This didn’t really pop into my head until recently so but why does the language have to use 3-4 paragraphs to say one thing that can be expressed succinctly in 1-2 sentences in plain English?
Every email, notice or announcement, you’re forced to parse a very long-winded passage looking for the keywords trying to overlook all the fluff and read into the euphemisms / ambiguous word usage. Is this just a part of their written language culture? Sorry for my ignorance.
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Culture. Keigo sucks be is good to know if you want to work in Japan.
This is both a linguistic and a cultural matter. Language and culture go hand in hand. That is why no one can fully expect to understand another language until one comes to understand the important role of culture as well.
There are clear patterns of communication for each language based on cultural norms. Even in the same language, there can be cultural differences. Here are some examples.
Take the way an essay is written. In American English, the pattern is to state one’s hypothesis in the first paragraph, then support it with one’s arguments for and against, with supporting comments, and so on. In the closing paragraph, one restates one’s hypothesis as a conclusion. In British English, the hypothesis is less directly stated. It is stated clearly in the conclusion, but the opening paragraph is more of an invitation to consider some points about a topic, and in the end, draw one’s conclusion. The American approach is very direct and sometimes feels abrupt to people from cultures where the pattern is not so direct.
In French, which is my native language, the pattern is quite different. We enjoy the story telling, so the narrative is important, even if it goes off track a bit. The explanation can become quite long. The importance is not in proving the point, as much as it is in telling the story. Of course, the more academic papers are more direct, but still… This pattern is fairly common in the Romance languages as a whole — Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, et al.
East Asian languages and cultures, especially Chinese, Korean and Japanese, are much more indirect. The cultures are more hierarchical than egalitarian. The honorific forms, Keigo, all are part of this cultural world view. The pattern of communication is more like a series of concentric circles, or a spiral, circling around the main point, hinting at it, a bit like a plane circling the airport getting closer and closer, until it lands and makes the point. That is why the text is longer, and full of what seems like ‘fluff’ to you.
Japanese is not a direct language, a direct to the point language. In Japanese, the nuances matter, the subtleties, the shades, the passing of time, the deeper things come to us like a slow cooked meal, cooked on low heat over much more time.
American culture is so fast paced. The slower paced journey requires much patience, endurance, and offers time to linger for a while as one ponders the meanings and the aesthetics of it all. Enjoy the journey!
As a quick aside on this matter, I am a native speaker of French, but I grew up in a French-Canadian family in California’s Central Valley. My best friend as a kid was Miguelito, who spoke Spanish. I learned a lot of Spanish from him and his family. I did not learn English until starting school. Part of that was encountering the cultural aspects of learning other languages. English was hardest because I did not understand why everything was so abrupt. In time I learned to think of it as efficient rather than too direct! I still prefer the story telling more, but I have come to appreciate the value of efficiency as well.
>This didn’t really pop into my head until recently so but why does the language have to use 3-4 paragraphs to say one thing that can be expressed succinctly in 1-2 sentences in plain English?
It does not.
Training materials for international organizations (full length instructional books) use the exact same layout, pagination, and paragraphs, chapter headings, etc.
To make a weird analogy, why do modern YouTube videos now have 5 minutes of fluff in them with words from sponsors, suggestions to like and subscribe, and links to merchandise stores? Because that’s how they are. There is nothing inherent about YouTube videos, that they have to have this fluff.
I’d be skeptical of any cultural explanations to any of this. We tend to Orientalize Japan, and say the culture is less direct, etc. But anyone who works in a US office setting and attends meetings knows, we have as much stupid useless fluff in English communication.We are just better at fast-forwarding through it mentally in out native language, so we forget it is there.
It is there. I certainly have not read whatever the note about email communication being privileged that’s is attached to many emails says in about ten years. They could be talking about their weekend barbecue. I have never read a terms of service agreement. We skip through this without thinking in our native language.
I find that things tend to be shorter.
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It’s longer to convey some things, shorter for others
Whenever there’s a need for formality, it’ll be longer tho
But if you look at casual Japanese vs English it’s really not that different
I somewhat dislike questions like these. All of this “fluff” is also content that’s considered important within the Japanese cultural context.
Try to avoid judging everything through the lense of your native language/culture.
Ignoring blog posts that are notorious for being filled with repetitive sentences. I think English is more succinct than Japanese when both are spoken at a natural pace. English can be spoken very quickly and native speakers can still keep up. If you then translate that English to Japanese and try to speak it at the same rate as English, it will feel crammed and dense. You have to omit some extraneous details artfully to get it to work in these cases.
Case studies:
– せかいをわかりやすく YT channel, people in the comments complain about the pacing, the show is a JP translation of originally English content that has to fit the pace of the animation
– Japanese covers of English songs having to omit a lot of the meaning (conversely English covers of Japanese songs have to add meaning)
– Japanese subtitles of English shows omit information (English subtitles add information)
because it’s a totally different language with a different sintactic logic. the poor english sintax is not the only one in the world.
there are also concepts that japanese cover in two syllables and it took to english like 4 or even two conplete words