Saga Dialect - Characteristics

Characteristics

Many of Saga's dialectical properties are variants, in particles or conjugations, of standard Japanese.

• Words are often repeated twice.
• The sentence-ending particle "よ" becomes "ばい" or "たい".
• The contrastive conjunction "ばってん" (somewhat equivalent to English's "however") replaces standard Japanese equivalents.
• The operative particle "を" is replaced with "ば".
  • Ex.:手紙ば書いた=Wrote letter.
• The particle "が", when referring to other people, is replaced with "の".
  • Ex.:黒君の書いた=Kuro-kun wrote .
• Traditional masu-form keigo is replaced by the suffix "～しんさっ", "～しんさる", "～しよんさっ", or "～しよんさる".
  • Ex.:手紙をかきよんさった=Wrote letter.
• The direction particles "に" and "へ" are replaced with "さい".
  • Ex.:学校さい行く=Go to school.
• The explanatory "の" it replaced by "と".
  • Ex.:手紙を書いたと？= Wrote letter .
• The continuative conjugation "～ている" becomes "とっ".
  • Ex.:書いとっ= writing.
• In the passive conjugation of a verb, "れ" is taken out and "る" becomes a long vowel, or doubles the next consonant.
  • Ex.:書かれる (writing; passive voice) becomes replaced with 書かるう or 書かるっ.
• I-adjectives have their "い"s replaced with "か"s.
  • Ex.: cold (寒い?) becomes 寒か.
• Na-adjectives sometimes have a か added on, reminiscent of the above characteristic. This seems to happen more in the south.
  • Ex.: じょうず becomes じょうずか.
• Pronunciation is similar to Hakata ben in the following: "sa, shi, su, se, so" become "sha, shii, shu, she, sho". In addition, Saga-ben also has the unique pronunciations of "za, zu, ze, da, ga," and "na" rendered as "ja, ju, je, ja, gya," and "nya", respectively.
• "～ない" conjugations become "ん" (the "ない" adjective itself becomes "なか"). This reflects the negative archaic/rude conjugation in standard Japanese. For example, whereas 食べん would be rude in eastern Japan, in Saga-ben it is standard.
  • Ex.:分からない becomes 分からん
• I-adjectives' "い"s become "さ" in when the speaker wants to add strong emphasis.
• I-adjectives' continuative form's "く" becomes a modifying "う" that elongates and possibly changes the vowel of the character before it.
  • Ex.:interesting (continuative) (おもしろく?) becomes "おもしろう"fun (continuative) (楽しく?) becomes 楽しゅう.