Where has the nicest accent?
 

Hey, I tried searching the forum for this and couldn't find it. But it's something I'd be interested to hear your opinions on.

In every country, there are many dialects. Some sound nicer than others arguably. In Japan, where would you say has the nicest accent? I'm about N4 level so I can't say, the only accent I can tell apart from others is Osaka-Ben.

Well I've always sounded weird which is I suppose because of my English+Welsh clashing. I've had a lifetime of people not hearing what I've said. I'm like come on...Oh well if it's only accents in Japan I don't know. I think Americans talking in Japanese normally sound good. Does that count!? I can't really tell an Osaka accent. I know they say -han or -hen. I did notice there was a guy one day at a train station who was saying like "irasshasumeo",something like that. I don't know what it meant but I did definitely tell he said o instead of u. Was he Osakan?

Haha. No.

Anyone speaking Japanese with an American accent sounds horrible. The same goes for anyone using any Anglophonic accent speaking Japanese. The problem is that Japanese does not use stress accent (it uses pitch accent), but English uses stress accent. I can vouch from personal experience that many anglophones (the worst was an American) speak Japanese with a stress accent, which sounds like this: Ore WA chuuGAKkou ni IkiMAshita

It's really bad. My use of stress accent in Japanese is not terribly bad, but I know of many examples where it actually hurt my ears to listen.

I'm sure the natives and advanced speakers can vouch for stress-accented Japanese sounding terrible.

I`ll vouch for it. It sounds awful. I actually find myself physically cringing - both at foreigners with really poor accents, and at Japanese who imitate it for amusement.

It`s not nearly as bad when the speaker really is poor at Japanese altogether. Japanese learners don`t tend to make me cringe. In that case, it`s just different and forgivable. But when someone is using high level vocab with the up and down sing-song anglophone accent... Awful doesn`t begin to describe how bad it sounds.

Personally, the Japanese accent I like the best isn`t a dialect. It is the accent that people from the Kansai area (not just Osaka) have when speaking formally. For some reason I just really like the pitch pattern.

I wouldn't say that's purely limited to American accents, however.

Standard Japanese kind of gets accused for being bland but I actually like it.

My friend's grandfather is from a small island near Okinawa and he has a full on Okinawa accent, it's hard as hell to understand him but he sounds pretty good otherwise!

In the right context, I love it when Japanese people do the English speaker's Japanese accent. Sometimes I do it too, I admit it. I like to mix up words while I do it for a greater comedic effect. I don't think it sounds good by any stretch of the imagination though.

I do hate the sound of a Japanese accent on English though-- I mean that can be used for comedic effect as well, but people who speak that way seriously and expect it to be understandable drive me crazy (which I guess is the case for an English speaker's bad Japanese accent).

As for Japanese accents, I like some of the archaic sounding phrases that are left over in various regions. I don't know if they sound all that great, but they are fun to try to figure out.

EDIT:
I have a question for you guys though-- Do you find any Japanese accents so bad that you couldn't date someone who spoke in that particular accent? I can think of a lot of American/English accents that I wouldn't be able to date for sure! Do you find any particular Japanese accent attractive/unattractive?

I hate to kick 'em while they're down but... Tohoku accents are just deplorable and so hard to understand.

Hakataben is weird too lol, all these と's everywhere to me it just feels like unfinished sentences!! ><

I remember when I was starting to really learn Japanese... a Tohoku accent was the first one that I encountered. So I think I will always kind of like it for some reason. I started watching the anime called Dragon Ball for the first time a few a few months back and something that struck me as interesting was that the character named Chichi speaks in a kind of northern accent.

I feel like I have an easier time understanding northern accents than really southern ones.

It's funny because after thinking about it... I can't think of an "unattractive" Japanese accent. I don't think it's because they don't exist, but I just think that none of them affect me that way. I get the nuances, but I don't find any of them particularly unattractive (or attractive for that matter). Like for English, there are some Scottish accents or Southern (USA) accents or even some east coast (USA) accents that would be a turn off to me haha. (No offense intended by the way :vsign: )

I think I prefer Kanto dialect and accent.

The thing that makes me cringe the most is gaikokujin speaking kansai-ben or anything but kantouben/hyoujungo.

The only other thing that makes me cringe on the same level is middle class New Zealanders trying to use American street slang.

In fact even middle class Americans trying to use street slang sounds stupid.

And it's not a race thing either... I hate it when black people, (like say Oprah Winfrey or Will Smith) who are articulate and intelligent people, sometimes bust out some street slang in interviews and such mid conversation (things like "uh-uh girlfriend" or "Oh no you di'-nt!"). Eminem however grew up on the streets so it sounds natural on him.