4 ms·
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 s
by least 4y ago
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.
- CobaltFire 4y agoI 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.
- least 4y agoI 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.
- CobaltFire 4y agoI’m honestly not sure, though the education angle sounds plausible.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIt’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.
- hasdha 4y agoHispanic here (though not hispanic-american). What do you mean by "cooperative overlapping"?
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoI 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-cooperative-overlapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop... is where I learned the name for this.)
- dunham 4y agoThere 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.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThis 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.
- inanutshellus 4y agoI 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!
- bjelkeman-again 4y agoWas 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.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoHow does this work in a large meeting? Does everyone at the table really start verbalizing when someone starts presenting, speaking, etc.?