Japanese Dialects, is Okinawan difficult to understand?
Author: Richard
Q: Hi Richard,
First off I love your site (http://genkijapan.net/)!! So right now I’m aslihtly concerned. I’ve studied Japanese for over a year now and in August I’m going to Japan to be a foreign exchange student for six months. To be more specific, I’m going to Okinawa. I know in Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands there is a Ryukyuan language spoken mainly by the older people called Uchinaguchi. It’s not this that I am worried about. I’ve learned that in different areas of Japan different dialects are spoken. I’ve also heard that people from the mainland have trouble understanding the people in Okinawa because of their accent or dialect. My host sister is currently in America and I have talked to her before in Japanese and have had no trouble. So what I’m concerned about is when I continue to learn Japanese in Okinawa will I be able to speak and understand Japanese people in places like Tokyo? Will they be able to understand me? – Jon
A: Hi Jon, good news is you have nothing to worry about!
Thanks to TV and the 国語 = kokugo = national language- lessons in schools, everyone under the age of 90 in Japan speaks pretty much the same Japanese. The pronunciation and accent are all the same, and the regional “accents” aren’t accents as such, you just change the word endings a little bit, the pronunciation is always standard so it’s really, really easy to understand!
Think the difference between Seattle and Portland, rather than Scotland vs. Brooklyn!
60 years ago, maybe a few problems occured, but not these days. So enjoy the lovely Okinawa lifestyle whilst learning Japanese you can use anywhere!
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Well, I lived in Okinawa. Accent is different, but the pronunciation is the same. We understand each other of course, but there is different kind of picth accents in Tokyo, Osaka, and other parts of Japan for example.
You might learn the difference between Hashi Hashi Hashi. that`s a Tokyo accent.
In Okinawa, however, people don’t distinguish these hashi hashi hashi. so it s easier for foreigners to learn, I guess.
Okinawans don’t like using difficult words. So they wont really use any sayings. Even when they count numbers, they tend to use ikko, niko, sanko rather than hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu.
Other differences are like wo, in Okinawa, they say wo, in Tokyo, they say o instead. Okinawans pronounce clearly like how it’s written.
like sensei and koukou, Tokyo ppl tend to say sense koko and okinawans would say sensei and kokou. It’s a small difference so you might not even notice.
Southern Japan, not only Okinawa, verbs to demand like “watch this, eat this,” we say mire, tabere instead of miro, tabero.
And yeah, every region in Japan, ending of a sentence is different. OKinawans tend to say sa.
We understand each other as long as we don’t use dialects. I think it’s harder for Tokyoite to understand Osakan speaking Japanese than Okinawans speaking Japanese.
Okinawans wont voluntary use a lot of dialect words if they are talking to outsiders unless they dont wanna be understood by others, so no worry.