Iya-benJapan is geographically small, but the Japanese spoken by people from different areas of the country can differ so widely as to make the speech of a person from one end of the archipelago almost unintelligible for anyone from the other. These dialects of Japanese are known as ben here, and every region of Japan has its own variation on the theme. In days long past, ben are thought to have arisen partly because people from certain communities wanted ways to tell the difference between people who were genuine locals and those who were from other (possibly enemy) places. These days, thanks to modern education, the younger generation of people tend more towards standard Japanese with just a smattering of their native ben, but you only need to strike up a conversation with one of the many ojisans or obasans shuffling around the countryside to get a taste of the true colour of the Japanese language. Dialectic Japanese is especially strong in country areas, as which the whole of Shikoku pretty much qualifies. Bearing similarity to Kansai-ben, the dialect of the Osaka region, even within Shikoku, the four prefectures Ehime, Kagawa, Kochi and Tokushima all have their own distinct dialects. Tokushima's dialect is known as Awa-ben and is famous for such things as:
|