<p>This study analyzes the characteristics of how foreigners understand dialects used by patients or users of nursing facilities in medical and nursing situations. Utterances in Yamagata dialect were examined, concentrating particularly on urgent phrases such as those involving pain and excretion. Some big differences between foreigners and Japanese from other districts were found in the level of understanding of Yamagata dialects. Foreigners understood only approximate meanings. And the features that foreigners could not understand were dialect forms which to them bore no resemblance to standard Japanese, onomatopoeia, words not commonly used and dialect words. It was also noted that words concerning parts of the body and words related to excretion, which Japanese understand, could not be understood by foreigners.</p>
Journal of Japanese Language Teaching 161 (0), 42-49, 2015
The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language