Japanese linguistic variation

The Japanese language, like all languages, has a wide range of linguistic variation. Differing geographical dialects ranging from the various Ryukyuan dialects of Okinawa to the south to the Tohoku dialects in northern Honshu, differing social dialects such as the Yamanote and Shitamachi varieties in Tokyo, gendered language, casual, polite and honorific language, as well as young people's colloquial usage enrich the Japanese language.

During my time living in Japan (in eastern Fukuoka, in the northeastern area of the southern island of Kyushu) from 1997 through 2002, I was exposed to a great deal of linguistic variation. In the junior high school in which I taught, I could hear one of the female teachers use incredibly honorific and elegant language, while I could hear one of the male teachers using forms such as shashi, a local dialectal form (which, in my communications with people from other areas of Japan, I found to not be used outside of this particular area) meaning roughly "shut up." I could hear my students use forms such as chau, a Kansai variant of the standard chigau 'to be wrong, different,' a form that is not indigenous to the area, but had gained popularity due to Kansai (Osaka) based television comedy shows such as "Downtown" and "99." I could drive 30 minutes to the west and hear different forms from those used in the town that I lived; for example, in Eastern Fukuoka, ke (for standard kara 'since, because') is used, while in the central area of Fukuoka prefecture, the speakers often use ki.