It’s not all semi-naked girls and food over here at neilduckett.com, i’ve learnt quite a bit in the last 2 yrs in Japan.
Something i find interesting about living in Japan is there is often a word for everything whereas in English just one word often doesn’t suffice as descriptive of the situation or topic in question. I’ll use a definition from wikipedia to assist with my example.
Aizuchi (相槌 or あいづち) is the Japanese term for frequent interjections during a conversation that indicate the listener is paying attention and understanding the speaker. Aizuchi are considered, by Japanese, reassuring to the speaker, indicating that the listener is active and involved in the discussion.
Aizuchi are frequently misinterpreted by non-native speakers as agreement on the part of the listener, because common aizuchi include:
- “hai”, “ee”, or “un” (yes, with varying degrees of formality)
- “sō desu ne” (that’s how it is, I think) This is also the name i refer to my local sushi bar by, due to Taisho’s habit of over using this phrase.
- “sō desu ka” (is that so?)
- “hontō” or “hontō ni” (truly)
- nodding
Business relations in particular can be hampered by non-native speakers assuming that their Japanese counterparts have been agreeing to their suggestions all along, when in reality the Japanese have only been saying that they understand the suggestions.
Aizuchi can also take the form of so-called echo questions, which consist of a noun plus “desu ka”. After Speaker A asks a question, Speaker B may repeat a key noun followed by “desu ka,” to confirm what Speaker A was talking about or simply to keep communication open while Speaker B thinks of an answer.
It might seem pretty basic but doing business in Japan is VERY VERY different to doing business in Western Society and it’s important to understand the Japanese way of doing things, another example would be Honne and Tatemae.
Do you know of one word in the English that captures the same intent Aizuchi does?
Update: Due to my poorly posed question i’ll expand a bit more. The word Aizuchi has a specific meaning yet it’s only one word, the same meaning in English takes several words to describe, as it does in the definition above.
Another example is “Douki” in Japanese, this means “This person joined the company the same time as i did” …. introducing someone as “Douki” results in very specific detail being known about your relationship with that person in just one word. Trying to say the same in English requires several words as i found out when trying to give a Japanese colleage the English equivalent.
Similar Posts:
- Japanese Tattoo Symbols
- J-Babe Of The Week #16 Maomi Yuuki
- What is the F*CK?
- Erotic Japan
- Teach English In Japan
You might consider subscribing to my RSS feed or starting to follow me on Twitter
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post Neil! I’ll jump in and nominate “I see”, “uh-uh” and “hmmm” as those are the first that come to mind. Will think about this some more though.
Question revised to reflect what i intended …. initially it was rushed when writing due to an impending meeting …. there’s a few lessons to learn from that!
“right”, “sure”… I’ll have to keep the above Aizuchi phrases in mind the next time I’m engaged in a jp conversation. Very good lesson!
There are lots of them, Neil. Take へえ for example; It has at least a few English equivalents like “really,” “oh, yeah?” or with less-questioning intonation becomes “that’s interesting.” Of course, even in English, these phrases can have the same trivial meaning if expressed at the right times with the right intonations.
Overall, what needs to be understood when conducting business in Japanese is that clear intentions are quite often never spelled out until the final phases of the dialogue. And, even then, there may still be some ambiguity.
Good post.
Thanks Bill …. although i missed my point in my question, i’ve edited it now, maybe it will be clearer.
I had a friend who did a PhD thesis in lingusitics on the uses of “Hmm”s etc… in English conversation – there was an academic word she used that I can’t for the life of me remember, but we do have one. She had some fascinating conclusions from the huge amount of data she collected. In English we do tend to use sounds rather than whole words if we are just indicating that we are listening and only use words if we want to give an indication about our opinion of what is being said (even if we want to give a misleading opinion) – hence the confusion when in Japan!
One of the other interesting things that I remember came out of it was that women use such “listening sounds” far more than men do but both sexes prefer it when their listener uses them – as long as they are appropriate and not being used to fake it of course lol!
Haha. I laughed at your first line of the post!
That was an interesting read ^^
“It’s not all semi-naked girls” – tell that to the web proxy at my office. Your site is blocked with the reason “provocative attire”.
Geez, sorry to hear that David, i think that’s a bit rich of them to block it!
See what you mean now, Neil. You’re definitely right in that there are so many single words in Japanese that express what can’t be expressed in English with less than a full sentence.
I think I’ve heard of this being referred to as “backchannel”
I’ll see if I can look it up…
More Japanese. On the phone: “Un…un… “
The first time i read the word “un” was when i got an email back from a girl in response to my question, “let’s go out for a drink when you finish work” … i took “un” as being negative at the time and it was only the next day when i researched it that i found out she meant yes …. i wont make that mistake again!
I remember learning about aizuchi and the first time I tried it out to make the conversationi go a bit more smoothly, and thinking “Holy crap, it works!”
This is what is called “phatic communication” in linguistics.