Some phenomena are indescribable…

I will therefore try to describe it anyway… lets see how I do.

My area of Japan (MyPrefecture), is a ways out from Tokyo, and thus has it’s own sort of way of life. I really like said way of life, it’s very quaint and pleasant, and very much like the areas I grew up in… well, except they don’t speak English here…

Of course, one could argue that children rarely speak English, so perhaps they are almost functionally identical…

Anyway, this area has an accent. It’s a cute accent (I’ve noticed that Maia has the accent). But since I was taught Tokyo-dialect Japanese, I’ve sort of picked up on the weird accent.

You see, the folks in MyPrefecture all seem to put in extra syllables. Generally when they are thinking of what to say next (As in where we’d put in “um”)

“Watashi wa Sensei desu” means “I’m a teacher”, but, for some inexplicable reason, folks around here will say “Watashi wa-AH Sensei-EE desu” With an emphasis on the newly generated (theoretically non-existent) syllables.

This is curious enough by itself… but the accent is transferring…

Today, one of my students came up to me, and clear as day she said: “Sensei, Do-OO you-OO like to play Soccer-RR?”

Since she said the sentence perfectly (Save the fact that it was seriously heavy in MyPrefecture Dialect), I had to do everything in my power to not laugh at her…

When I came over here, this wasn’t something I really thought I’d have to worry about… looking at a 14 year old and trying desperately not to laugh at her because I realized that not only does her English have a Japanese accent, but she has a MyPrefecture accent…

These are the things they don’t warn you about in training :D
---Me.