Hokkaido-ben

Hokkaido-Ben (a regional dialect in Hokkaido)

Hi everyone, I’m Nanami.

Here, I’d like to introduce the regional dialect in Hokkaido, which is called Hokkaido-ben in Japanese. The root of Hokkaido-ben is said to be the north of Hokkaido. Before it was transmitted to the north of Hokkaido, it developed in the Tohoku region (the north part of Honshu).

 

 

Below, I am going to introduce some words and expressions of Hokkaido-ben. Some people from Hokkaido use some of them but do not know that expressions are not used outside of Hokkaido.

 

The first one is famous as Hokkaido-ben. Do you use the word “めんこい“? In what situation do you use the word? It has the same meaning as cute, it is said “かわいい” in standard Japanese. “めんこい” came from the word of classical Japanese.

 

The next word I will introduce you is “なまら“. It means “very” in English. The root of this word is “生半可” which means incomplete or unfinished. The pronunciation of “生半可“ and “なまら” are similar but the meanings are completely different. Why did the meaning change? It is said that “生半可“ originated in Niigata prefecture in the Tyube region. It means that on the way to Hokkaido, the meaning changed and the wrong meaning was spread in Hokkaido.

 

These two words are only one part of Hokkaido-ben and there are a lot of more interesting expressions. If you are interested, please search on the internet.

Thank you for reading!