The Current Status of Regional Standard Dialect in Kagoshima City and the Surrounding Area

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The aim of this project is to have a clear view of the 'Regional Standard Variety' of Kagoshima dialect which is mainly used around the urban area of Kagoshima City. To accomplish this aim, we have conducted three surveys on old and new lexical items, grammatical features unique to Kagoshima dialect, language attitude and social attitude. The research was done in one large urban area (Kagoshima City) and two small cities (Makurazaki City and Miyakanojo City). The main discoveries from the research on the urban dialect of Kagoshima City are as follows :(1) The sentence final particles, 'kee' and 'ga', are used among the younger generation more frequently than the older generation, although they are old lexical items.(2) The other older items, 'wazze', 'naosu' and 'hawaku' are used equally all through the generations. The old and the middle-aged generations regard them as items of the standard variety, while the young generation use them without hesitation even though they know they are … More dialect forms.(3) The new items, 'nakatta deshita', 'desuyo / dayoo' and 'yasukude', are now diffusing among the younger generation.(4) The grammatical forms peculiar to the Kagoshima region, e.g. 'ga naran', 'kaseta' and 'netta', are not popular among the young generation. And it should be noted that the language of young women is remarkably standardized.Comparing these findings to the results of the surveys in Makurazaki and Miyakonojo, the following points become clear :(5) In these two places, the lexical items mentioned in (3) above are used less frequently than in Kagoshima City. However, the increase of the number of people among the young generation using these new items of dialect demonstrates the tendency of diffusion of these new forms which were born in Kagoshima City. This fact shows that the young generation tends to accept new forms quickly.(6) The grammatical features mentioned in (4) are still popular, even among young speakers.(7) Miyakonojo is less influenced by the dialect of Kagoshima City than Makurazaki. However, from the fact stated in (5) that the young generation tend to pick up the variations of Kagoshima City, we could say that the Miyakonojo dialect is still under the influence of Kagoshima dialect.(8) In addition to (7), the results of the research show us that the Miyakonojo dialect was not influenced by the Hyuga dialect as much as we had expected. Less