There are, or rather I should say were, almost 80 different ways to say kane (money) in Japan. This map comes The National Language Research Institute's Linguistic Atlas of Japan. (Ah, to get my hands on this book!) Some of the ways to say money in Japanese include: zeni, ozeni, zene, zenu, zeno, zini, zinii, zinuu, zyeni, zyene, zyeno, syeni, deni, dene, zen, zin, zenzen, dende, dede, oasi, ginka, etc. The word kane (金) was most likely Edo-ben (Tōkyō dialect) originally, but like many words it gained currency (har-har) when that dialect (also known as Yamanote Kotoda, 山の手言葉 ) was first promoted as "standard Japanese" in the middle Meiji Period. During the war, policies to push "standard Japanese" were suspended, leading to a rethinking of local dialects. The Tōkyō dialect was for a time called a "common language" (共通語).