Background
Since Osaka is the largest city in the region and its speakers gained the most media exposure over the last century, non-Kansai-dialect speakers tend to associate the dialect of Osaka with the entire Kansai region. However, technically, Kansai-ben is not a single dialect but a group of related dialects in the region. Each major city and prefecture has a particular dialect, and residents take some pride in their particular dialectical variations.
The common Kansai-ben is spoken in Keihanshin (the metropolitan areas of the cities of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe) and its surroundings, a radius of about 50 km around the Osaka-Kyoto area (the zone colored orange in the left map). In this article, it is mainly discussed about the Keihanshin version of Kansai-ben in Shōwa period and Heisei period. Dialects of other areas such as Kii Peninsula and northern Kansai have different features, some archaic, from the common Kansai-ben. Tajima and Tango (except Maizuru) dialects in northwest Kansai are too different to be regarded as Kansai-ben and are thus usually included in the Chūgoku dialect. The Shikoku dialect and the Hokuriku dialect share many similarities with the Kansai dialects, but are classified separately.
Read more about this topic: Kansai Dialect
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)