Dialects are something each countries have and Japan is no exception as it is said to have more than 100 dialects. As all of you are studying “standard” Japanese, when you visit local areas in Japan, you might hear Japanese dialects you didn’t learn in textbooks and classes. In today’s article, I want to share a few Kansai-dialect (spoken in Osaka prefecture, Kinki-area)!

①なおす（Nao-su）

「なおす（Nao-su）」means either fix something (直す) or cure disease (治す), however, in Kansai-dialect, it means return something back to its original place. So if somebody says「この本、なおしといて」, it doesn’t mean “fix this book” but “return this book (to the shelf)”.

②ほかす（Hoka-su）

Can you even guess what this means? This word is probably not on your Japanese textbook. This means throw away in Kansai-dialect. For example, if somebody says「この紙、ほかしといて」, it means “throw away this paper”. When I first heard this word, I also had no idea what that means!

③あかん（Akan）

Some of you might have heard of this word in manga or anime, but it means that I can’t do it in Kansai-dialect. For instance, when you are asked if you are free tomorrow to hang out, if you reply 「明日あかんわ」, then it means “I can’t tomorrow”.

Our teachers of 日本語.COM are from different regions in Japan, so if you are curious what their dialects sound like, it’d be interesting to compare them to standard Japanese!