The voiced interdental fricative - [ð]. It mostly occurs as the voiced counterpart of [θ] in the languages that have it, or as an allophone of /d/, like in Spanish. This is the sound present in English TH like in THat, or THe, or moTHer. In many dialects of English this sound is substituted by [d], [v] or [z], like London English, Philadelphia English, African American Vernacular English, North New Zealand English, Irish English.
English to French to Québécois translations. The accuracy is killing me lol
Yeah, when people say Canadians speak French, we really don’t. At all. We just call it French.
When I was younger I lived with a girl from Paris for two months, and every time she’d meet someone who spoke Quebecois they would speak to her thinking she’d understand it, and she would just nod and smile.
Why the fuck is it still called French?
Because its still french??? We have our own dialect and accent yes but it is still french. All over Québec there is different dialects. The french spoken in Montréal isn’t the same as the french spoken in Saguenay for example.
Je vais juste mettre la réponse de «l’insolente linguiste» ici. TLDR; C’est normal que ça ressemble pas à du français vu la façon dont ils l’écrivent. Et puis, c’est niaiseux de comparer la norme a un dialecte.. Le «Français» de cette image est aussi bien utilisé par les Québécois!
Okay, ça, c'est de la belle grosse merde. Ça doit faire 10 ans que cette image circule, au moins! Je l'ai démolie dans mon premier livre, d'ailleurs On confond toutes les variations linguistiques, c'est vraiment épouvantable. En plus, les versions «québécoises» sont écrites dans une orthographe fantaisiste qui stigmatise encore plus le français québécois. Pourquoi du côté québécois, c'est écrit «d'javusa», mais du côté français, c'est «déjà vu ça»? La seule différence, c'est qu'on fait pas le «é»!!! Sérieux, je peux pas croire que ça pogne encore, cette affaire-là.
Faque je me suis un peu amusée, pis j'ai fait l'équivalent, tiens, mais de l'autre bord:
Prenez tous les commentaires qui vous viennent à l'esprit, comme, mettons, «mais ça s'écrit pas nécessairement comme ça» ou «mais c'est pas tous les Français qui parlent de même» ou «mais ça dépend du contexte», pis vous allez avoir tous les bons arguments pour l'image de merde.
@tepitome, arrête de dévaloriser la variante que parlent les québécois. Ça reste du français. Moi non plus quand les français se mettent à parler avec des variantes qui leur sont propres, j’comprends rien.
As someone who lives not too far from the Canadian border in New England, I honestly wish they taught the Québécois dialect either along with or instead of the Parisian French I learned in high school. And I say “Parisian French” because even in France there are so many other dialects. IMO there’s a lot of misguided ways of teaching and while i LOVED my main French teacher, I wish we all had focused on more of a worldwide/functional Francophone vocabulary instead of just what’s in France, and only the Capitol City at that.
Quick english summary of the response chloek3 included for my non-french-speaking followers:
The above image has been making the rounds for at least ten years and the way it transcribes the québécois phrases further stigmatizes that dialect of french. For instance, for “déjà vu ça” they write “d'javusa” even though the only difference is not pronouncing the é in déjà. (The examples included show ways that québécois people use the standard dialect while parisian french people use a non-standard version. When reading this picture, remember that 1. it’s not necessarily written like that, 2. not all french people speak the same, and 3. it depends on context.
For any of you who are writing ‘across the pond’-here is a little guide I put together of some common differences between British and American English!
I will add though, some of these switch/overlap; for instance: a lot of people in America say makeup, ground floor, wash your hands, etc. and people in England do the same thing. Not everything is set in stone, and words can change
Weird, I’m American, but “wash up” to me sounds very old-fashioned. Like, I’ve heard my grandparents say that, but everyone else I know says “wash your hands”, and “cosmetics” just sounds formal, “make-up” is definitely the more common term in my experience.
Also, some of this is wrong. “Underground” is specifically the London Underground (aka “the Tube”), we generally call it by the local name (e.g. “metro” in Paris, “subway” in New York etc), and “queue” is a verb on its own. Sure, you can “wait in the queue”, but that makes it sound like you’re waiting for something else (e.g. for your friend to arrive) whilst queuing, the equivalent of “to wait in line” is definitely just “to queue”
the British (and South African) “grill” is called a “broiler” in North America. so “under the grill” and “on the grill” are actually different things. @lorata
South African English is mostly the same as British, but we use some Americanisms like cellphone, pants and public holiday. there are also uniquely southern African words :
Throwback to the time my poor German teacher had to explain the concept of formal and informal pronouns to a class full of Australians and everyone was scandalised and loudly complained “why can’t I treat everyone the same?” “I don’t want to be a Sie!” “but being friendly is respectful!” “wouldn’t using ‘du’ just show I like them?” until one guy conceded “I supposemaybe I’d use Sie with someone like the prime minister, if he weren’t such a cunt” and my teacher ended up with her head in her hands saying “you are all banned from using du until I can trust you”
God help Japanese teachers in Australia.
if this isnt an accurate representation of australia idk what is
Australia’s reverse-formality respect culture is fascinating. We don’t even really think about it until we try to communicate or learn about another culture and the rules that are pretty standard for most of the world just feel so wrong. I went to America this one time and I kept automatically thinking that strangers using ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ were sassing me.
Australians could not be trusted with a language with ingrained tiers of formal address. The most formal forms would immediately become synonyms for ‘go fuck yourself’ and if you weren’t using the most informal version possible within three sentences of meeting someone they’d take it to mean you hated them.
100% true.
the difference between “‘scuse me” and “excuse me” is a fistfight
See also: the Australian habit of insulting people by way of showing affection, which other English-speakers also do, but not in a context where deescalating the spoken invective actively increases the degree of offence intended, particularly if you’ve just been affectionately-insulting with someone else.
By which I mean: if you’ve just called your best mate an absolute dickhead, you can’t then call a hated politician something that’s (technically) worse, like a total fuckwit, because that would imply either that you were really insulting your mate or that you like the politician. Instead, you have to use a milder epithet, like bastard, to convey your seething hatred for the second person. But if your opening conversational gambit is slagging someone off, then it’s acceptable to go big (”The PM’s a total cockstain!”) at the outset.
Also note that different modifiers radically change the meaning of particular insults. Case in point: calling someone a fuckin’ cunt is a deadly insult, calling someone a mad cunt is a compliment, and calling someone a fuckin’ mad cunt means you’re literally in awe of them. Because STRAYA.
One guy comparing how northerners and southerners refer to people. It’s not totally encompassing (he forgets the popular 闺女/gui-nv for how northerners refer to their daughters, for example), but you get the idea.
Apologies for the lack of article reviews and/or pasta recipe comparisons these last few months, but this semester I’ve been solo teaching my first sociolinguistics course while collecting data for my dissertation on truthful and deceptive TripAdvisor.com hotel reviews! I designed a survey and experiment asking people about their dialect background then having them write a truthful and deceptive hotel review (here’s the survey if you’re interested in taking it or passing it along). While my dissertation is focusing only on survey respondents who are undergraduates, I’m hoping to get as many surveys from as many people as possible for future research! Hopefully this summer I’ll be back with some more articles as I work on my literature review chapter as well and thanks for your support!
Just as my research looks at how language is used in truthful and deceptive hotel reviews, this vegan dish is deceivingly like pasta yet a delicious take on the usual sun-dried tomato take in other pasta recipes. The garlic and fresh basil work together to make zingy flavor that compliments the squash, just as I hope to discover if dialect differences may work together with language in shaping online deception. Good Cooking!
okay wait u should all take the nyt dialect quiz which will tell u where ur from based on the words you use for certain things. don’t dox urself in the tags tho
We’re really excited to have gotten to interview Sali Tagliamonte at the Linguistic Society of America meeting in January! Dr. Tagliamonte is a full professor at the University of Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She’s written a bunch of books and articles about sociolinguistics, and how languages shift and vary over time. You can find out more about her and her work here.
In our interview, we discussed the following topics: - why it’s so important to investigate how teens use language, and what facets of adolescent speech she finds most interesting - what differences we can find in spoken vs. online language use - the Toronto English Project, and the changes we see in people’s language use over the course of their lives - how language might look in the future - how to better inform people about how language variation works - the role of social media in telling people about linguistics, and in language change
… and more! Thanks again to Dr. Tagliamonte for speaking with us. Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say!
Guys, I still get tons of messages about your dialects. It’s very interesting and I appreciate it very much, but there are just TOO MANY messages right now :/ Maybe you could post your message as a reply to this post, please?! So everyone has the chance to read your story/opinion/whatever. It would help a lot.
One of my favorite aspects of language learning is studying dialects. I am fascinated by how language branches and adapts to new environments like some form of linguistic natural selection. Japanese is rife with interesting dialects, some of which are so different from the standard that they can sound like a totally different language to the untrained ear. I thought I’d make a series of posts highlighting different dialects in Japanese. Since this sort of post will take a bit more research on my end and I plan to find native speakers of the dialect to confirm with, they won’t be very regular, but I hope that you enjoy them!
What are some of the main Japanese dialects?
Firstly, let me tell you how to say “dialect” in Japanese, because I know I’m gonna use it and I don’t want to cause any confusion.
方言 (hougen) Dialect
___弁 (__-ben) __ Dialect, so “Osaka Dialect” is “Osaka-ben.”
I daresay that just about 100% of all Japanese learners are familiar with Tokyo-ben, because it is Standard Japanese. The next most popular dialect is Kansai-ben, which is spoken in the Kansai region (Osaka, Hiroshima, etc.). The Kansai Dialect can be broken down into several smaller, regional dialects. Next would probably be Okinawa-ben.
(Caution! Some people, particularly Okinawans, consider Okinawan Japanese to be a language independent from Japanese, and they can be offended if you refer to it as a dialect. Japan’s official stance is that Okinawan is a dialect, though, so I am calling it a dialect in my posts.)
Now without further ado, let’s actually start learning about one of these dialects!
Hokkaido-ben, namara ii!
Hokkaido is the island in green. It’s the biggest prefecture in Japan by far.
I am a foreigner and Japanese is not my native language, but I have been living on the island of Hokkaido for 5 years now and am very comfortable with the Hokkaido dialect, so I chose to introduce it to you first. Also, it’s not one that gets talked about a lot, so I figured maybe there weren’t many posts about it.
Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan, and it wasn’t settled and officially incorporated as part of Japan until the late 1800′s. There is a group of indigenous people here called the Ainu who speak a language completely different from Japanese, but their language has not bled into Hokkaido-ben. (Many place names in Hokkaido are from Ainu, though).
Because Hokkaido was settled so late in history compared to the other islands of Japan, their dialect doesn’t differ drastically from Tokyo-ben. There are some minor intonation differences that, frankly, I don’t feel confident explaining. I have internalized the intonations through exposure, but I’ve never been taught it and don’t really know what is correct. So I’m not going to talk about tonal differences, and instead focus on the different words and a wee bit of grammar.
投げる Nageru
Standard Japanese: 捨てる suteru
English: to dispose of (lit. “to throw/toss”)
To an English speaker, “throw away” feels just as natural as “dispose of.” But to people outside of Hokkaido, it sounds very unusual and the image it conjures is comedic, like someone is hurling trash into the garbage can like it’s the opening pitch at the World Series.
Example: そこの古い新聞を投げていいよ。 Romaji: Soko no furui shinbun wonagete ii yo.
Standard: そこの古い新聞を捨てていいよ。 Romaji: Soko no furui shinbun wo sutete ii yo.
English: You can throw away those old newspapers there.
Learn a whole bunch more by clicking below!
おっかない Okkanai
Standard: 危ない abunai
English: dangerous, scary, a “close call”
My hostmom uses this with me, like, all the time. According to her, I’m always doing okkanai things, like walking alone at night or*gasp* going outside with wet hair. I love her so much haha.
Example: うちの子が熊のぬいぐるみだと思って遊んでいたのは本当の子グマだった。おっかなかったわ！ Romaji: Uchi no ko ga kuma no nuigurumi da to omotte asonde ita noha hontou no koguma datta. Okkanakatta wa!
Standard: うちの子が熊のぬいぐるみだと思って遊んでいたのは本当の子グマだった。危なかったわ！ Romaji: Uchi no ko ga kuma no nuigurumi da to omotte asonde ita noha hontou no koguma datta. Abunakatta wa!
English: Our kid thought he was playing with a teddy bear, but it was actually a live bear cub. What a close call!
（手袋を）履く (Tebukuro wo) haku
Standard:（手袋を）はめる (tebukuro wo) hameru
English: to put on (gloves)
Winter in Hokkaido is long and cold. Gloves are one of the most essential articles of clothing here, and I have heard/used “haku” so much that “hameru” sounds incorrect to me. The “haku” sounds funny to other Japanese people because it is used for putting on socks, underwear, and pants, and they will imagine you putting socks or panties on your hands instead of gloves.
Example: 外は寒いから、手袋を履きなさい。 Romaji: Soto ha samui kara, tebukuro wo hakinasai.
Standard: 外は寒いから、手袋をはめなさい。 Romaji: Soto ha samui kara, tebukuro wo hamenasai.
English: It’s cold out, so put on your gloves.
めんこい Menkoi
Standard Japanese: 可愛い kawaii
English: cute
I included this because it’s one of the famous aspects of Hokkaido-ben, but I actually don’t hear it used that much. I tend to see it on souvenir shirts for tourists more than in actual conversations.
Example: この子猫はめっちゃめんこい！ Romaji: Kono koneko ha meccha menkoi!
Standard: この子猫はめっちゃかわいい！ Romaji: Kono koneko ha meccha kawaii!
English: This kitten is super cute!
Note: Even though it is functioning as an adjective and ends with an “i,” it is not an “i” adjective. It is a “na” adjective.
あずましくない Azumashikunai
Standard: 居心地が悪い、嫌 igokochi ga warui, iya
English: uncomfortable (surroundings), unpleasant
This is a word that many Hokkaido people use but struggle to explain. Azumashikunai describes any place that you find unpleasant or uncomfortable, maybe due to it being too crowded, or too empty, or because it’s very cramped, for example.
Example: 日曜日の札幌駅が人混みであずましくない。 Romaji. Nichiyoubi no Sapporo-eki ga hitogomi de azumashikunai.
Standard: 日曜日の札幌駅が人混みで嫌だ。 Romaji: Nichiyoubi no Sapporo-eki ga hitogomi deiyada.
English: Sapporo Station is always crowded on Sundays and I don’t likeit.
いずい Izui
Standard: none
English: different (in a bad way), off-kilter, something is “off”
Hokkaido people really struggle to explain izuibecause Standard Japanese doesn’t have an equivalent for it, but I think it can be likened to “off” in English. You got something in your eye but can’t find it and your eye feels funny? Your eye is izui. You have a hair in your shirt and can’t find it? That feels izui. Sometimes it can be a mysterious ache not painful enough to warrant a visit to the doctor, or sometimes it can just be a sense that something is “off.”
Example: 目にゴミが入って、いずい。 Romaji: Me ni gomi ga haitte,izui.
Standard:目にゴミが入って、痛い。 Romaji: Me ni gomi ga haitte,itai.
English: Something got in my eye and now it feels off.
汽車 Kisha
Standard: 電車 densha
English: (train, lit. “steam engine”)
The first time I came to Japan, I could just barely hold down an everyday conversation in Japanese. My hostparents (hostdad especially) both spoke very strong Hokkaido-ben, and during my first meal with them my hostdad asked if I had traveled from the airport to their city by “steam engine,” and I was just baffled. Wait, did he just say locomotive? What year is it? Are steam engines still a thing in Japan?! Then my kind hostmother explained that he meant regular, modern trains.
Hokkaido is famous for their sweet corn, and “toukibi” is a word you will hear a lot here as a result. A popular summer snack is corn on the cob with soy sauce and butter, and it’s made just like in the gif above! Japanese people tend to eat it using a toothpick, picking off kernel by kernel. So when I just rocked up, grabbed an ear and started going to town on it, they thought I was a barbarian hahaha.
Example: やっぱり、とうきびに醤油だね！ Romaji: Yappari, toukibini shouyu da ne!
Standard: やっぱり、とうもろこしに醤油だね！ Romaji: Yappri,toumorokoshi ni shouyu da ne!
English: Soy sauce really does go good with corn!
なまら Namara
Standard: とても totemo、結構 kekkou
English: very, super, rather
This word is like “menkoi,” in that it is famous throughout Japan for being Hokkaido-ben, but I rarely hear it in actual conversations. I hear people use it when they are surprised by something. “Namara oishii” has a nuance of “It’s (actually) very tasty.”
Example: 曇ってるけど、今日の天気はなまらいい。 Romaji: Kumotteru kedo, kyou no tenki ha namaraii.
Standard: 曇ってるけど、今日の天気はけっこういい。 Romaji: Kumotteru kedo, kyou no tenki ha kekkouii.
English: It’s cloudy today, but it’s still pretty good weather.
なんぼ？ Nanbo?
Standard: いくら？ Ikura?
English: How much?
My friend asked me to go get a couple drinks from the convenience store. I came back with a bottle for her and for me and she asked, “Nanbo datta?” I thought that bo was maybe a counter for things, and desperately tried to figure out what we were supposed to be counting. Then she explained that, for whatever reason, “nanbo” means “how much (does something cost)?”
Example: そのお弁当はめっちゃ美味しそう！なんぼだった？ Romaji: Sono obentou ha meccha oishisou! Nanbodatta?
Standard: そのお弁当はめっちゃ美味しそう！いくらだった？ Romaji: Sono obentou ha meccha oishisou! Ikuradatta?
English: That bento looks super good! How much was it?
ボケる Bokeru (for produce)
Standard: 腐る kusaru
English: go bad (produce)
In standard Japanese, “bokeru” means “to go senile” or “to develop dementia/Alzheimer’s.” While I wouldn’t say it’s a slur bad enough that it would be bleeped out, it certainly isn’t a kind way to refer to aging.
So when my host mom told me, “I would give you some apples, but they’re all senile” I had no clue what she was going on about. But then she showed them to me, and they were all wrinkled like this:
Not exactly the most appetizing, but also not entirely rotten. I’m really not sure why Hokkaido-ben likens produce to senility, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because pretty much every single person with Alzheimer’s/dementia is wrinkled.
Example: このリンゴはボケてるから、パイでも作ろうか… Romaji: Kono ringo ha boketeru kara, pai demo tsukurou ka…
Standard: このリンゴは腐りかけてるから、パイでも作ろうか… Romaji: Kono ringo hakusarikaketeru kara, pai demo tsukurou ka…
English: These apples are about to go bad, so I guess I’ll make a pie…
～べ ~be
Standard ～だろう、～でしょう darou, deshou
English: …, right?
This is probably the most famous aspect of Hokkaido-ben. Japanese people get a real kick out of it when this white girl uses it haha. “~be” is a sentence-ending particle that functions about the same as “darou” or “deshou” in that it:
asserts the speaker’s confidence in the likelihood of something
asks for the listener’s confirmation
This sentence-final particle has its roots in the particle ～べし (~beshi) found in Classical Japanese, which had a similar purpose. Other forms of ~beshi survive in Modern Standard Japanese with the words べき (beki) and すべく (subeku).
Here are two examples, one for each function ~be fulfills.
Example 1: 君の飛行機はあと5分に出発するって？間に合わないべ！ Romaji: Kimi no hikouki ha ato 5 fun ni shuppatsu suru tte? Maniawanai be!
Standard: 君の飛行機はあと5分に出発するって？間に合わないでしょう！ Romaji: Kimi no hikouki ha ato 5 fun ni shuppatsu suru tte? Maniawanai deshou!
English: You said your plane takes off in 5 minutes? There’s no way you’ll make it!
Example 2: このサラダに白菜も入ってたべ？ Romaji: Kono sarada ni hakusai mo haitteta be?
Standard: このサラダに白菜も入ってたでしょう？ Romaji: Kono sarada ni hakusai mo haitteta deshou?
Standard: There was napa cabbage in this salad too, wasn’t there?
～れ ~re
Standard: ～なさい ~nasai
English: imperative command
I really don’t like giving grammar explanations because it’s been a long time since I’ve formally studied Japanese grammar and I’m scared of explaining something poorly or incorrectly. But an upper-elementary level Japanese learner should know that there are many different levels of imperatives in Japanese that vary in politeness. In order of rude to polite, we have:
Imperatives that end in an “e” sound or ろ, as in:
死ね！Shine! Die!
待て！Mate! Wait!
食べろ！Tabero! Eat!
Imperatives that end in tte, te, or de and are not followed by kudasai
死んで Shinde. Die.
待って Matte. Wait.
食べて Tabete. Tabete.
Imperatives that end in nasai. (These are most often used by parents/teachers to their children.)
死になさい Shininasai. Die.
待ちなさい Machinasai. Wait.
食べなさい Tabenasai. Eat.
Imperatives that end in tte, te, or de and have kudasai after them.
And then there’s super formal Japanese, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Anyways. Back to the Hokkaido-ben. I went to a picnic here with a Japanese friend’s family, and her aunt gave me a plate of food and said, “Tabere!” I knew that this had to be an imperative, but I had never studied it before. It felt like it was the same as the rudest imperative, and I spent the whole rest of the picnic wondering what on earth I had done to have her family speak to me like that. Conventionally, they should have been using the -tte form or -nasai form with me.
After the party, I asked her, “Dude, what’s the ~re stuff for? Do they not like me?” I was close to tears I was so hurt and confused.
And that when she laughed and explained that the ~re is a facet of Hokkaido-ben, and it is the same in politeness and nuance as the ~nasai imperative used by parents and teachers to their children.
So I had spent several hours thinking that her family hated me, when really they were treating me like I was their own child!
Example: ちゃんと野菜を食べれ！ Romaji: Chanto yasai wo tabere!
Standard: ちゃんと野菜を食べなさい！ Romaji: Chanto yasai wo tabenasai!
English:Eat all of your vegetables properly.
The End!
This was a monster of a post. There are actually a few more words I wanted to introduce, but I had to cut it off at some point haha. I hope that you enjoyed this segment of Moderately Interesting Japanese. I plan to make more on the other dialects within Japanese, but they will take a considerable amount of time so they won’t be very often.
![linguisticmaps: The voiced interdental fricative - [ð]. It mostly occurs as the voiced counterpart o](https://64.media.tumblr.com/025dba5051cda5aaaef27d7d1d15849c/tumblr_osqd3gQfub1uuqf4fo1_1280.png "linguisticmaps: The voiced interdental fricative - [ð]. It mostly occurs as the voiced counterpart o")
