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dialect

New Miyazaki Pref. tourism ad gets laughs with the incomprehensible dialect of an ancient god

Looking for a great travel destination for the new year? Well, this one will at least ensure you never understand what anyone’s saying!

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Newly released image of the giant in Attack on Titan: Kansai version is more glam than ever

Last week Attack on Titan Part 2: Wings of Freedom was released on DVD and with it came a special gift: An improved visual for the Kansai dialect AoT.

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What do you call this sitting pose? Japanese netizens polled to find differences in dialect

Even when speaking with fellow English speakers, sometimes you realize that the same thing can be called a variety of names. (Try calling soda “pop” in most of the US and enjoy the funny looks you get.) The same is true in Japan, where, thanks to regional dialects, some people have a hard time being understood when they leave their hometowns.

One Twitter user recently brought regional dialect differences to the forefront of the Internet when he surveyed over a thousand people about the word they would use to describe a certain way of sitting. Collecting and plotting the data on a map of Japan, the results have been surprising people from all regions!

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Well, the combination of the first two was working out well, apparently. (For those of you who don’t know, there are many regional dialects / accents in Japan. The most easily found is likely the Kansai dialect, due to the huge number of comedians and entertainers you can see on TV.) In any case, following the logic of [cute girls] + [dialects] = [cute], they created a late-night TV program featuring these girls doing various  things in their respective dialects (PG-rated, presumably). Due to the skyrocketing popularity of the TV show, the next natural step was to … promote men’s electric shavers. Read More