Tokyo
Dialects

Japanese is the primary language spoken throughout the metropolis, though regional and socio-economic differences can be heard. Traditionally, dialects in Tokyo are classified into two groups: the Yamanote dialect and the Shitamachi dialect. The former has traditionally been spoken in the upper- and upper-middle-class residential area of Yamanote, which includes Bancho, Kojimachi, Koishikawa, Kudan, Yotsuya, Azabu, and Akasaka. During the Edo period, these neighborhoods were occupied by Daimyo and other powerful samurai families, and the dialect evolved largely based on their way of speech. Standard Japanese pronunciation is largely based on this accent and spread across the country with the introduction of radio. The Shitamachi dialect, in contrast, has been associated with the Chōnin district of Shitamachi and retains many characteristics of the accents spoken there in the Edo era. However, socio-economic changes in the post-war period and the large influx of people moving from other areas have largely blurred these distinctions in recent years. It has been reported that young generations are not as aware of the differences in dialects as their parents' and grandparents' generations were.

The Hachijō dialect, spoken primarily in Hachijōjima and Aogashima, descended from 6th-8th century Eastern Old Japanese and has fewer than 1,000 speakers. Bonin English is a creole spoken in the Ogasawara Islands, derived from English and Japanese, as the islands’ population historically consisted of people of Japanese, British, American, Hawaiian, and Polynesian origins, mostly mixed-race.
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