Reading Dialogue in Japanese Novels: Old Phrases, Gendered Speech and Dialect
Hiroki Obara · Developer
In chapter 4 of Natsume Sōseki’s Botchan, the narrator, a young man from Tokyo who has just started teaching at a middle school in Shikoku, scolds the boarding students for putting grasshoppers in his bed. One of them answers:
「そりゃ、イナゴぞな、もし」
That is, “Those are locusts.” The narrator shoots back:
「篦棒め、イナゴもバッタも同じもんだ。第一先生を捕まえてなもした何だ。菜飯は田楽の時より外に食うもんじゃない」
He calls them fools, says locusts and grasshoppers are the same thing, and then makes a pun of their なもし with 菜飯 (なめし, rice boiled with greens). The student replies 「なもしと菜飯とは違うぞな、もし」. In the same scene, the school servant speaks in polite textbook Japanese: 「拾って参りましょうか」. One page holds local speech, a rough man’s speech and plain polite Japanese.
This is what makes dialogue in Japanese novels hard at first: each character has a voice of their own. Below are three kinds of speech you will meet in Aozora Bunko works, old phrases, men’s and women’s speech, and dialect, with lines from the texts and the notes that the JMdict dictionary data gives for them.
Speech marks the character
There is a term for this: 役割語 (yakuwarigo, “role language”). A Japan Foundation review (in Japanese) of Satoshi Kinsui’s book on the subject describes it as a way of speaking that makes you picture a certain kind of person, by age, gender, job, class, period and so on. Its examples: 「私は知っててよ」 brings to mind a young lady from a good family, and 「拙者が存じておる」 a samurai. The old man’s わし and じゃ in folktales are covered in Phrases in Japanese Folktales.
Novels often leave out who is speaking. The way a line is said tells you.
Dictionaries mark some of these words too. In the JMdict file of November 7, 2026, 130 of its 253,959 senses carry a “feminine” tag, 85 a “male” tag and 597 a dialect tag. What Are JMdict and KANJIDIC2? explains the data.
Old phrases
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Aru hi no Ōishi Kuranosuke (A Day in the Life of Ōishi Kuranosuke) is set among the Akō samurai after their revenge. Kuranosuke, who led the group, speaks to Yoshida Chūzaemon beside him:
「今日は余程暖いようですな。」 「さようでございます。こうして居りましても、どうかすると、あまり暖いので、睡気がさしそうでなりません。」
“It is quite warm today.” “Indeed it is. Sitting like this, it is so warm I nearly doze off.”
さよう means “that’s right” in JMdict. ございます comes from ござる, which JMdict tags as archaic and polite, with the note that modern Japanese usually uses it as ございます. Kuranosuke speaks more casually, with ですな. Who speaks more formally shows who stands where.
Sōseki’s Sanshirō follows a young man from Kumamoto who enters university in Tokyo, and it has phrases you rarely hear now. In chapter 9, Nonomiya tells his sister Yoshiko 「里見さんといっしょに行ったらよかろう」, “You could go with Miss Satomi.” JMdict marks よかろう as dated and calls it the archaic or dialect equivalent of よいだろう.
Professor Hirota, in one of his long talks to Sanshirō, says 「英国を見たまえ。」, “Look at England.” たまえ follows the masu stem of a verb. JMdict glosses it “please …” and tags it male.
Men’s and women’s speech
Near the end of chapter 9 of Sanshirō, Nonomiya and Yoshiko argue. Sanshirō is about to leave, Yoshiko says she will go too, and her brother stops her:
「さっきの話をしなくっちゃ」と兄が注意した。 「よくってよ」と妹が拒絶した。 「よくはないよ」 「よくってよ。知らないわ」
“We have to talk about what I mentioned,” her brother reminded her. “It’s fine,” she refused. “It’s not fine.” “It’s fine. I don’t care.”
JMdict notes that the てよ in よくってよ is used mainly by women. It is the same form as the role-language example 「私は知っててよ」 above. Sentence-final わ also has a feminine tag. わ has a second sense, though, marked Kansai dialect, where it adds emphasis, and that sense carries no feminine tag.
On the men’s side, JMdict tags おれ, the word Botchan’s narrator uses for himself, as male and describes it as informal, rough and blunt. Sentence-final ぞ is tagged male too, adding force to a statement or a command. In Sanshirō, Professor Hirota calls himself ぼく and calls Sanshirō 君.
This is useful when the speaker is not named. When よくってよ and よくはないよ alternate, you know the sister and the brother are taking turns.
Dialect
In chapter 7 of Botchan, the old woman at the narrator’s lodging ends sentence after sentence with ぞなもし:
「しかし先生はもう、お嫁がおありなさるに極っとらい。私はちゃんと、もう、睨らんどるぞなもし」
“But surely you have a wife already. I can tell.”
The narrator calls this 田舎言葉, country speech, and even imitates it: 「それじゃ僕も二十四でお嫁をお貰いるけれ、世話をしておくれんかな」.
In Miyazawa Kenji’s Kaze no Matasaburō, the children of a small school by a mountain stream speak differently from the narration. On the morning of September 1 they find a strange boy sitting in their classroom:
「だれだ、時間にならないに教室へはいってるのは。」一郎は窓へはいのぼって教室の中へ顔をつき出して言いました。 「お天気のいい時教室さはいってるづど先生にうんとしからえるぞ。」窓の下の耕助が言いました。
Ichirō says 教室へはいってる and, in the very next line, Kōsuke says 教室さはいってる. Put side by side, the さ stands where へ stands.
After class that day, broom in hand, Ichirō asks the teacher 「先生、あの人は高田さんのとうさんですか。」 in polite Japanese, then adds 「なんの用で来たべ。」. The teacher answers with the reason the man came: 「上の野原の入り口にモリブデンという鉱石ができるので、それをだんだん掘るようにするためだそうです。」. The answer shows that 来たべ was a question, “What did he come for?” JMdict lists sentence-final べ as Kantō and Tōhoku dialect, used for speculation, volition or invitation.
Dialect words are often missing from dictionaries. Counting JMdict’s dialect tags, Kansai has the most with 294. Tōhoku has 30, and the only Shikoku dialect tagged is Tosa, with 8. There is no entry for なもし or ぞな.
When the dictionary has nothing
One way to work through a line you can’t look up:
1. Take off the sentence ending. In 睨らんどるぞなもし, drop ぞなもし and what is left, 睨らんどる, carries the content.
2. Compare within the same book. As with 教室さ and 教室へ, the narration or a character who speaks standard Japanese often uses the same phrase.
3. Look at the reply. If the teacher answers 来たべ with a reason, it was a question.
4. Check who is speaking. When てよ or たまえ appears, work out whose line it is first. That narrows down the character.
Using these words yourself
JMdict tags ござる as archaic and よかろう as dated. てよ is the review’s example of how a young lady from a good family talks. As the idea of role language puts it, words like these call up a particular kind of person. One view is that they are words to understand when you read, not words to use yourself.
For where to start with Sōseki, see Natsume Sōseki for Japanese Learners. Kenji’s works are covered in Miyazawa Kenji for Japanese Learners, and honorifics in dialogue in Reading Keigo in Japanese Novels.
Reading dialogue in Niho
I make Niho, a free reading app for iPhone and iPad with more than 17,000 Aozora Bunko works and a built-in dictionary. It has no ads and no in-app purchases.
Long-press a word and tap Look up. Along with JMdict’s senses you get its usage notes: よかろう shows “dated”, たまえ “masculine”, sentence-final わ “feminine”, and ござる “polite” and “archaic”. For phrases the dictionary doesn’t have, Jisho and Translate are in the same selection menu.
Dialogue-heavy scenes are easier in Chat view. The chapter arrives one sentence at a time in speech bubbles, and lines in 「」 appear on the right, so you can tell speech from narration at a glance. Words you look up are saved to your word book with the sentence you found them in. Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.
