I'm from Japan. I think I speak typical Japanese living in Kanto region including Tokyo.
One day, I visited Aomori prefecture in Tohoku region, and took a taxi, but I could rarely understand what the driver said. It's like an another language. But I thought he could understand what I meant. Also, I think the people there are able to understand TV programs spoken in typical Japanese.
Does the same thing happen to your coutry as well?
Ariana Zialcita, thank you for your comment.
I see. So do the people who don't speak Tagalog understand it?
Ihatov, thank you for explaining about China!
I understand that there are some indipendent Chinese languages in China, and Mandarin is like Hyojungo in Japan. Could you check "津軽弁(Tsugaru-ben)" if you are interested in it? Here's the link. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmKOW46LaGo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmKOW46LaGo</a> I can't understand at all.
As you say, Wakamonokotoba is sometimes difficult for me, but you can gess what they mean, so they are not that difficult. However, I'm not sure if the words used on the internet can be used at face to face conversation, so I don't use new words on the internet at outside of my house.
Most people from the south part of China are bilingual (sometime even trilingual or quadrilingual), which means they have other mother tongues besides Mandarin, the government designated standard variant of Chinese. Most of these non-mandarin variants are quite different from Mandarin and thus are not intelligible to Mandarin speakers. Yet as Mandarin is the variant that's taught in school, everybody could speak Mandarin to a certain extent. In sociolinguistics, we actually call the variant which enjoy the status of the standard variant "roofing language" or "Dachsprache." (In your case, it's the Hyojungo. In my case it's the Mandarin.)
P.S. The wakamonokotoba, e.g. JK talk, is an even bigger mystery to me. Different from dialects which almost only appear in the context of local culture preservation or promotion, wakamonokotoba is all over the internet. Most time I just can't make heads or tails out of it.
Sam L, thank you for the comment.
In my case, he spoke in his dialect. I personally think elder people there have strong one.
