Great news to all of you Kansai fans out there! Kansai-Ben is now available on facebook! めっちゃええやん！
Japan, like any other country has a wide variety of regional dialects. Some more famous than others, in Japan however the most widely known is 関西弁 (Kansai-Ben), otherwise known as Kansai Dialect. Most people relate it to the city of Osaka but it covers an area much wider than that, stretching from Hyogo to Kyoto. There are also many regional varients.
Depending on who you talk to, peoples image of Kansai-Ben ranges from "friendly, and approachable" to "too direct", "mean" and "blunt". There are exceptions of course but in my experience it seems that people native to Tokyo tend to think of Osakans as more funny, brash and too direct types. Whereas Osaka people tend to view native Tokyo as too cold and uptight. Who knows though? I've encountered many exceptions to these stereotypes. I personally love it, both speaking and hearing it, it feels very friendly.
But Kansai-Ben is now available as a language option! But what does that mean?
Lets look at the search bar, for all these images the standard dialect is on top with Kansai-Ben below.
As you can see the words for search 検索 Kensaku now has a new ending 検索せえへん Kensakuseehen! This is a negative version of する suru, to do. So it kind of roughly translates as "Don't you wanna search for friends or places?"
My favourite changes comes in the status bar. Having lived and the Osaka and Kansai area for a while I have noticed that this ending form has become a big part of my spoken Japanese without even thinking about it. I always worry about it in formal situations!
The standard dialect states 今どんな気持ち？Ima donna kimochi? Which can be translated as "What kind of mood are you in now?"
Whereas the Kansai version says 何してるん？Nani shiterun? Which could be said as "What are you doing now?" Kansai dialect tends to add a lot of -n sounds to everyone which is really fun and easy to say!
It's interesting that the question asked feels completely different in nature though!
Next up, birthdays! Super happy times! So of course we use stronger language when doing so!
Standard dialect offers a rather blands 今日はだれだれさんの誕生日です。Kyou ha daredaresan no tanjoubi desu. "Today its Blah Blah's birthday."Whereas the Kansai version feels like it has a lot more punch to it. 今日はだれだれさんの誕生日やで！Kyou ha daredaresan no tanjoubi yade! This is basically "It's blah blah's birthday today!!!" やで！is somewhat similar to だよ but just feels like it has a lot more emotion behind it. Actually feels like they are happy to announce it rather than just being a blank statement.
On pictures is where we can see the most notable changes.
Tokyo's いいね！iine! (like), コメントする commentsuru (comment) and シェア Shiea (Share) buttons have now been replaced with ええやん！eeyan! つっこむ tsuukomu and わけわけ wakewake.When you put やん！on the end of a statement it makes it stronger! Kind of like "I really like this!" or "awesome!" The other words have been changed to sound much more like native Japanese instead of the simple katakana words too.
I personally think that this change has been long overdue and have already seen several posts from Osaka friends who seem super happy about the new changes!
What do you think? Are you going to make the switch? If so, then you can select it under 日本語（関西弁） in the language settings!
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