They tend to have some really thin-thin dialect-focused books in Japanese book stores, if you happen to be living in Japan. amazon Japan can ship overseas I believe (and I know they'll take foreign credit cards); if you'd like, I can try and pull up a few pages for you.
I have to say, though, while I don't really know much in the way of dialects, what I do know, I love kansai-ben (That heard in osaka and thereabouts) the most.
I bought a little pocket book - "How to Speak Osaka Dialect" by H and K Takahashi. ISBN4-88463-076-9, $14 at Kinokuniya. It's alright, I wish it had Kana.
I love studying dialects; it's one of my biggest interests in Japanese. The first dialect I happened to learn was Hiroshima dialect, as a friend of mine who was studying at my university in Canada was sad that no one else spoke his dialect. So he taught me haha.
Here's a decent starting page for anyone who'd like to learn some Hiroshima dialect: http://www.able4language.com/English%20site/Hiroshima_ben.html
Of course, knowing the changes in the dialect and actually knowing how to speak it are two different things. Remember that in dialects not only do the words and grammar change (sometimes), but also the intonation is quite often different. It's best to learn a dialect from a native speaker of said dialect.
oh, they say dabee in tohoku? in ibaraki, they say daPE? instead of darou? (capitals= emphasis) every time I go to Tokyo, I intentionally say it just for the weird looks i get.
Okinawan dialect is hilarious. :P I would argue that what they call a dialect is actually another language (Uchinaguchi). But the Japanese-Okinawan dialect is really easy. Just speak really slowly, remove all particles and say "saa" after everything. 「なんかさ～、今日さ～、スーパー行ったさ～…」 ;D
I once played a Japanese game, where everyone was speaking a different dialect. While I liked the だべえ best, I could never match one dialect. The person was a snotty woman, who was always saying ざます at the end of every sentence. Does anyone know what dialect this is?
There's a few phrases in the dialect around here that even makes people who live here laugh - いちきちきもちきちき means 持って帰ります - I think that's my favourite phrase in any dialect. Pretty rare even here though.
Every year the foreigners in Kochi prefecture put on a musical entirely in Tosa-ben (although I live far enough away from Kochi city to be speaking an entirely different dialect) which is always great fun.
A lot of dialects should have small dictionaries like this http://www.hata-koiki.com/doc/hataben.html available online
hi I know this is stupid question I am new for japanese language, but i am learning japanese so this is question for you all. What is mean by dialects. I search on net but I did not get....
A dialect is a distinct set of different vocabulary, pronunciation, or grammar, or all of the above within a language, and spoken in a certain area. The Japanese word is 方言(ほうげん).
Examples of Japanese dialects are:
[list] [li]Kansai dialect (spoken throughout the Kansai area, i.e. Osaka, Kobe, etc.)[/li] [li]Tohoku dialect (spoken in northern Japan, i.e. Aomori, Hokkaido)[/li] [li]Sanuki dialect (spoken in Kagawa prefecture)[/li] [/list]
Most prefectures have their own dialect, and some prefectures even have more than one.
As an add-on to what 宮本勝利 said, every Japanese dialect is denoted by the kanji 弁 (べん/ben). So, Kansai-ben = 関西弁, for example. I have a book lying around somewhere that denotes all of the small yet weird differences between different areas of Kansai and their dialects. Basically, people in Kobe say different things than people in Kyoto and Osaka, in some cases.
Either way, mayu12, if you're just starting to learn Japanese, don't worry about dialects/方言. Normal Japanese is what you should stick to, and then if you decide to live in Japan, it can be fun to learn the local dialect!
Dialects get confusing, but they are fun. 関西弁がめっちゃ好きやねん~w There's a dialect that was so odd on my ears, I think its from the Tosa region. Not really sure, but it was like some weird hybrid of kansai-ben and standard Japanese. I know in the show Utahime, that was the spoken dialect.
Its so difficult. This was the only drama, outside of medical, that I needed subs. It blew me away, DAT DIALECT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDZcsN0fsRs
Tosa-ben is by far my favourite dialect. I was also first exposed to it through Utahime. Right now I'm watching the Taiga Drama [i]Ryomaden[/i], which is about Sakamoto Ryoma (坂本龍馬) who was from the Tosa-han (present day Kochi prefecture). It's really good; I recommend watching it ^^
Dailects are fun! I live in Miyagi, and everyone loves it when the foreigner can speak even a word of 宮城弁! My favorite? お晩です （おばんです） instead of こんばんは (good evening) - or if you're going to be formal about it, お晩でございます... although the おじいちゃん tend to say おばんでがす (which is even more 宮城弁, or maybe even 宮崎弁, meaning my small town of Miyazaki, not the Prefecture thereof) - 宮城弁 seems to be comprised of mostly just not opening your mouth wide (because it gets freaking cold here!) Here is a great introduction to Miyagi-ben, written by someone from my organization: http://miyagiajet.tripod.com/miyagi-ben.html
just like any other language, I think that's hard to count; for one, where do you draw the line at what's a dialect? For example, I live in a small town in Miyagi. Miyagi is in the Tohoku region, so nominally they speak Tohoku-ben. But there's also Miyagi-ben, particular to the prefecture, and within that, people from my town refer to certain speech patterns as Kami-ben or Miyazaki-ben (the town I live in and the section of town I live in, respectively). So how many different dialects is that? Where does the 'difference' end? It's really hard to compute something like that.
