The True Native Tongue?

This evening I was flipping around the channels on the TV hoping to find something halfway watchable when I stumbled on an interesting program. Since I caught it in the middle and didn't see the whole thing, I don't know what it's called, but it's a sort of Japanese equivalent to the famous "Mythbusters" series. Basically they employ scientists to help either prove or debunk popular notions.

One of the experiments I saw had to do with the dominance of specific dialects of Japanese.

So-called "Hyojun" or standard Japanese, also known as "kyotsugo" ("common tongue"), which is what is found in textbooks and classrooms and spoken by most newscasters, isn't really spoken "natively" anywhere. It was originally the "proper" version of the Kanto area dialect, which includes Tokyo, but there are now many local variations. The language can change a lot more depending on where you go. I'm not just talking about the usual differences in vocabulary and pronunciation; quite often a local dialect is a more or less separate language with its own unique grammar rules. Put a sushi chef from Morioka (Tohoku region) with one from Fukuoka (Kyushu region), for example, and they probably won't understand each other at all. Their respective tongues differ from each other even more than Dutch differs from High German.

Pride in one's dialect also tends to vary from place to place. Ironically, both the largest cities and the smallest villages seem to maintain their local ways of speaking much more than medium-sized towns and small cities, whose often overly fashion-conscious populations tend to be ashamed of the "dasai" (uncool), "jiji-kusai" (old fart) traditional lingos. It's also true that people wanting to appear better cultured quite often stick to the Hyojun way of speaking regardless of location. This is by no means always the case, however. In fact, that was the point of the experiment I saw on TV.

It is often said among the Japanese that, although the proper form of the Tokyo dialect is officially labeled Hyojun (standard), the Kansai dialect, variations of which are spoken in Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, and the surrounding areas, is culturally stronger. In fact, people from the Kansai region are fond of bragging that, if you put people from all parts of Japan together for a while, they'll all eventually start speaking the Kansai way. To test this, scientists took eight-year-old boys from Fukuoka (Kyushu), Osaka (Kansai), Nagoya (Nagoya), Tokyo (Hyojun), and Morioka (Tohoku) and shut them together in a house full of toys for an eight-hour period. Then they observed the children's speech patterns carefully. Sure enough, after a while, first the boy from Nagoya started speaking in the Kansai style followed by the one from Fukuoka. The boy from Morioka followed not long afterward. By the time the eight-hour period was over, only the boy from Tokyo wasn't speaking Kansai! (Hmm...I guess some things never change!) Bottom line: the popular notion was proven accurate. Kansai dialect seems to be culturally stronger than Kanto "Hyojun".

Actually, the scientists said there may be a number of different reasons for this. Part of it is the fame of Kansai dialect, which is coupled with its historical significance. There is also the no small fact that a lot of well-known media personalities speak it with great pride. The variant of Osaka (arguably the "New York of Japan") in particular is also a naturally strong-sounding tongue, i.e. it sounds rough and therefore more macho, but at the same time it flows more easily than the somewhat clunkier Kanto dialect. Of course, there is also the no small fact that people from Kansai, Osaka in particular, are famously talkative. Even in the experiment it was the boy from Osaka who tended to get things rolling, so it was only natural that the other boys picked up his lingo.

Have I been learning the wrong Japanese all along? Then again, I live in Ibaraki, which has a notoriously unique dialect including bits of Tohoku, Kanto, and its own lovable craziness. Chigaube? ;-)