I looked at Wikipedia today to see what information they had about Tomiko's history, and in a "stub" something is mentioned about her having a Komamoto dialect (obviously, the dialect of where she grew up.) Here..

"Tomiko has a Kumamoto-dialect, which she performed on the first show that was aired after the official announcement of the split-up, Domoto Kyoudai. For most of the time, she doesn't display it to the public"

What exactly does that mean? She fakes an accent/vocabulary or something? =/ Does anyone have any other information about this? And what does it mean by "she performed.. it.. on the first show after the split up"?? So like, in every interview of her after DAI broke up she was speaking how she naturally would? *exasperated sigh*

I'm so confuzzed

Yeah I noticed that too...
Here's what I thought when I first read it:

Obviously Tomiko grew up in Kumamoto in Yamato Prefecture. They probably have their own dialect there (Much like Southern people have a different dialect than Northern people in America). So maybe Tomiko didn't want to be different from everyone else when performing in the mainlands so she learned the dialect of "regular" Japanese.

I'm not sure, though.

In Japan, there are many different dialects, such as Kansai-ben, Okinawa-ben, etc. But some of the really rural dialects are pretty hard to understand for people who don't live in that area, so when talking to outsiders, they use the standard, Tokyo dialect. Everyone should at least understand this, cause that's what they teach at school. So when we hear Tomiko speak, she's not speaking in Kumamoto-ben at all. I think the time she was on Domoto Kyoudai was the only time she ever publicly demonstrated her native dialect...

Now, there might be many reasons why she would hide it, but from what I've learned about Japanese dialects, there seems to be a negative stereotype placed on people who speak them. Like they're not intelligent or something like that. I can definitely relate to this - us locals in Hawaii tend to speak "pidgin English", and people from the mainland think we sound dumb... Anyway, it would be hard for her to succeed in this business if people had these misconceptions about her, so that's probably why she chooses to hide it. I personally think that's why she seems nervous during interviews - she might be worried that she'd slip up and the Kumamoto-ben would come out. But that's just what I think.

*agrees with shidosan*

My friend mentioned the same thing, about different areas having different dialects. (^^) and some of the really rural ones are REALLY strange. She made a thread about the particular dialect that's in the area she stays in (it's called "Saga-ben"):
http://www.megchan.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=11

One thing she mentioned was that endings like "i" (in "atsui") would turn into "ka" (so "atsui" becomes "atsuka" in Saga Prefecture). And in some instances, "atsui" can be written as..."nukka". xD

Another (of several things) she mentioned is this:

Here's an excerpt, if anyone's interested:I think you can see how that'd be confusing to some people, kind of like some Southern people saying "I was fixin' to go there" instead of "I was about to go there". =D

Lol, omg thank you so much!! God, I love Japanese =P It's bad enough learning all that -i and -na adjective crap in college.. imagine having to take into consideration the -ka endings too!! Although, the -to ending seems like it would make life a lot easier.

In addition to what Shidosan said about people who speak dialects seeming unintelligent (which I noticed Tomiko always seems quiet during interviews) but it probably also seems rude speaking in them to people you should be showing respect.. it sounds like a lot of dialects find ways to shorten their verbs, and knowing how long verbs can get when trying to be polite, it would most definately seem rude to speak that way =P (For those of you who don't understand exactly what I mean, consider these well known ways of saying thanks: "Domo" or "Arigatou gozaimashita". Take a guess at which one would seem more *polite* lol


Anyway, I wanna know more about this!!

EDIT: also, can anyone maybe get ahold of the episode of Domoto Kyoudai with Tomiko on it? There's not one on Youtube atm =(

ehm ^^

That's the other thing, you might offend people even if you don't intend to. What you say might be completely acceptable in terms of showing respect to people in your region, but outside of that region, it might not be. For one of my Japanese classes, we watched a news program where they investigated the difference between the words "baka" and "aho". which are the Tokyo-ben and Kansai-ben words for "stupid" respectively. Interestingly, they found a couple, where the man was from the Tokyo region and his wife was from the Kansai region. He said that it felt more "disrespectful" to him when she calls him "aho" rather than "baka", say whenever they were having an argument. So that's an example of how just the difference in dialect can bring out different responses from different people.

In Tomiko's case with Kumamoto-ben, however, I really think it's more of an issue of being understood rather than not wanting to offend somebody. If you understand a little Japanese, and watch that episode of Domoto Kyoudai, you'd realize how difficult it would be to understand her if she talked like that all the time.
She's probably more afraid of people making fun of her... My Japanese teacher for that class told me that whenever he visits certain areas of Japan and listens to people speak, some dialects sound almost like Korean to him. I've actually seen a video of an Okinawan singer, Natsukawa Rimi, where they actually had two sets of subtitles - one was the actual Okinawan lyrics, and the second was a translation of that in standard Japanese. It's really bizarre when you think of the amount of variation that's possible.

neh!!......I don't understand what's happening.....it makes me feel dizzy.... .....

btw, what's the matter if Tomiko Van speaks with her own dialect???.....I guess it's ok because why are you going to be ashamed of the place where you come from???.......

you have to think of it as going to another country where they dont speak eng as part of their daily life...say france for ex. you can't assume and expect them to know english... it's not a matter of being ashamed of where you come from but respecting the people and the language they speak there...when i saw the ep of ban-chan on DK kumamoto dialect really sounds NOTHING like japanese! so hard to understand XD

hmm..bad example but works for me =D

Ai Takahashi's Fukui dialect comes out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSe5YHzDjbI

See how they make fun of her? It was almost the same way when Tomiko was on Domoto Kyoudai. Now, I'm not saying they were being mean spirited about the whole thing, but you can kinda see how these "obscure" dialects are usually targets to be made fun of. It can come off as being "cute" in some cases, (like Ai Takahashi), but to really be taken seriously, people in Japan generally tend to avoid using their native dialect in the presence of outsiders.

Ai-chan's accent is actually quite adorable. I'm assuming you saw the "Hoppi de Hop" bit that she did on Utaban several years back? Priceless.

But that's just how it goes sometimes. It was cute with Takahashi because she was still in her mid-teens, but if you see some of her more recent interviews, she's mostly dropped the accent. As others have said, it's considerably more difficult to be taken seriously as an artist if you're speaking a dialect that variety show hosts/radio DJs can't fully understand.

Lol yeah.. I saw that Hoppi de Hop thing a long time ago. I can understand what they meant when they said she sounded like a morse code or whatever.. but it was still cute.

I STILL WANNA SEE THE KYOUDAI THING WITH TOMIKO THOOOOOO T_T

OK! OK!....I got it now!!!!!.......Gomen nasai, Ban-chan....please forgive me.....

Well, there's also some situations like that here in our country but I don't pay attention to that kind of things too much......but with Tomiko Van....shocks!!...Gomen nasai, Banchan!...Gomen!!!!

Aishiteru, Tomiko Van, my Goddess, my angel, my princess, my queen, my empress, my deity, my fairy, my lady.....

Van Tomiko - Domoto Kyoudai 051120

right click and save ass ^^

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! You are so reliable lol. <3

So I actually saw this before when it was on Youtube a long time ago I realized!! I don't quite get it... so all through those questions, she's speaking with her dialect? I can't understand enough Japanese to tell the difference, but I can sense that there's something strange about the way she's talking.

EDIT: Ok, after I watched the whole thing I understand what's going on now. Lol. This is so fun =D

It will be great if it has sub, since it's all talk.

This is the first time I see her in a live interview, where she does a lot of talk.

She's so lovely.

One thing, Ban chan always lovely when she smiles, but many times she pushed herself holding back her smiles (wide smile, and laugh lol). Oh Ban.

Thx UF!

OMG~!!!.........Arigatou, aino-san!!....SANKYU~!!!!



OMGGGGGGGG~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!................Tomiko Van is really kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~~!!!.........Sankyu, aino-san!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the first time I saw Banchan so happy in a talk show!!.....She's so talkative~!!!!........I just wish I could understand them.........hehehe...... ...........but Tomiko Van is so so so.....wooooooooh~!!!......Any translations????.......

Aishiteru, Tomiko Van, my Goddess, my angel, my princess, my queen, my empress, my deity, my fairy, my lady......

Very interesting, I never knew she spoke in an accent, always wondered about it though!

AHhh!! I totally missed out on this. Can someone reupload it?