Very cool, I had no idea about Japanese dialects! Sad that they're vanishing. A similar thing the world over, of course. When I taught in Shanghai my Chinese students were generally working in their third language, English, after both Mandarin and their local dialect, or even entirely separate language--China has tons. Or did. The PRC has worked hard to push them aside, and demographics and tech do the rest. Anyhow. Great post, love seeing your students and the snow, too.
Do you know Minae Mizumura's book The Fall of Language in the Age of English? Great book about the same question on a national level. Your post made me think of it. I....read it in English, of course. You've probably already read it in the original Japanese!
Thanks for your comment Dan! Japanese has a lot of very extreme dialects. Akita just north of here that is famous for having a sentence nenebanenoni nerenenee
ねねばねのにねれねねー, which we also understand to the general Japanese population would just be gibberish! It’s really fun to learn and actually I have a book on Sakata dialect I should probably give another read. That was insightful and my mother in law really enjoyed it.
I’m afraid I hadn’t come across that book! Will definitely look into it!
Just read an overview of the book, I tend to agree. To be honest though, I don’t see much promotion of writing in Japanese at Japanese schools. They do a lot of analysis of classical texts from what I can tell, but not so much on the creative side. Just a theory, as this is also true in English education here, but I believe it could be down to a lack of resources or motivation to provide appropriate feedback for students, so they just give up. I could easily be wrong, but that’s the sort of hurdle I’ve come across in my English teaching.
Creative expression in another language is wild, and hard to teach! I taught poetry and fiction to Chinese students in Shanghai--in poetry, especially, it was almost impossible to know what word choice to 'correct' and what to applaud. But that was the joy of it! Interesting that they do classical texts but not the students' own work. A shame, really. In books as in dialect--that which is not taught gets lost. This is the fate of books everywhere soon enough, I'm afraid, but that's another letter altogether.
Great article about an important topic. I witnessed similiar things when living in Suzhou - Wu dialect changed between cities. Humour really tells the story. I laughed at the video and the image of Mongolian throat singing tennis dancing. ooh la la. Seriously though, dialects changing so a mother had to translate a grandmother's dialect - that's fast change.
Thank you for your comment Debbie. It was incredible to watch, not least because I was the one used to translating the outside world to my mother in law. In that case, it was her explaining to my wife and I! Very fast change here, but there are a few people who understand the importance of dialect and make a point of it in their social media and interactions, which is great to see! I want my children to be trilingual at the very least, Japanese, English, and Shonai Dialect.
Yes! thats great! My daughter grew up functionally bilingual, its not so difficult. kids learn young. Question is - which Shonai dialect, given it changes so much!! :)
I have two daughters, both under three, it's very interesting watching the elder learn new words because she is truly mixing her English and Japanese! And then the Shonai dialect from her mother and grandmother :)
I'm a preschool teacher, so very aware of young children's language development. Its completely normal for kids to mix languages when they are young and still learning them (hey we adults do it too!) but as they get older they become more aware of linguistic distinctions. The biggest challenge is probably between standard Japanese and the Shonai dialect. The more you can be upfront about the differences - talk to them about how you say a word in Japanese and how grandmother uses a different word - the more conscious they will become of the different languages.
Oh thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind! I have an MA in applied linguistics, but there was only a little that touched on bilingualism (meaning an age of onset of say 5 plus as opposed to earlier), so I’m intrigued with educating little ones in multiple languages! I have a friend who is a researcher at Kyoto University specializing in plurilingualism too and that is just fascinating!
yes most people ignore the really young kids, unless they are early years specialists. language acquisition, esp multilingual language acquisition, is wonderful! Its up to aged 5 that language is acquired so that is the really important time!
My two favorite shortened words are
- pansuto for panty・stocking (panty hose)
- zensuto for zeneraru sutoraikki (general strike)
Pansuto! I had forgotten that one!! Zensuto also up there :)
Very cool, I had no idea about Japanese dialects! Sad that they're vanishing. A similar thing the world over, of course. When I taught in Shanghai my Chinese students were generally working in their third language, English, after both Mandarin and their local dialect, or even entirely separate language--China has tons. Or did. The PRC has worked hard to push them aside, and demographics and tech do the rest. Anyhow. Great post, love seeing your students and the snow, too.
Do you know Minae Mizumura's book The Fall of Language in the Age of English? Great book about the same question on a national level. Your post made me think of it. I....read it in English, of course. You've probably already read it in the original Japanese!
Thanks for your comment Dan! Japanese has a lot of very extreme dialects. Akita just north of here that is famous for having a sentence nenebanenoni nerenenee
ねねばねのにねれねねー, which we also understand to the general Japanese population would just be gibberish! It’s really fun to learn and actually I have a book on Sakata dialect I should probably give another read. That was insightful and my mother in law really enjoyed it.
I’m afraid I hadn’t come across that book! Will definitely look into it!
Just read an overview of the book, I tend to agree. To be honest though, I don’t see much promotion of writing in Japanese at Japanese schools. They do a lot of analysis of classical texts from what I can tell, but not so much on the creative side. Just a theory, as this is also true in English education here, but I believe it could be down to a lack of resources or motivation to provide appropriate feedback for students, so they just give up. I could easily be wrong, but that’s the sort of hurdle I’ve come across in my English teaching.
Creative expression in another language is wild, and hard to teach! I taught poetry and fiction to Chinese students in Shanghai--in poetry, especially, it was almost impossible to know what word choice to 'correct' and what to applaud. But that was the joy of it! Interesting that they do classical texts but not the students' own work. A shame, really. In books as in dialect--that which is not taught gets lost. This is the fate of books everywhere soon enough, I'm afraid, but that's another letter altogether.
ねねばねのにねれねねー just LOOKS amazing....!
Great article about an important topic. I witnessed similiar things when living in Suzhou - Wu dialect changed between cities. Humour really tells the story. I laughed at the video and the image of Mongolian throat singing tennis dancing. ooh la la. Seriously though, dialects changing so a mother had to translate a grandmother's dialect - that's fast change.
Thank you for your comment Debbie. It was incredible to watch, not least because I was the one used to translating the outside world to my mother in law. In that case, it was her explaining to my wife and I! Very fast change here, but there are a few people who understand the importance of dialect and make a point of it in their social media and interactions, which is great to see! I want my children to be trilingual at the very least, Japanese, English, and Shonai Dialect.
Yes! thats great! My daughter grew up functionally bilingual, its not so difficult. kids learn young. Question is - which Shonai dialect, given it changes so much!! :)
I have two daughters, both under three, it's very interesting watching the elder learn new words because she is truly mixing her English and Japanese! And then the Shonai dialect from her mother and grandmother :)
I'm a preschool teacher, so very aware of young children's language development. Its completely normal for kids to mix languages when they are young and still learning them (hey we adults do it too!) but as they get older they become more aware of linguistic distinctions. The biggest challenge is probably between standard Japanese and the Shonai dialect. The more you can be upfront about the differences - talk to them about how you say a word in Japanese and how grandmother uses a different word - the more conscious they will become of the different languages.
Oh thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind! I have an MA in applied linguistics, but there was only a little that touched on bilingualism (meaning an age of onset of say 5 plus as opposed to earlier), so I’m intrigued with educating little ones in multiple languages! I have a friend who is a researcher at Kyoto University specializing in plurilingualism too and that is just fascinating!
yes most people ignore the really young kids, unless they are early years specialists. language acquisition, esp multilingual language acquisition, is wonderful! Its up to aged 5 that language is acquired so that is the really important time!