Even among Japanese happens it often that people convey unwilling messages despite of an effort to choose appropriate words to say. As a result, your conversation will not keep on well as you imagine. Besides, misunderstanding can negatively affect your impression to the other person. In the worst case, these disconnection in communication can easily generate hostility or hatred in the other person's mind. This article addresses the following questions: Why does misunderstanding in the Japanese language happen more often compared to other languages? How could it be possible to avoid such a unwilling message?
Why does misunderstanding in Japanese happen more often than other languages?
To answer this question, we need to consider two technical aspects: first, High Context versus Low Context. Second, multiple interpretation of single element.
High Context versus Low Context
High Context is the term which represents that communication is highly dependent on the contexts before and after the remark. Under High Context culture, people are focusing on what is meant instead of what the person is saying. To understand each other smoothly, each person needs to have the same information or experience, which both sides can share. And thus, without mensioning too much about details of meaning or without defining the context, people in high context society will smoothly understand each other. On the other hand, people in low context culture have not much shared knowledge or experience. Therefore, they need to refer to specific information and establish the basement of what the speaker wants to say before insisting on the main subject. In other words, conversation in low context society is much more logically established than that in high context society. Japan is considered a highly strong high context society, which means conversations in Japanese often rely on speakers' shared information and are limited in that range. This is the most clear reason why the Japanese language provides people with confused, ambiguous messages.
Multiple Interpretation of Single Element
Japanese language is famous for its unique usage of three types of letters: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. And in fact, these three types of switching letters are the cause of the notorious reputation that acquiring Japanese language is quite difficult for Japanese learners. Likely, taking a look at a single element of word or phrase, a single element of words often has several meanings which are totally different. For example, "だから" is an adverb and depending on the context in which sentence this word is used, the meanings will change. 「私は疲れている。だから今日は早く寝る。」「早く寝なさい。だから、早く寝なさいってば。」 In these two types of sentences, the meaning of the word "だから" is different. The first one means "Therefore", and the second one has not quite meanings rather than represents the frustration of the speaker. Since the word has several meanings, people who listen to the remark can interpret both meanings, but one is not what the speaker wants to tell. This is possibly why Japanese conversation causes easily misunderstanding.
To summarize, even in Japanese people it's difficult to catch the meaning and continue conversation as imagined. So I would like you to be confident and not afraid of expressing yourself.
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