Even with a familiarity of the vocabulary and grammar of Kansai, it may be hard to understand conversations between speakers of the dialect. To help build towards this goal, we have created twelve conversations based on real conversations--each conversation includes an audio track in Kansai-ben and the text in Kansai-ben, standard Japanese (in translation), and English (in translation). In addition, the grammar and vocabulary from the conversations are explained in detail from the linked pages on individual lines. Use the buttons to toggle between all of these.

The topics of these conversations were chosen to be situations that you could realistically encounter when starting to live or work in Kansai. Since dialect usage is not as common in formal settings like company meetings, most conversations are set in more casual environments. Since the exact dialect spoken can depend on things like the speaker's age, gender, and relationship to each other, the characters in these conversations come from a variety of backgrounds. When you listen to and read the conversations, please note these differences. Below is the current list of example conversations.

After you have gone over some of the features of Kansai-ben from the example conversations, you will be ready to tackle actual Kansai-ben conversations spoken by natives in context. These can be found in the real conversations section.