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: bac

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/ https://www.cs.utep.edu/nigel/bc/ 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)