Kyoto has its own regional dialect, Kyō-kotoba (京言葉), distinct from both standard Japanese and the Osaka dialect it's often lumped in with as part of broader Kansai-ben. As the former imperial capital, Kyoto's speech historically carried its own register of formality and indirectness, shaped by centuries as the seat of the court.
Softer, more indirect
Kyō-kotoba is often described, even by other Japanese speakers, as more roundabout and softer in tone than standard Tokyo Japanese — a linguistic habit sometimes linked to the historic culture of the merchant class and court alike favouring indirect phrasing over blunt statements, especially when declining something. A flat "no" is rarer; a vague, polite deflection that means the same thing is more typical.
A few recognisable features
Visitors with even basic Japanese might notice softer sentence endings and particles that differ from what's taught in standard textbook Japanese, along with vocabulary specific to the region. You're not expected to speak it — nearly everyone in Kyoto also speaks and understands standard Japanese fluently — but recognising that what you're hearing on the street or from an older shopkeeper isn't "textbook Japanese gone wrong" is worth knowing.
Where you're most likely to hear it
Older residents, small family-run shops and restaurants, and formal hospitality settings (including ryokan staff and, notably, geiko and maiko, whose speech patterns are closely associated with a particularly refined register of Kyō-kotoba) are where the dialect is most alive today. Younger Kyoto residents, like young people across Japan, lean more toward standard Japanese in everyday speech.