Do all Japanese understand regional dialects?

Question:

I was looking at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_di…

and was wondering, can all Japanese understand these dialects? Are they another language, or just slang?

Like how someone from Compton speaks, would probably not understand someone from Georgia.

The real question is, is these "dialect" language or accent/slang? I know native Japanese people such as the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Burakumin, speak their own languages.

Answer:

These dialects are the same language but has different vocabulary, grammar, intonation and accent. They are not slang words.

Generally, Japanese people do not understand all the dialects. In national TV for example, when someone speaks in Hakata-ben or Kagoshima-ben, subtitles are put for people from other regions to understand.

I'm a Japanese, speaking in Hakata-ben. When I speak to friends or people from outside Kyushu, I speak standard Japanese (Hyojungo) or the Tokyo-ben. But naturally, I just speak Hakata-ben here to my friends, family, school, etc.

I do not understand Akita-ben or the Tohoku-ben dialects. Kagoshima-ben is also known to be a very difficult dialect to understand. They have very different words and their verb system is also very different. I understand some words in Kagoshima-ben but when they speak fast, I get lost in their words.

This is not like in the USA, where southern accent is different from New York accent. Japanese dialects have their own system.