|
Sometimes the implied meaning of words can be very different from the stated meaning.
A friend of ours in Japan, on a recent visit to the offices of another company, asked the receptionist, “Kobayashi Hiroko, onegai shimasu” (“Please get me Hiroko Kobayashi”), only to be told, “Shitsurei desu ga…” (“Excuse me…”). Thinking that she hadn’t been able to catch the name of the person he was looking for, he repeated himself. She laughed a little, and said “Onamae wa nan desu ka?” (“What’s your name?”).
In this case, the Japanese phrase “Shitsurei desu ga” (literally, “it’s rude, but”) implied something like “Excuse me for being so rude, but who should I say is asking for her?” This is just one of the many situations in Japan where just being able to understand the spoken words is not enough – to communicate successfully, you have to understand the cultural background, and hear the unspoken words as well as the spoken. This is a major part of our approach at GenkiJACS (the “C” stands for “Culture”!), and the reason we offer a cultural component to all our courses. Words alone are nearly meaningless – cultural context, it could be argued, can change everything…
A friend of ours in Japan, on a recent visit to the offices of another company, asked the receptionist, “Kobayashi Hiroko, onegai shimasu” (“Please get me Hiroko Kobayashi”), only to be told, “Shitsurei desu ga…” (“Excuse me…”). Thinking that she hadn’t been able to catch the name of the person he was looking for, he repeated himself. She laughed a little, and said “Onamae wa nan desu ka?” (“What’s your name?”).
In this case, the Japanese phrase “Shitsurei desu ga” (literally, “it’s rude, but”) implied something like “Excuse me for being so rude, but who should I say is asking for her?” This is just one of the many situations in Japan where just being able to understand the spoken words is not enough – to communicate successfully, you have to understand the cultural background, and hear the unspoken words as well as the spoken. This is a major part of our approach at GenkiJACS (the “C” stands for “Culture”!), and the reason we offer a cultural component to all our courses. Words alone are nearly meaningless – cultural context, it could be argued, can change everything…