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Comment by navhc | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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).

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