Places, Images, Times & Transformations

Language Variation

Pages

  • <
  • Page
  • 3
  • of 6
  • >

From the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912) and continuing through the first half of the 20th century, the government went to a great length to promote a cleaned-up version of the Tokyo dialect as the national language, eradicate dialects from other areas, and force compulsory education to be conducted in the standard language, reprimanding school children who spoke their regional parlance in school. This effort was motivated by the belief that a lack of a standard mode of communication in the areas of military, science, and humanistic learning will hinder Japan from developing into a modern nation. This effort has been partially successful-today everyone, even those in Okinawa, will understand Tokyo variety of Japanese and many can switch between his own regional dialect to the Tokyo dialect in a hurry. This trend is aided, of course, by widely available newspapers, magazines, and TV, where the Tokyo dialect has a near monopoly both written and spoken form of the language. This does not mean that dialects are dead; in fact, one may say some are regaining their strength. People, especially in areas with a strong dialect identity (Osaka, Hiroshima, etc.) have become increasing vocal about the pride they feel when speaking in their dialects. In these areas some TV and radio programs and publications are produced using their own dialect.

A Digression—a Case of Arinsu Kotoba

Related to the standard language discussion is a phenomenon of so-called arinsu kotoba, used by the courtesans of Edo Japan, which serves as an example of how a language policy of sorts change the speech of a small group of women. Women in this profession, who came from all dialect areas of Japan, felt pressed to hide their dialects and learn the language suitable for the occasion. Noticing that dialectal differences appeared most frequently at the end of a sentence, courtesan houses developed new inflectional endings to camouflage the women's dialects. Called arinsu kotoba, it is characterized buy the use of arinsu, as in Okoma de arinsu 'I am Okoma'. Other examples specific to this subculture during the Bunka Bunsei period (1804-1830), differing from house to house, included the use of nanshi for request as in oide nanshi 'please come', use of zansu as in kanzashi zansu 'it's a hairpin', use of gozansu (probably from gozaru 'be' and a variation of contemporary gozaimasu 'be') for desu as in samū gozansu 'it is cold', use of politer adjectival form yoroshū as in yoroshū osu 'it's fine'. It is worth noting that this arinsu kotoba was a constructed language, too, for a specific purpose. As a footnote, the word gozansu became widespread among housewives in the Tokyo's well-heeled residential Yamanote district in its permutated form, giving the so-called zāmasu kotoba 'zāmasu language', often made into caricature for its self-important, arrogant way of speaking (e.g., sō zāmasu ka? 'Is that so?').

Gender

Certain stereotyped generalizations are associated with man's speech--that it is rough, ungrammatical, and short. Women's speech, in contrast, is said to be more accurate, soft, and trivial. With these generalizations notwithstanding, one can tease apart certain linguistic elements that are marked for one gender or the other in Japanese. One of the earliest records of gender-differentiated (perhaps more accurately profession-differentiated) language in Japanese comes from 11th century, when women kitchen workers in the imperial court began using euphemistic, code-like words to refer to cooking utensils and ingredients as well as some court-related events.

Pages

  • <
  • Page
  • 3
  • of 6
  • >