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Yamanote kotoba and Shitamachi kotoba together form the so-called Tōkyō-go (東京語, language or dialect of Tokyo) which, because of its influences from Western Japan, is a linguistic island within the Kantō region.
The Yamanote dialect is characteristic of the old upper class from the Yamanote area. Since Meiji period, Standard Japanese has been based on the Yamanote dialect. The Shitamachi dialect is a working-class dialect, and it preserves features of Edo Chōnin speech, so also called Edo dialect (江戸言葉, 江戸弁, Edo kotoba, Edo-ben).
Normative pitch accent, essentially the pitch accent of the Tokyo Yamanote dialect, is considered essential in jobs such as broadcasting.The current standards for pitch accent are presented in special accent dictionaries for native speakers such as the Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten (新明解日本語アクセント辞典) and the NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten (NHK日本語発音 ...
The dialects (方言, hōgen) of the Japanese language fall into two primary clades, Eastern (including modern capital Tokyo) and Western (including old capital Kyoto), with the dialects of Kyushu and Hachijō Island often distinguished as additional branches, the latter perhaps the most divergent of all. [1]
A Tokyo dialect, specifically that of the upper-class Yamanote area, became the model for Standard Japanese, widely used in schools, publishing, and radio broadcasting. By the early twentieth century, the Ministry of Education and other authorities instituted various policies to reduce or suppress regional differences.
The Kantō dialects (関東方言 kantō hōgen, 関東弁 kantō-ben) are a group of Japanese dialects spoken in the Kantō region (except for the Izu Islands). [ note 1 ] The Kantō dialects include the Tokyo dialect which is the basis of modern standard Japanese.
Here is what I would say: 95% of the people in the Tokyo metropolitan area speak standard Japanese as their native dialect; this is identical to "Yamanote dialect". 5% (or less) of the people in the Tokyo metropolitan area speak the shitamachi dialect; this is mostly older people who grew up in the shitamachi neighborhood, and it is dying out.
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.