佐々木：この頃、方言の良さが見直されてきましたね。
ロックウツド：そのせいでしょうか、私の子供の学校の先生も、方言で教えるらしいんですよ。
Minaosu
Mrs.Sasaki: Kono goro hoogen no yosa ga minaosarete kimashita ne.
Rokkuddo: Sono sei deshoo ka, watashi no kodomo no gakkoo no sensei mo hoogen de oshieru rashiin desuyo.
Mrs. Sasaki: It seems people are rediscovering the value of dialects these days.
Lockwood: So that's what's happening? You know my son's teacher even conducts classes in his dialect...
There are two basic meanings for the word minaosu: toan wo minaosu (have another look at the examination papers) and musuko wo minaosu (discover new merits in one's son). This week's conversation is an example of the second usage.
Today, no matter where one goes in Japan, one is bound to hear someone speaking or at least able to understand hy6jungo (standard Japanese). It's not even an exaggeration to say that all Japanese children understand standard Japanese, even those who continue to use a dialect when talking with their parents.
It's said that at the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) when Japan was finally centralized and people were able to freely travel throughout the country, one of the biggest problems was language-people just weren't able to understand each other. And so began the movement to establish a "standard" language. Without television or radio to help expose people to the so-called "standard," elementary school teachers were left to do the job.
Times have changed however and today there is a movement encouraging people to keep their dialects. "They represent the cultural history of a particular area." The sense that people should think better of what was good in the past (mukashi no yoi mono wo minaosu) has finally reached the level of people's thinking about language. Indeed people today have a kind of nostalgic Jonging, a desire to "have another look at" (mo ichido minaoshite mitai), all the things thrown out in the rush to modernize at the end of the last century. How can we explain this trend? That Japanese have begun to take pride in their own culture is probably one of the main reasons. And this is, of course, a result of the pride Japanese have in having achieved so much economically (notwithstanding the fact that the success doesn't seem to have had an impact on the ordinary person's standard of living...).
Minaosareta mono wa hoogen bakari de wa nai (It's not just dialects which have been given renewed attention). Kimonos, for instance, are returning to more traditional designs after a period in which Western motifs were quite popular. Many designers have begun to feel that "furuku kara Nihon ni atta mono wo minaosu hitsuyoo ga aru" ("there is a need to reconsider those designs which have been passed down in Japan for centuries"). Last year's retro (the Japanese abbreviation for "retrospective" ) boom has continued into this year. At first it seemed odd to find old, out-dated things mixed in with modern things. But not any more.