Flowers Called Unfamiliar Words

Born and raised in Osaka, I am still sometimes surprised when I think, 'Wait! Is that Osaka dialect? People in other regions don't understand that?!'

When I lived in Tokyo, 'hokasu' (meaning 'to throw away') wasn't understood. At work, when I said, 'I threw away that scrap of paper,' the person replied, 'It's fine if you've kept it,' and that was when I first realized it.

Since the company was formed by merging with a firm that had its headquarters in Osaka, there were many employees from the Kansai region, and they helped me out a great deal.

'Oh, that word won't be understood in Tokyo.'

They taught me things like that many times.

However, even so, there are still many new discoveries, such as the fact that 'tomorrow's bread' is a phrase only used by Kansai people, or that the humor packed into the expression 'a lump of hesitation' (the last piece of food left on a plate) doesn't translate.

Also, on a slightly different note, Osaka people frequently use expressions like 'ga-tto' (whoosh) or 'guwa-tte natte' (getting all worked up).

I often encounter directions like, 'If you go straight down that road whoosh, you'll hit a big street with a bang, so turn sharply to the right...' Everyone is being kind and trying to help, but people who aren't from Kansai might be surprised.

I myself was recently talking to a friend from Tokyo, saying, 'I was so stressed I just went "Eee!"...' and they gave me a puzzled look.

'You use that "going Eee!" thing a lot, but what does it feel like?'

Wait, they don't understand it? Although they sort of got the gist, they didn't understand that it meant 'a state where stress has reached its peak and I can no longer control my emotions.'

In my work as a writer, the moment to write 'I went "Eee!"...' almost certainly never comes, so I hadn't noticed.

But sometimes I feel that the fun of dialects lies right here.

When I ask, 'Hey, what does that mean?' not to mock, but out of genuine curiosity, the depth of the language begins to bloom. If you follow the scent of the flower and ask, 'Then what kind of nuance does this have?' you're already falling into the rabbit hole.

When I encounter words used only in a specific place, I can reach a kind of excitement that I wouldn't get if I had lived in only one place.

Thinking this way all the time, I am now eagerly waiting for interesting expressions to pop out from a friend I recently met who is from Kyushu.