Areas where Tosaben and Hataben are spoken

   Tosaben is spoken mainly in Kochi City and Middle and Eastern Kochi. It has remnants of ancient Western Japanese dialects in its sound and vocabulary, and it has been strongly affected by the Kyoto and Osaka style accents and dialects in the Kinki region. On the other hand, it has a lot of distinct expressions.

  For example, people in Kochi say “-ki,” “-ke” or “-kin” as a conjunctive instead of “-kara” in standard Japanese. Moreover, we apply “-ga?” to the end of questions, and elderly women add “-zo ne” to the end of words.

   Hataben is spoken in the Hata region which includes Shimanto City, Tosashimizu City, Sukumo City, Kuroshio Town, Shimanto Town except former Kubokawa Town, Otsuki Town and Mihara Village. It is called the ‘Shikoku Southwest Dialect’ along with the southern dialect of Ehime Prefecture.

 

Municipalities where Tosaben is spoken
All municipalities besides the ones listed to the below

 

Municipalities where Hataben is spoken
Shimanto City, Tosashimizu City, Sukumo City, Kuroshio Town, former Towa Village, former Taisho Town, Otsuki Town and MiharaVillage

 

*Both dialects are used along the boundary zones of the two dialects.

 

   Fundamentally, Hataben has the same characteristics as Tosaben. It has remnants of ancient times, especially around the Nara Era (710-794). However, people in the Hata region often speak with tumid expressions and in a Tokyo style accent as do people in a part of Southern Ehime. This differs from the accent in Kochi and Shikoku in general. Hataben has many slightly different things from Tosaben such as people in the Hata region saying “-ken” at the end of a sentence instead of “-ki” in Tosaben.

Taken from vol.35 PDF