Comment by wahnfrieden

3 days ago

Kagoshima where there is no pitch accent is like a different language entirely though, and nearly unintelligible

Native Kyushu conversations are literally unintelligible to me as a Japanese speaker. There are actually numerous Japanese dialects and accents that aren't so mutually intelligible, though of course post-TV generations understand TV Japanese.

That's kind of a secret to how CJK languages are each supposedly being a unique linguistic isolates: the rest of the families are hiding in the "dialects".