Vocabulary
Though it also includes a few distinctive words, today it is largely indistinguishable from the standard speech of Tokyo other than the phonemic difference. Famous Shitamachi words are a swearword berabōme! or beranmee! (masculine Shitamachi speech is commonly known as Beranmee kuchō or "Beranmee tone"), atabō for atarimae meaning "of course" and an emphasis prefix o + sokuon such as oppajimeru for hajimeru meaning "to start" and so on. Atashi is a feminine first person in standard Japanese, but in Shitamachi dialect, it is often used by both men and women.
Read more about this topic: Tokyo Dialect
Famous quotes containing the word vocabulary:
“The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.”
—Marina Warner (b. 1946)
“My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“[T]here is no breaking out of the intentional vocabulary by explaining its members in other terms.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)