For beginner students I don’t recommend listening/reading a lot of Japanese where characters speak in a regional or other accent. While it’s good to have some understanding of other styles of accents beyond the typical Tokyo-dialect (東京弁), my concern is that you might unintentionally pick up something and use it without knowing it’s not typical Japanese.
There’s nothing wrong with speaking in an accent (odds are you will still be understood), but there is so much to learn just with basic Japanese that I think it’s best to focus on that, especially when you are first starting out. Not to mention that intonation, which is one of the hardest things to master in Japanese, becomes even harder to figure out if you hear a mix of different intonations and never get a feel for what is ‘standard’.
Of course, there are exceptions, for example if you are living in a city with a specific regional accent (for example, somewhere in Osaka), or if you plan to live there in the near future.
Regardless, as you deepen your Japanese studies and gain experience, I think eventually you should start exposing yourself to accents more and more. But I think it’s important to not simply acknowledge “well, that’s different,” but instead try to understand the ins and outs of the accent, and also where that accent originates.
I should clarify that there are really two types of accents. One is a regional accent corresponding to some part of Japan, where there are a bunch of people who speak in a similar way. To those people, the accent is likely to be “normal”, though oftentimes Japanese people from other regions learn the Tokyo dialect and may switch to that in certain situations so they can be understood better (I have seen that myself).
The other type of accent is when a non-native speaker is speaking and ends up using grammar and/or pronunciation that are not what native speakers would typically do. This is generally not purposeful, and often depends on individual quirks they just developed over time. There is also an interesting type of accent that is sort of a cross between this and the regional accent, which is when a person from another country speaks in a “typical” incorrect (or different) way for that country.
For example, it may be that people from India tend to speak Japanese in a certain way because of similarities or differences to their common native language (Hindi, I guess). There’s of course going to be a lot of variation here depending on the speaker.
Anyway, the thing that inspired me to write this post was the character Lu Shaotang from the (rather great) anime series Sakamoto Days. She is apparently Chinese, and speaks with some very unique quirks, although it took me some time to pick up on them.
Lu does at least three things that deviate from typical Japanese (and I think this applies to many non-native speakers’ accents). First, she often omits pauses that are normally described with a small tsu (っ). For example, she may pronounce (yokatta) as (yokata). Second, the intonation of her words can often be different from Tokyo-dialect Japanese. This one is a bit harder to pick up on, but if you have enough experience can probably pick up on patterns that are unusual.
Finally, and this one is the trickiest to me, she uses some words that are not incorrect, but rather used in contradiction to the situation. In particular, she often ends sentences with the “ne~” particle. That itself isn’t wrong, but her intonation sounds a bit weird, and also in many situations it just feels off. For example, in one of her first scenes in Episode 2 she says (when being grabbed from behind by a gangster):
- “この。。。放すネ” (kono… hanasu ne) => ???
Given the context, the use of “ne” (plus the verb tense of “hanasu”, “to let go”) really doesn’t make sense. Some more natural options would be:
- 放してくれ (hanashite kure) => Let go of me!
- 放すんだよ (hanasu n da yo) => (You) are letting go of me (now).
- 放してね (hanashite ne) => Let go, ok?
In fact, in anime and manga (and perhaps dramas to a lesser extent), sometimes characters are given personality through the sentence-ending particles they use. For example Naruto often says “ttebayo” (which to me has a bit of a persistent, annoying nuance).
I think the usage of “~ne” is one of the main linguistic traits of Lu Shaotong. A few minutes later in the same episode she says:
* “お前ら誰ネ” (omaera dare ne) ⇒ Who are you guys?
Again, this is technically not wrong grammar (sometimes the “da” can be dropped to give a feminine nuance). But the expression doesn’t match her tone, and a phrase like “omaera dare da yo” would fit much better.
Also, notice that the “ne” in the two examples above is written in katakana, not hiragana. This is copied directly from the Japanese subtitles, and it tells you there is something special about this “ne”.
I’ve been told that some of her characteristics are typical for Chinese speakers of Japanese, though I don’t have enough data to say that with certainty.
Is there any character you know who has an interesting accent? Let me know in the comments.