Colloquial Kansai Japanese

Making a determined attempt at being the Japanese language book with the longest ever title: "Colloquial Kansai Japanese まいど！おきに！関西弁 The dialects and culture of the Kansai Region ", this tome is a well written, thoughtful explanation of that most colorful tongue - Kansai-ben.

On a shopping expedition to Kobe and Osaka last weekend I was drawn into the black hole that is the Kinokuniya bookshop in Umeda, There I stumbled upon Colloquial Kansai Japanese. I picked it up more out of curiosity than anything else - I harbour no burning desire to master the tongue of the manzai wit, but the book's easy conversational tone sucked me in and I decided to take a copy home (after paying for it of course).

Colloquial Kansai Japanese starts out with an introduction to the basics of Kansai-ben, simple stuff but well laid out and easy to follow, for example, contractions:

Standard Japanese        Kansai-ben        English
よく                              よう                    very, well
おもしろい                    おもろい             interesting

Then to words unique to Kansai:

Standard japanese        Kansai-ben         English
あたたかい                    ぬくい                  warm
ころぶ                          こける                  fall down

It was at this point, page 13, that I was hooked. Why? Because everyday I am bombarded with Mishima-ben, the dialect of the city I live in, and by reading CKJ I could see how closely related the two dialects are. I have worked out the basics of Mishima-ben but if I had possessed CJK I could have saved a lot of time.

eg こうた　is Kansai/Mishima dialect for かった, whilst もろた　is もらった。

My point - the book is useful not only for people in the Kansai region but for western Japan generally - hell, with the number of Osaka TV personalities these days it is useful for anyone who watches TV.　

Following the introduction the book goes on to describe 15 survival words (eg あかん、ほんま、おる、や）providing plenty of example sentences along the way. The contextualisation of all the examples makes Colloquial Kansai Japanese very easy to follow, and the healthy dose of notes on usage means that you can start using Kansai-ben straight away. The examples have both romaji and kana/kanji, so even beginners are catered for. Later chapters present a further 15 basic words and masses of sample conversations. There is even a dictionary/glossary at the back.

Those who click through to Amazon to purchase this choice tome may be surprised to note that the book has yet to garner even a single Amazon review, which would make sense if the book was newly published, but it came out in 1995........The answer is simple - in its former incarnation the book was called Kinki Japanese. Anyone with Japanese Geography 101 knows that Kinki is another name for the Kansai region and it doesn't take a great deal of brainpower to work out that someone finally realised that for an English speaking audience the title Kinki Japanese may not have been the best way to market the book.

174 pages and only 1200 yen too. A bargain. Do yourself a favour.