Introduction

This website is dedicated to the Tsugaru dialect (Tsugaru-ben). My goal is to make this site into a detailed resource for the dialect. For now, check out what I have here:

Dialect Overview - This contains general information and features about the dialect

Dictionary - This will be a more formal list of Tsugaru-ben words and inflectional rules

Click here to visit the Matsunoki corpus of the Tsugaru dialect, which consists of trees that include syntactic and morphological analysis, based on folktales narrated by native speakers of the dialect.

Q & A

• What is Tsugaru-ben?

  Tsugaru-ben is a dialect spoken in the Tsugaru region of Japan. The Tsugaru region is on the west side of Aomori prefecture, the northernmost prefecture on Japan's mainland of Honshu. The dialect is famous for being notoriously difficult for outsiders to understand.

• What is the purpose of this site?

  The goal is to make a website rich with information regarding Tsugaru-ben. General information, dictionaries, and even searchable samples will be made available.

• Who is this for?

  Anybody who has an interest in the Tsugaru dialect, or even Japanese in general. Outside of Standard Japanese, Kansai-ben is the most widely spoken. However, Tsugaru-ben is well known throughout Japan because of how different it can be from Standard Japanese. Because of this, I think it is good for any learner who lives or will live in Japan to know a little bit about it. Of course if you are moving to the Tsugaru region, you definitely should try to at least familiarize yourself with the dialect.

  I also hope to make this useful to researchers of the dialect alike. Computer resources for the dialect are sparse, especially in English. I will slowly add acedemic information and tools to alleviate this gap.

• Who is the author?

  My name is Vance. I moved to Japan in 2018 to pursue my master's degree at Hirosaki University. I have since graduated and continue to live and work in Hirosaki in IT.

  My background is IT, but I am also interested in literature and lingustics. As a master's student at Hirosaki University, I worked on developing a corpus for the Tsugaru dialect.

  I began to learn the Japanese language after I moved to the Tsugaru region, so there is a strong influence from the dialect on my way of speaking and vocabulary. This is one of the primary reasons I became interested in the dialect.

  Feel free to contact me if you wish at vance {a} tsugaruben.net.

  Or say hi to my cat: Boo the Cat