

I would say that accents and vocab vary far more in Japan than they do in the US- usually the newer a country is, the less variety there will be, and the US is a relatively new country.

To me (not American), most people from the US sound the same. I can hear that a southern accent is a bit different, but to me a California accent sounds no different to a Boston accent, although Americans I know say they are very different. To someone not from the US though, the differences are just too subtle.

In the UK on the other hand the differences are far more obvious- whereas I find someone from the south of England relatively easy to understand, some people from the north (e.g. Manchester) I find very difficult to understand, even though we theoretically speak the same language!

In Japan it's the same- I have no trouble with standard Japanese as spoken in Tokyo, and although it's quite different I'm pretty familiar with Kansai dialect, but people from Kyushu and Tohoku might as well be speaking a different language.

When I moved to Nagoya from my hometown Tokyo in the late 70s, I couldn't understand a word of what the old janitor was always saying to me in the apartment elevator. I always just smiled and nodded like I'm a foreigner :) My Okinawan college boyfriend sometimes jokingly talked to his friends from home in dialects so that none of us Tokyo-ers can understand what they're saying. Nowadays though, I hear that a lot of people in their 20s can hardly speak ''hard-core'' dialects whatever the region they're brought up in.

"To me (not American), most people from the US sound the same. I can hear that a southern accent is a bit different, but to me a California accent sounds no different to a Boston accent, although Americans I know say they are very different. To someone not from the US though, the differences are just too subtle."

I am not American, I'm Australian, and I can pick a lot of different US accents, and the differences between some are not all that subtle.

You must have a good ear for it then. I'm a Kiwi, and after 10 years of working with Americans here in Japan, I am not a lot closer to hearing the difference between those accents than I was when I left NZ.

Well, I am an American and I've lived all over the states. Pronunciations really do vary here. Bostonians accents...instead of saying ''car'', it's more like ''cah''. People in Wisconsin have a very terse way of speaking...in the south it's ''cyow'' instead of ''cow''. But on to he other answers, thank you guys for replying, that helps a lot.

Osaka-ben has a nice rhythm/intonation to it, while Tohoku-ben sounds like a shot gun firing.

So those are the main two? Does anyone happen to know where I can listen to the differences...I look it up, but if anyone has any links or anything, that would be great.

Nyapi,

Those aren't the main two at all. It's just that Osaka-ben is well-known since Osaka is the second biggest city in Japan next to Tokyo, and Tohoku-ben is well-known since it sounds comical and is often used in comedy.

I did find sound databases of Japanese dialects, but the websites are in Japanese as well. I wonder if you can understand them.
http://dir.kids.yahoo.co.jp/Around_the_World/Languages/Nihon...

Also a translation site.
http://siva.cc.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/usr/koyama/osaka/

Tokyo-ben, not Tohoku ben sounds more like a shot gun. Tokyo-ben seems so flat compared to Osaka-ben. I don't really know about Tohoku-ben.

As you know, alphabet is not used in Japanese. There are not only the differences of pronunciation but those of spelling in Hiragana or Katakana. So we cannot say it's just an accent difference.

You're right, they are regional dialects, as I think a few people have mentioned.

I struggled to understand the Kansai dialect, other than the basics. It was much easier in Tokyo. Interestingly, when I used my English, which is a fairly strong Australian accent, I was always understood in Japan, whereas when travelling in the US I'd nearly always have to repeat everything and tone down my accent. The Japanese must have been taught to understand a wide range of English dialects.

Well, I thought that when the OP mentioned "accent or slang" I thought this was what (s)he meant:

For example, in Tokyo "aME" (with the accent on the ME) means "candy" while "Ame" (with the accent on A) means rain. But in a lot of other regions, rain is aME.

Then in other cases, the words people use just aren't the same. In Tokyo, when you want to say thank you you say "arigato". In Osaka, you say "okini".

And then there are cultural differences. In Tokyo, most people say that when calling someone "silly", "aho" sounds harsher than "baka". In Osaka, they say that "baka" sounds harsher than "aho".

I'm from Israel, and I can tell pretty well between basically all of the American accents, and they really don't sound the same.
Of course though, there's that "regular" sorta American accent, that many people have. maybe that got you confused.
I'm sure however, that even you (who according to you doesn't really tell the differece) can hear that people from New-York don't sound like people from California, or people from Texas and such.

And adding to your question, [though i have a pretty concrete assumption (or rather i can tell from hearing) that the Japanese accents are quite different.]

You guys mentioned the different dialects. But i was wondering about the different accents. Is there such a huge difference like for example in how they sound in London in comparsion to how they do in Liverpool?

arigatou (:

Tohoku ben, and osaka ben? is the person saying that really a Japanese? A lot more "ben" than that. Different prefectures have different accents and dialects (not all though). If you talked about Kansai accent, then there are many among it already. Osaka accent is one thing, Kyoto accent is diffent from it already. Hiroshima and Okinawa dialects are also very unique. In Kyushu, there are words that people from different places might not understand either. There are a lot more variety than that, but slightly different from place to place all over Japan.

I think in almost all countries in the world, no matter new or old countries (if the country is not too small), there are different accents from place to place. In China and India, they're probably the most variety in the world (hundred of dialects and accents?). Even the new country like Australia still have different accent from place to place. People in QLD speak one accent, and ppl in NSW speak another accent, and ppl in SA speak another accent. Even in QLD or NSW itself, if they're from a countryside place, it's also another accent.

You don't need good ears to distinguish different american accents. If you listen to it a lot u know it. Surely Californian accent is different to Bostonian. Even in Mass (Boston is in Mass), Mass accent is still different to Bostonian accent. I said all these from my experience.

Well, I'm sorry everyone, but I can't distinguish Californian from Bostonian from Mid-western, or even Canadian! I speak 3 languages fairly well in addition to my native language, so I have some kind of ear for languages, but for me the differences in American accents are far more subtle than in Japan or the UK.

I would also be interested to know the differences between a NSW and Queensland accent? I have family in both states and can't say I've noticed a difference.

Sira,

If English were your first language, you would be able to tell the differences. I'm sure in your first language there are dialects that all sound the same to foreigners.

Tomboy, when I referred to my native language, I meant English- I was born and brought up in New Zealand, and I'm a 6th generation New Zealander, so am most definitely a native English speaker. I don't think I made any non-native-speaker-type mistakes in my posts, did I? ;-)

I also speak Japanese, and reasonable French and Spanish- the other 3 languages I mentioned.

I'm sure if you pointed out the differences between a Californian accent and a Bostonian accent and then played me recordings of people from each place saying the same sentence I would be able to hear the differences, but if I meet someone from California, there's no way I can tell when talking to them that they are a Californian- they just sound American to me.

On the other hand I can tell if someone is from the north of England very quickly because that is a very pronounced accent- I used to work with a guy from Manchester and could barely understand him a lot of the time, and I wasn't the only one.

I'm still interested to know the differences between a NSW and a Queensland accent- I have spent plenty of time in both states visiting family and I have never noticed any major differences- which sounds exactly are pronounced differently?