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.
> 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.
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:
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
> 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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
[+] [-] crazygringo|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cvoss|3 years ago|reply
*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.
[+] [-] g_p|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] wizofaus|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smegsicle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyphar|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] foobarian|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqeF8nSiewA
[+] [-] least|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dunham|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inanutshellus|3 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|3 years ago|reply
Does everyone at the table really start verbalizing when someone starts presenting, speaking, etc.?
[+] [-] jobs_throwaway|3 years ago|reply
That explains a lot honestly
[+] [-] exq|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antihero|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bee_rider|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ant6n|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] navhc|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] presentation|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etage3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at_a_remove|3 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] Vrondi|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] rzzzt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zedpm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yamazakiwi|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] the-printer|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] O__________O|3 years ago|reply
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_saf...
[+] [-] afandian|3 years ago|reply
Can anyone here shed some light?
[+] [-] CobaltFire|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cephei|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JCharante|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterTea|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whoisjuan|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] aliqot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spicyusername|3 years ago|reply
There's more interesting discussion here[1] and here [2] about it.
1: https://www.cs.utep.edu/nigel/bc/2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)
[+] [-] anyfoo|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] YeBanKo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RicoElectrico|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buxQHS6cZuI
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incomingpain|3 years ago|reply
Sometimes the mixed cultures of Canada can be confusing.