【細かい日本語コーナー】 関西弁喋ってみやん？ kansai-ben crash course!
since @onigiriforears さん's seitokai bookclub will be reading 光が死んだ夏 for spooky season, i thought i'd do an introductory post on 関西弁! hikaru is definitely tricky if you don't know any 関西弁, so i hope this will be a helpful intro for anyone reading/watching the series for the first time. ほんじゃ、行くで〜！
n.b.: i think the manga uses 三重弁, and i know more about 和歌山弁 and 大阪弁, so forgive me if anything isn't exactly representative of how they talk in hikaru!
in japanese class, we generally learn standard japanese, or 標準語(ひょうじゅんご), which is spoken in tokyo and in higher social registers, like at work. kansai japanese is spoken locally in kansai! the kansai region is on the island of 本州 (honshu) and is usually said to contain these prefectures:
these prefectures all use a noticeably similar variety, aka 方言/"dialect", of japanese, though there are definitely differences across the region.
just to cover my linguistic bases: "dialect" can be a charged or derogatory term in english. when i use the word "dialect", i use it as a neutral synonym for "variety", meaning a type of some given language (including a regional type, a social type, a historical type, etc.). for this reason, i use "variety" much more often, but 方言 in japanese does literally translate to "dialect". no linguistic variety has any inherent moral, societal, or scientific worth.
as with any non-standard variety/方言, usage of 関西弁 tends to be heavily context-dependent. for example, teachers in the region may use 関西弁 with each other in the staff room but 標準語 during class with older students. similarly, someone using 敬語 (honorific language) will probably not combine it with 方言. if you speak a non-standard variety of any language, you have probably had similar experiences.
anyway, let's finally get into some of the concrete differences between 標準語 and 関西弁!
*kyoto and osaka here refer to the prefectures (= 府 "borough"), not the cities, which of course are contained in their respective prefectures.
関西弁 is famous for certain vocab items (kind of like how "pop" is considered a great lakes regionalism in the us). some words from 標準語 are just entirely different words in 関西弁:
some words are pronounced differently, or are old-fashioned:
いる → おる** (including in the 〜て form)
or, some words are frequently abbreviated:
not all of these are 関西弁-exclusive, but they're all very common in 関西弁!
*remember, 方言 doesn't usually get combined with 敬語 or 丁寧語, so forms like ゆう tend to show up only in the plain form, like 言った → ゆった, but not 言いました → ✕ゆいました.
**eagle-eyed readers may notice おる is the equivalent of いる in 謙譲語 (humble language). as it turns out, おる is just the old-fashioned version of いる which, in other places in the country, only stuck around as a hyper-formal form. neat!
conversational (i.e., non-grammatical*) particles may be different, too!
じゃん** → やん、やんか、やんけ (rough)
の？ → ん？ (pronunciation allowing, e.g. ✕ 知らんん？)
these particles are all optional, but they're some of the most noticeable things about 関西弁 in my mind. when you're listening to/reading them all the time, you can get used to them really quickly!
*though many varieties of japanese differ in their usage of grammatical particles as well, e.g., の as が and vice-versa.
**see below for more details on what happens to the copula!
lots of grammatical forms
famously, there are lots of negative verb endings in 関西弁. in 標準語 we learn the 〜ない form (and the 〜ず form, which used to be a fully independent verb form!), but in 関西弁, the most common negative is famously 〜へん.
but there are others! the following are just some possible negatives!
わからなかった → わからんかった、わからへんかった
also, conditional forms from 標準語 often get abbreviated:
こけた帰るわ = if i fall over, i'm going home (real quote from my co-teacher having sat on a broken chair)
交通ルールを守らなあかん = we have to obey traffic laws
走っては → 走った (cf. standard 走っちゃ)
and as stated above, the 〜ている form uses おる instead:
よう知っとるな = you really know your stuff
the 〜てしまう form also gets abbreviated, kind of like 〜ちゃう in 標準語:
行っちゃった → 行ってまった、行っちまった、行ってもうた
lastly, the negative い-adjective form (including the declined 〜たい form, etc.) is also frequently abbreviated by deleting the く:
*eagle-eyed readers may notice that the 〜といて ending looks like a conjugation of 〜ておく, and they're right! the 〜ておく form is used very liberally in 関西弁, including in the negative command form as above, but also just all over the place in regular speech.
the term "copula" refers to だ in 標準語, but in 関西弁, the copula is や! this even affects copula contractions such as (what would be) じゃん*.
because of the types of consonants that だ and や are,** i sometimes find myself using the や forms just because they're quicker/easier to say!
*just in case you needed a refresher, じゃない comes from ではない, where で is a copular form.
**specifically, plosive vs. glide. the closure for a plosive requires more work from your articulators.
the pitch accent in tokyo is famously very "flat", but in kansai, it's much more "musical". in particular, most* words in 標準語 start on a low pitch and go up (＿↑), but in 関西弁, it's much more common to start on a high pitch and go down (＿↓).
サ↑ーシャ → サ↓ーシャ (my name lol)
now, my personal opinion is that the best way to learn pitch accent is to actually hear and reproduce it, so if these janky arrows don't make any sense to you, please feel free to ignore them! but if you're comfortable with dissecting pitch accent, be sure to pay attention when you next listen to speech in 関西弁.
here are some common phrases you hear a lot in 関西弁!
行けたら行く = i'll go if i can (but i don't really want to/probably won't)
like with the vocab items, these are not necessarily 関西弁-exclusive, but they show up very frequently or are associated with the region.
楽(たの)しいんちゃう？そんなにむずないやろう？みんなが「なんだか聞いたことある」とでも思ってくれたかな。関西弁の面白い点がこの他に山ほどあるから、これからよう聞き取ったり読み取ったりしてみてよう！
lastly, if i can, i'd love to be a point-person for fielding 関西弁 questions while the bookclub reads this series, so please reach out to me with any questions! if i can't provide help/answers just from experience, i'll definitely try and look up all the 細かい (nitty-gritty) details. ほんじゃ、またな！
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