Aizuchi: Does your listening make Japanese people uncomfortable? (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Aizuchi: Does your listening make Japanese people uncomfortable? (2013)

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116 pointskaraokeyoga93 comments

I'm American and I certainly don't do anything like this in normal conversation, but absolutely do it over the phone.

I never did it in the era of landlines because there was a level of background noise present that you could tell the connection was working and assume the person was listening.

But then in the early 2000's when we switched to cell phones, filtering turned "not talking" into absolute dead silence, no background noise. And that was back when cell connections would drop frequently, and you'd discover you'd been talking for the past 3 minutes to nobody.

So not only would I make a conscious effort to interject "yeah", "right", "uh-huh" about every 30 seconds or so of the other person talking, but if I was talking and didn't hear anything for about 60 seconds I'd just ask if they were still there and explain why I was asking -- and then they'd just instinctually start peppering their listening with the same "yeah", "right", "uh-huh" after I'd ask like 3 times.

It's totally unnecessary now that so many calls happen over Zoom, but I definitely still do it over cell phones.

(American native speaker) I do this interjection thing* all the time in both technical and social conversations. I still find this desirable over Zoom/Teams calls, even with video on, because for me the purpose isn't so much checking that the digital connection is still live as it is checking that communication and understanding are occurring. It annoys me to no end that the latency and anti-feedback mechanisms in the software swallow these little sounds or mess up their timing or make the primary speaker think they're being interrupted. I've reluctantly had to stop this practice at work as a remote worker.

*For what it's worth, the article claims there is no English word for this, but I was taught to call it "backchanneling" in a linguistics course.

didn't they add the background noise back in?

> But then in the early 2000's when we switched to cell phones, filtering turned "not talking" into absolute dead silence, no background noise.

As a matter of interest, the background noise generated on a digital squelched line is called comfort noise, and its addition is quite common for a number of reasons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise

> but absolutely do it over the phone.

As kids we constantly used to make fun of our Mum who'd repeatedly say "Oh I know, I know" while talking on the phone to a friend - even though both are Australian, they'd both spent time in the UK where that's obviously a common enough way of acknowledging the person on the other end of the line that the Fawlty Towers' character Sybil would regularly caricature the over-use of it.

But from what I've observed Japanese people do tend "un" and "a sou" or "sou desu ka" quite a lot even when talking face to face, far more than we would as English speakers, where we might just grunt occasionally to make it clear we're still listening, but probably rely more on facial expressions/eye contact to convey that info.

> The blacksmith, being a wise old sage, starts with the first blow saying: "Like this!" Then, the apprentice follows the master's strike with another, saying: "Oh, like this!" ...

The term does originally come from blacksmithing, but i disagree that it's from a teacher instructing a student. It comes from the fact that they are both alternating in striking the same thing (to make the analogy to a conversation -- you're both "striking" the same topic). From Wikipedia:

> 語源は鍛冶で主導的な鍛冶職と金敷をはさんで向かい側に位置し、ハンマー (槌) を振るう助手 (向かい槌とも) を指す言葉から。

And a language blog[1]:

> そこで、師匠が槌（ハンマー）で鉄を打ったあとに、弟子がすぐさま槌（ハンマー）で鉄を打つ様子から、「相槌を打つ」という言葉が生まれました。

In both cases, they are referring to a master and student but they make no mention that it's explicitly being done to teach the student.

This explains why the alternating roles in pounding mochi (which is a similar, though much louder[2], collaborative process) is also sometimes likened to 相槌 (tbh I was under the impression it was also called 相槌 but I can only find examples of it being used as an analogy, while the blacksmithing story is the commonly-cited etymology).

Also the (linguistic) term for this in English is "back-channeling". To be fair, 相槌 is referred to in conversation more frequently than "back-channeling" is in English but there is a word for it.

[1]: https://fof48.com/aizuti-wo-utu/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGeUE9KK-es

The Turkish show Diriliş: Ertuğrul had a number of back-and-forth smithing scenes that remind me of this. [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqeF8nSiewA

I'm Japanese-American and I behave like this in conversation, just with a lot of mms and ahhs and the occasional, "oh really?" instead of そう、うん、ね？本当？、 etc. My sister does not, really, and I'm not sure why. We were not raised speaking Japanese, though perhaps I picked the habit from my father who also tends to use these nonverbal grunts to communicate. My mother who was hafu did not use them.

Not everyone uses it, but I'm pretty certain I've encountered it from others in the US with similar speech behaviors that aren't Japanese. Or perhaps I just never noticed how rare it is.

I have an interesting one to go with yours:

I've been married to a native Japanese speaker for almost 20 years and this style of speaking translated over to my English. I've found it quite useful. My wife, however, does NOT use this style in English, only in Japanese. My daughter is like my wife; uses it in Japanese but not in English.

Both languages are spoken in our house, and media is probably more Japanese than English, as points regarding exposure.

I wonder if it's a matter of English education? I don't think my grandmother on my father's side was formally taught and my father started learning English only after he emigrated to the US as a young boy.

Your wife perhaps learned not to and subsequently your daughter emulates her mother's speech behaviors? I'm not sure if daughters tend to emulate their mother's speech and sons emulate their father's, though, or if it's simply coincidence.

I’m honestly not sure, though the education angle sounds plausible.

It’s common in Hispanic communities. We actually tend to go further into what’s called “cooperative overlapping”, which I had to spend the first few years of my career learning to avoid.

Hispanic here (though not hispanic-american). What do you mean by "cooperative overlapping"?

I don't know if it's universal across the Americas, but up here it's common for us to take over the ends of each other's sentences to respond. So instead of saying like:

"The story is just so ridiculous." "Yes, I know! It reminds me of..."

my family conversations sound more like:

"The story is just[]" "Ridiculous, I know, it reminds me of..."

(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop... is where I learned the name for this.)

There was a paper I read in a sociolinguistics class back in college, which observed (for English speakers) that women typically would use “uh-huh” etc to indicate that they were listening and men were using it only to indicate agreement with the speaker. The paper claimed that it led the women to think that the men weren’t listening and the men to think that women were agreeing with them when they were just indicating that they were listening.

This explains a lot of the dynamic between my wife and I. It follows this exactly. I often listen in silence until a response is needed, she expects more uh-huh's but in my world that signals agreement, not I heard you.

I spent some time in Sweden. Old folk in the region I was in would do this quick inhale of breath instead of an "uh huh" kinda "I'm listening".

The thing is... it was like a tiny, frightened gasp. The first dude that did it made me worry he was having a heart attack!

Was this maybe in the north of Sweden. The inhale of breath between nearly closed lips is the way there. But we also have quite a lot of what is described in TFA, but with different non-word sounds all over Sweden. But the indrawn breath is more north Sweden.

How does this work in a large meeting?

Does everyone at the table really start verbalizing when someone starts presenting, speaking, etc.?

> For example, sometimes you'll be saying something in English to a Japanese person. They have no idea what you're saying, but because they're such good listeners, they're saying "yes, yes, yes" to everything you say (because that's the translation of hai, right?). At some point, you ask them an important question: "Do you want to join my Starcraft2 team?" They say "yes" not because they want to join your team (they really don't) but because they have no clue what you're saying (and they're good listeners).

That explains a lot honestly

Yes!

That makes you a terrible listener though. Fake listening is worse than just straight up ignoring someone.

Did you read the article? In Japanese culture, those sorts of exclamations are an integral part of good listening. Its probably pretty hard to just switch that off when you're put in a context with a language barrier

Well, they aren't wrong. Nonconfrontation + mimed politeness are better descriptions than "good listening" when you bluff your way in a convo you don't understand.

Reminds me of the "Place, Japan" meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/place-japan). The first panel can have an American not understanding a foreign language next to a disgusted soyjack, and the second panel has a Japanese guy smiling while he doesn't understand a word next to a "clap clap" retard soyjack screaming "amazing listener!"

You and antihero are talking about two different kinds of "good listening," though.

"Being a good listener" has both a practical and a social component. You are referring to the social component ("in Japanese culture..."). The tenets of social interactions in Japanese culture which have been ingrained in speakers of the language to one extent or another. The performance aspect of the act of listening.

antihero is talking about the practical form of "good listening" when they say "that makes you a terrible listener though." That is, what is the function of "listening" in a social interaction? I would hazard a guess that they believe the function of listening is to understand what another person is saying.

And by that benchmark, an individual who is not actually reaching any sort of understanding is a "bad listener" irrespective of how successful they are at performing the cultural/social component of the act of listening.

There's the additional implication that because signaling you are understanding when you are not leads to misunderstanding (which is the antithesis of the intended function of listening), it makes the listener an even worse quality listener than if they were not performing.

I agree, they are using two different definitions of "good listening". I'd say the "fit in with the social interaction" one is usually the most relevant. This reminds me of Wittgenstein's "language games"[1]. Maybe I'm butchering Wittgenstein's thought, but my understanding is that language works in a social situation as a game, as an activity where things "work ok" or don't work ok. It's not about me communicating my inner mental state and you making sure you're understanding my inner mental state (Wittgenstein's argument is that this is not generally possible, but also maybe it's not even what we usually care about)

Of course, when you're in a specific setting (such as doing science or a police investigation) the other definition can be more relevant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)#:~:....

Reminds me of the horror of living in a foreign country, bluffing that you're understanding a convo, and then getting asked a question that you didn't even know was a question and you certainly don't know the context.

This is why it’s important to develop the skill of being able to communicate your completely understandable weakness.

Japanese is a turn-based strategy game rather than an RTS.

I'm joking a little. But interrupting someone is almost unspeakably rude in Japanese, whereas 'Yes! Yes...yes. Yes! I'm terribly sorry, I couldn't understand any of that. Bye!' would be common in Japanese but infuriating to many Americans.

I'm reminded of the balloon boy case years ago. The mother was Japanese and they didn't get her a proper translator even though she had a very basic level of English. She kept saying yes to the detective during the interview and he took that to mean confirmation not "I'm following along with what you're saying". Caused a lot of problems.

Is "hai" closer to something like "ok" or "a'right" than "yes"?

Yes, except it's more formal. Based on tone, it can mean "what?" or "yes" or indicate hesitation, etc. If you say it really sharply, it can mean agreement, but "ええ" (the sound the Fonz makes) is probably more equivalent to English's "yes."

Like so much in Japanese, it depends how you say it. It could be a simple acknowledgement as you describe, or it could be very emphatic to say 'you are important and I'm paying full attention' (to a teacher, parent, or official), or it could just be a 'yes' - but usually answering a question would be 'yes, that's what happened' or something similarly specific.

'Naruhudo' (usually translated as 'I see' is a common way to politely acknowledge hearing information while reserving agreement.

Correction: naruhodo instead of naruhudo. Beware that it's not exactly polite, it has a condescending tone, so it's better to avoid using it with superiors.

> The fact that there isn't even a proper translation of the word in English, though, just proves that native English speakers aren't as aware of it as Japanese speakers

The article seems to make a pretty big point about this being a foreign concept that is difficult to articulate, but in English linguistics we call it "backchanneling". Obviously it won't be a perfect one-to-one translation but it's the same as what is described in the opening.

Honestly as an American living in Japan, it’s nothing like anything I’ve experienced in the USA. My wife will say “Hai” about as many times as her conversation partner stops for a breath, which felt very unnatural to me in English (she’ll replace it with mhm’s in English and it still feels quite aggressively frequent). Maybe the same idea but the execution is a different level.

I've met a few people in the US who will nod and make some sort of acknowledging sound after every sentence (or more often) you say, so while rare, it's not exactly something I've never come across.

A lot of hai’s is what one end of a polite Japanese conversations sounds like. In my experience Japanese friends speaking casually say it much less, unless one of them happens to be on some extended monologue. From this perspective one reason English speakers use acknowledgement much less is that conversations coded as formal or polite are much rarer.(think how you respond to a desired job offer, chances are you would be very active in frequently expressing positive assent).

It also appears to be similar to Jakobson phatic function (checking if the channel is working).

This reminds me a bit of the Japanese "pointing and calling."

With the standard disclaimer that I am sometimes a bit whimsically cruel ... I'm not particularly fond of extraverts and their habit of monopolizing the conversation, breaking in, preemptive interruptions when they pick up that you're about to say something, so I invented a game where I see how long I can keep them talking without them noticing I am not saying anything. No verbal interjections on my part are allowed (no aizuchi), only facial expressions, posture, and hand gestures.

It's surprising how often one apparently gets away with it. I've heard, to my amazement (and amusement) that I'm a "good conversationalist."

This seems very similar to/related to conversational style differences between some cultural groups in the USA, where some groups have constant interjections from the listener side during conversation, other sub cultures here will call it "interrupting" and "being disrespectful". I've known it to cause interpersonal conflict between friends from different ethnic groups/social classes/geographical regions.

Interviews with Linguist Deborah Tannen on this topic:

https://www.waywordradio.org/tag/conversational-style/

https://whyy.org/episodes/interrupting-and-the-art-of-conver...

I’m surprised neither of the links have transcripts. PBS usually does.

I wish I could find the article I've read about this topic -- one example I remember was the "No way!", "Unbelievable!" or "Get outta here!"-kind of interjections which throw unacquainted people off, as they think the listener expresses actual disbelief. (They occasionally do, but people from the region that was brought up use it more liberally.)

This is interesting. I've just started having video meetings with a colleague (not Japanese) who aggressively interjects these words when I'm speaking, to the point that I find it distracting. I'm simply not accustomed to having someone say "mmm hmm" several times during a single sentence, and I find I start to lose my train of thought.

We're opposites. I completely lose track of my thoughts and my mind starts to wonder if I don't interject or use small affirmations throughout a conversation. Half the time I interrupt people is because I literally won't remember 30 seconds later what my thought was because there will be a avalanche of other thoughts during that time. I feel like a conversation that is not collaborative is not a conversation.

Unless you're telling a long story in which I generally will try not to interrupt, but one has their limit to being spoken at.

As an aspiring sidewalk linguistic I am very stimulating by this post and its comments. For a brief but significant period of my youth I was taught that the “mm-hmms” and “uhh-huh” that characterize the English version of “aizuchi” (a commenter has said that this is called backchanneling in English) was uncouth. That’s stuck with me.

What’s striking me the most as I age is that “uhh-huh” and “mm-hmm” often serve as indicators to the speaker to continue with what they’re saying. This is important to me because what I’ve found is that, American English speakers have a habit of putting a tone on many of their speech patterns that could easily be taken in the form of a question (where the last word of the sentence has a slight pitch increase) or is a rhetorical question in and of itself (“Y’know?”).

I understand how alternative interjections can communicate engagement with the speaker (“Wow”, “Really?”, etc) but have also observed instances where these interjections in general can suggest a sort of condescension against the speaker from the listener.

Language is bonkers. I have a hunch that we are in a very chaotic age of communication dynamics.

Reminds me of impact of culture on aviation safety:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_saf...

I have a Japanese friend, and we have relatively philosophical conversations, talking about ideas. Often when I make a point he acknowledges it with "thank you" which always intrigued me. I always wondered whether this was a literal translation of an aizuchi.

Can anyone here shed some light?

If I'm understanding your explanation right he says this at the conclusion of a point. If so this is more in line with my experiences in discussions in Japan, acknowledging that you've made a point and thanking you for sharing it with them without necessarily accepting it.

Weirdly the best example that comes to mind was when I was buying a car and discussing the price against my needs and why I wouldn't want to pay what they were asking. The salesman would acknowledge the points I made with a "Thank you" and then proceed to argue against them.

Yes, I think it's the same thing. It happens several times in a conversation. What intrigued me was how the translation intensifies the gratitude when read in the British context.

Same way that when an American acknowledges my thanks with a "sure" it seems, from my perspective, to be downplayed.

The closest parallel I've found for this in English is the phrase "active listening" which includes this kind of interjection to reassure the speaker that they are heard.

Honestly all the interjections make me feel like they're being overeager and fake (which was mentioned in the article), and that makes me uncomfortable.

Years back I phoned a retired tech who was one of the last few people left who knew how a piece of machinery worked. He had a deep booming voice (A somewhat higher pitched Sam Elliott) and throughout the conversation continually boomed "yeah" in reply to almost everything I said. This mans name was not Japanese but that conversation stuck in my head. I will say this, he was a good listener and immediatly knew the answer to most of my questions.

Half of this conversation was on speaker phone and was overheard by a few coworkers who got a kick out the stream of yeah's booming in reply. For the next few weeks my coworkers and I would repeat this during conversations where we would comically interject a deep "yeah" in an attempt to frustrate the person speaking. So I can see how it can be annoying to someone not familiar with the practice and the lack thereof frustrating to someone expecting attention.

I have a couple of work relationships with people who don’t provide any verbal or physical cues that they’re listening and following what I’m saying.

It makes having conversations with those folks incredibly difficult.

It probably doesn’t help that we are having these conversations via Zoom, but I interact with other people via Zoom, and I don’t have this problem.

Hate to admit I get this sometimes, check if your mic is muted.

This is called backchanneling in English.

There's more interesting discussion here[1] and here [2] about it.

    One clear difference is in the frequency: backchannels are very common in Japanese, fairly common in English, Dutch, Arabic, and Korean, probably somewhat less common in German, and significantly less common in Chinese and Finnish

1: https://www.cs.utep.edu/nigel/bc/

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)

Being German and having lived for close to a decade in the US now, I feel like in German it's also more common to do these interjections.

One more jarring difference though is when giving numbers over the phone (e.g. your account number). In German, it's common to say digits in groups of, say, two to four, and then the listening party repeats those digits, to make sure there was no mistake so far.

In the US, the other person on the phone just... sits there. Not saying anything, not even an acknowledging interjection, until you gave them the whole number. And of course sometimes it arrived wrong and you have to dissect it...

Oh boy, this hits home. Repeating it back, or at least acknowledging that you wrote/them down would be so helpful. It seems so obvious to me, but rarely notice it in the US. I sometimes wonder why this and using phonetic alphabet aren’t part of standard cs training.

So it explains how that man's interjections weren't purely for meme value :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buxQHS6cZuI

How does this work in a primary school setting? Do students respond with aizuchi as teachers explain? Are they expected to (as in the teacher will call out students not engaging in it)?

I think I've experienced this. I used to nod, acknowledge, repeat what people were saying, etc. People found I was 'talking over them' or 'interrupting them'. So I started simply sitting and listening. Nothing from me out of my mouth. Then people were upset because I wasn't paying attention anymore.

Sometimes the mixed cultures of Canada can be confusing.

Forget about the nitty gritty of how it works, I didn't even know this was a thing until today. Lovely article :-)

A related thread about different conversation styles posted yesterday: "Wait vs Interrupt Culture" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33266372

Does the latency of video conferencing feel more annoying to Japanese speakers? I know that in English, it’s most noticeable when waiting for potential replies or when trying to interject. It seems like it could really mess with aizuchi timing.

My Japanese PM from three years ago had a case of extreme aizuchi. He would say hai every three to four of my words, made me think -is he really listening to what I’m saying?

I really enjoyed the way this article was written. I took a couple semesters of Japanese and this is the first I've heard of "aizuchi".

This article connected several dots for me :)

I love that analogy that the term Aizuchi is built on. "Alternating strikes of the hammer between the blacksmith and their apprentice"

I de-gendered it.

Interesting. But notice how they aren't interrupting the other speaker with their own point. Because that is nearly universally poor manners.

Yes, aizuchi does sound a bit like the deeply concerning goop you left in a Kleenex last time you got a severe case of Bronchitis (hopefully that doesn't happen often),

How did we jump from something as intense as blacksmithing to having a conversation, quite possibly over afternoon tea?

Is there a Japanese word for completely pointless sentence embellishments that do nothing but slow the article to an agonizing drag?

Ironically, that’s how most email correspondence worked when I lived in Japan. Nearly every message had a paragraph of fluff before getting to the unpleasant details:

Dear Customer,

It seems that the leaves are once again turning to their Fall colors, and the chill of an autumn breeze is once again upon us…

Also we haven’t received your television license fee yet and it would be most appreciated if you could please send us it immediately.

Warmest regards,

-X

That is a notably pleasant way to be taxed, though. I would appreciate the IRS more if their communications were like that.

Personally I'd rather someone tell me directly what I did wrong and what they want than coat it in fluff, which I consider offensively passive-aggressive. I know that is cultural though, and that in some cultures, e.g Japanese, it may be taken very offensively to just come out and say what you want

That "some cultures" tends to be known as "high context cultures".

https://sites.psu.edu/global/2020/04/18/japan-high-context-c...

> Just like Saudi Arabia and Spain, Japan is also characterized by high-context communication (R. T. Moran; N. R. Abramson; S. V. Moran, 2014, p. 44). Some of Japan’s traditions, values and norms have supported its high context communication. According to Hofstede’s culture dimension, Japan scores 46 on individualism, indicating that they are more likely to show characteristics of a collectivistic society; such as putting harmony of the group above the expression of individual opinions and people have a strong sense of shame for losing face (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). With this, the Japanese have established an in-direct and non-verbal communication within their inner circle rather than the outside circle of the world. Thus, in Japan, communication goes non-verbally, through subtle gestures, facial expression and voice tones. However, this can be a big challenge for foreigners and westerners that do not understand the Japanese language and communication.

https://kosoadojapan.com/high-context-culture-japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...

You even get some difference in the cultural context between men and women, and urban and rural, and north and south within the United States

For an example of a low context culture... Switzerland https://www.worldbusinessculture.com/country-profiles/switze...

> On the whole, the Swiss believe in plain speaking and place directness before diplomacy. It is expected and respected that people will speak their minds, without feeling the need to couch any uncomfortable messages in a softer way in order to spare the feelings of the audience. The type of coded language used by the Japanese or the British can be misconstrued in Switzerland as prevarication or even deviousness. Better to say what you mean and mean what you say.

> As has already been stated, however, this directness of approach should not be confused with confrontation or aggression – it is more the result of a desire to get to the truth or the empirically provable right answer.

There's a nice bit in Forster's A Passage to India in which one of the Indian characters reflects on how ill-mannered another character is for taking a polite excuse (which also happens to be a lie) as a problem to solve and not as the firm "no" that any properly-raised person would understand it to be.

100% this. The IRS doesn't provide enough information in their communications, which are already painfully verbose.

I remember getting some tax notification, and attached was some 2 page doc indicating "we've spent a lot of time working on making our documents more understandable, let us know how we're doing"... and... the notice they'd sent me was... more confusing than it needed to be. My accountant didn't quite understand it. I mean, he knew what it was, but hadn't seen the new language, and to top it off, it was months late - indicating I owed money that I'd paid months earlier.

We replied the following Monday, because the notice said we had to reply.

THEN.. 3 months later I got another notice indicating they'd received the first reply, and they needed a bit more time to process.

This was over about $200.

I would love to see them resourced appropriately, but the "let's hire more IRS employees" has been viscously attacked as "87000 more people with guns coming to take all your money!". I've been hearing that propaganda for weeks (months?) now.

> I would love to see them resourced appropriately, but the "let's hire more IRS employees" has been viscously attacked as "87000 more people with guns coming to take all your money!". I've been hearing that propaganda for weeks (months?) now.

Yeah, they've got way fewer people per taxpayer than in the 90s, and I don't think the new hires, the hiring of which will be spread unevenly over a decade, will even bring them back up to that level. Meanwhile the "armed" thing is just transparent bullshit—"here was ONE job posting for the police branch of the IRS (tons of federal agencies have such a branch of armed agents, including many you wouldn't expect), so all these new hires will surely be armed IRS cops coming to bust your door down and take your money!" LOL WUT. But A Certain Set of Terrible News Sources ran with that (knowing it was a lie) so to some chunk of the population, it's true now.

Tldr below.

You are both perfectly fine in wanting it both ways. In communicating with people to be effective it’s best to align with their communication style. Some folks want the long explanation, some folks want the tldr. I always try to accommodate both in my work communications.

Tldr: Different people liked to be spoken to differently and that’s fine and useful to accommodate.

Yeah, they're set phrases that go on letters. I have a book of them, you have to look up the right one for the situation / time of year and add it to your letter. It would be a faux pas not to.

As an American, yeah, just charge my credit card for the fee. Thanks.

> The fact that there isn't even a proper translation of the word in English, though, just proves that native English speakers aren't as aware of it as Japanese speakers.

But then, a few paragraphs down, the author uses the term "active listening." Ho hum

There never seems to be a direct translation into English of compound words, only phrases :/

Isn't "active listening" an open compound word?

Would any German speaker be kind enough to tell us what the word for that phenomenon would be? I may or may not write an essay-length article about the unbridgeable differences between the exotic Germanic culture and the Anglo-Saxon worldview based on that untranslatable bit of language.

The techincal term in German is "Rezeptionspartikel", a special kind of "Gesprächspartikel". Wikipedia describes them as follows:

"Sie werden parallel zur Äußerung eines anderen Sprechers oder direkt im Anschluss daran hervorgebracht. Sie stellen dabei das Rederecht des Sprechenden nicht infrage. Beispiele sind hm, hmhm, mhm, ja ..." ("They are uttered parallel to or directly following the statement of another speaker. They do not question the speaker's right to speak. Examples are hm, hmhm, mhm, ja ...")

Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partikel_(Grammatik)#Gespr%C3%... (in German)

"Back-channeling" is the English linguistic term for the concept, but 相槌 is actually referred to in normal conversations in Japanese, while most people (the author included it seems) don't know or use it in conversation.

Yeah I tried to ignore that, and I know it's not constructive to complain about it here, but I couldn't finish the article because of its writing style. Is there an audience this is appealing to?

I couldn't finish the article either. I guess the author was trying hard to be funny.

Perhaps "冗長" (jouchou) which translates to prolix, tedious, wordy, etc.

I know that you are just being sarcastic to make your point, but taking it at face value, it's pretty rare for languages to have words with such hyper-specificity.

Is there an English word for completely pointless cynicism towards other people's writing styles that adds nothing to the conversation?

> Is there an English word for completely pointless cynicism towards other people's writing styles that adds nothing to the conversation?

My bet is "lowbrow dismissal" (Is there a word for knowingly answering rhetorical questions?)

Summary in greentext style:

> Article about differences between 2 cultures.

> Describes foreign word as sounding like it could be describing a bodily fluid.

Well done Sarah W!

I'm not sure, is there one for killjoy?

Seriously though, I see this exact complaint so often on this site. If people like you are so bothered by superfluous (or enjoyable and engaging, depending on your perspective) prose why not just look up the dictionary definition or Wikipedia article of the topic instead?

Japan: learn our language and on top adopt our mannerisms to keep us comfortable US: What WE learn your language? YOU learn ours but don't actually speak it cuz that's cultural appropriation.

English is de facto required in Middle and High School in Japan, and many parents pay for extra tutoring. Many of the best corporate positions require you have a minimum fluency.

In other words: I have no idea where you got that idea.

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