Chūgoku

The Chūgoku region is the westernmost region of Honshū. It is characterized by irregular rolling hills and limited plain areas and is divided into two distinct parts by mountains running east and west through its center - the San'in region and the San'yō region.

In the San'yō is the city of Hiroshima, which is regarded as the capital of the Chūgoku region and is an industrial metropolis of more than one million people. The San'in region, by contrast, is less industrialized with an agricultural economy.

The varieties of Japanese spoken in the Chūgoku are divided into two groups: the Chūgoku dialects and the Umpaku dialects. The Umpaku dialects, spoken in part of the San'in region, are unique in the Chūgoku region, superficially resembling the Tōhoku dialects and containing archaic sounds which are non-standard for modern Japanese. The Chūgoku dialects are spoken in the rest of the region, and like the Kansai dialects are sometimes stereotyped as being Yakuza dialects. A notable feature of some of the Chūgoku dialects, such as the Hiroshima dialect, is the use of "ja" instead of "da" as the copula.