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Tosa dialect and the work of recording it
土佐弁, the dialect of Kōchi, is one of the best known in Japan, partly through dramas about the nineteenth-century Kōchi native Sakamoto Ryōma. Typical features are the progressive ~ゆう and the completed ~ちゅう (both covering ground that standard Japanese gives to ~ている), the reason marker ~き or ~きに ("because"), and ほう for そう. Within the prefecture, speech still varies by valley and settlement, and the oldest residents of remote areas use words that younger people, and even older people in town centers, may not know. Through the twentieth century, schooling and national broadcasting spread standard Japanese (標準語 or 共通語). Policies and attitudes varied by period and region: some schools discouraged or punished local speech, while others treated it more tolerantly. Today almost everyone is bilingual between standard Japanese and their local variety, and many dialects are losing their last fluent speakers. Municipalities, universities and volunteers record elderly speakers as 聞き書き, oral histories transcribed with a standard-Japanese gloss. The grammar of this lesson is the grammar of reaching further: どころか, ばかりか, のみならず, はもとより, and に限らず.