Why do they laugh? Overdoing it?

Greetings all,

So, one thing that has been stressed to me since I've begun learning Japanese is the important of ritualistic (standing) phrases in may situations, particularly introductions, among many other things. To give one example in particular, if someone says 「日本語がお上手ですね」, they way I've been taught to reply is with something similar to 「いえいえ、少しは出来ます」。Again, there are plenty of others that I've had the problem I'm about to describe, so I'm seeking general advice rather than for this specific phrase.

Anyway, it seems that whenever I use something like that out of the classroom, I get laughed at. Doesn't really happen if I'm just speaking Japanese, but when I say one of these phrases I'm told we should take extra effort to memorize as is, even in the dead exact same context as the book...Yeah, I get laughed at (unless in class, which does have some native speakers teaching).

So then.
1. Why?
2. Does it come off as overdoing it? Recently someone suggested shorter responses, so I think maybe this would be it.
2.b. If so, should I just stick to simple phrases...declining compliments with いえ、or sticking to ありがとうございます and はじめまして・よろしくお願いします for their appropriate situations, instead of using some of the more elaborate ones?

Just for extra info, in case it helps...in my classes, they tend to quiz us with things that prompt for them by saying things like "You've just been introduced to (your sister's Japanese friend/your Japanese friend's parents/etc). What would you say?" or have us practice conversations we might have while sharing a meal as a guest, business meeting greetings, business phone conversations, etc. So they drill in the "ritualistic" phrases pretty hard. And I do want to be polite. But not get laughed at every time I try to be.

To all who can shed some light on this, thank you.

1. First of all, are you sure you get "laughed at"? I know when my non-Japanese spouse gets a compliment about his language and says something like "いいえ、それなりに、だけです" or "日本も長いですから" or something like that, the fact that he has responded with VERY Japanese phrase is received with ummmm, another compliment, and and he gets good smiles, but not "laughing" in the sense "being laughed at." When you respond like that, that's another proof showing that you know the manners and all that... which is a good thing.

2. I don't know what other phrases you have been using, but maybe, just maybe, they might be somewhat stiff or really "learned from the book."

2b. I could suggest something like:
ありがとうございます。いっしょうけんめい勉強していますから with a big smile (so that gets them off the "complimenting" mode),
or
simply saying ありがとうございます。or いいえ、そんなことありません。or いいえ、まだまだです。

Maybe somewhere it shows that those are the phrases you've been focusing on, and you might be rapidly searching through your memory for the right phrase, and your seriousness/earnest attitude is something they can just smile about?

The school I used to teach at focused on getting the message across and on grammar, and I have not seen school with that kind of focus before myself though.

Let me get this straight. Someone says your Japanese is good and you reply "ieie, sukoshi WA dekimasu," right? I think people are supposed to laugh, as a courtesy, because what you're saying is "Oh, I DO speak a little." meaning, "Hey, you might be praising my Japanese as a compliment, but I do really speak it well, you know."

When someone replies to you like that, you're supposed to laugh as to imply, "Whoa, excuse my underestimation!" or as to imply, "Hey, you're doing good, man, you're doing good."

If you want them to take you more seriously, then you'd expect them to frown and say, "Hey, don't be so arrogant!"

If you wish to say, "Oh no, I only speak a little." you're supposed to say, "ieie, sukoshi shika dekimasen." or "iyaa, sukoshi dake dekimasu." or beginners in the language might simply say, "sukoshi dekimasu." These are all lame boring expressions, so they probably won't laugh but just smile.

Plus, by saying, "ieie" or "(sukoshi) wa (dekimasu" you're already implying that your Japanese is good enough to use cunning expressions as that, so of course, people would try to share a good laugh with you by implying, "Wow, your Japanese is better than I thought!"

I know you weren't asking about this specific Japanese expression, but those were the things that instantly came to my mind. If you can give us other examples, maybe we can analyse the situation in a better way.

Hope it helps.

Actually AK, I have noticed a tendency of Japanese people to laugh at non-Japanese people who are just starting to learn Japanese.

Yoga teachers from overseas often come to the studio I teach at for special workshops. They have interpreters, but if occasionally they try out a Japanese phrase the usual response from the students is to laugh, which can be quite disconcerting for them. On the other hand when I teach either all in Japanese or bilingual classes, no-one laughs when I speak Japanese.

I'm not sure why people do it, but it is quite common, and seems to go away once your Japanese gets better.

Uco-san,

I noticed too, but I thought that the OP encountered similar reactions when using other different expressions too, it was mentioned, so I made no comments on that particular sentence. But I agree with you.

Sira,

Ummm. When encountered with language beginners, there may be some instances where you either cannot help smiling (and you do) because something really sounds "off" with the pronunciation or phrasing to the extent it sounds cute (in a child-like way, to native speakers), OR, you take the efforts of those beginners seriously and act/respond accordingly, like grown-ups should :) Still I don't take the first reaction as "laughing" in the sense of "being laughed AT."

And somehow from the OP's description I was not under the impression that the OP was at a beginner level any more, rather more on the fluent side, so thus my previous answer, from my experience.

AK, good comments. To the people on the receiving end of the lauging though, it does often appear to them that they are being laughed at.

Winterfell mentions that it is not only that specific phrase, but a general reaction to his/her attempts to speak Japanese, and this is what I have seen as well. Of course not all Japanese people do it, but I do feel it is something that Japanese people are far more likely to do than English speakers.

I remember going to see Kill Bill here in Tokyo, and when Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman came out with some Japanese phrases partway through the movie, absolute hilarity ensued from the audience in the theatre each time they spoke- there was nothing funny about the lines themselves, it seemed to be just because foreigners were attempting to speak Japanese, as with the yoga teachers who came to our studio.

You would never see an English-speaking audience laugh at Ken Watanabe and Zhang Ziyi's English in the movie Sayuri, for example, even though it was somewhat stilted at times. I can only put it down to English speakers being more used to hearing their language spoken by non-natives than your average Japanese person is. It's peculiar behaviour from my point of view, because Japanese people are usually so polite!

Not that I disagree with Sira in general, but I don't think that Kill Bill is a good example. The movie is supposed to be comedy, and the lines the character spoke in Japanese were indeed hilarious. Hilarious because they sounded like perfect B-class action movies made in Hong Kong back in the days, which was absolutely the director's intention. You're supposed to laugh there. The fact that the words itself weren't funny made the scene even funnier. I thought it was an hommage to the Japanese audience from the director. Plus, the two Kill Bill female characters were supposed to be perfect Japanese speakers, while the Ken Watanabe characters are always supposed to have accents, so it's not really fair to compare them. Meanwhile, I can't recall the Japanese audience laughing at the Timothy Spall character when he spoke Japanese as a foreign interpreter in The Last Samurai.

But again, I don't disagree to Sira's opinion on the theme of this thread. I clearly remember that as a child, I used to hate it when my parents and grandparents laughed at all the things I do. Now I know that they laughed only because they thought that my efforts as a child was adorable, but the adults wouldn't stop unless they are in a classroom. Probably similar things are happening between the Japanese and the foreign learners, which is quite an ignorant behavior, I must say, but no harm is probably intended.

Either way, my advise to the OP is to try to ask why they are laughing, each time they do, or even tell them to stop. That might clear things up and teach them a lesson at the same time.

Rather off-topic, but I don't think the Japanese are polite at all when it comes to dealing with foreigners in comedy mode, although things are improving. Look at the variety shows, and look at what a lot of the "geinin" stand-up comedians do, and it really irritates me that, in interviews, only the non-Japanese people's quotes are transcribed into non-keigo, while the Japanese people's quotes are transcribed to keigo. But I sense that these aren't the direct reasons to the laughter on issue.

Having read through this very interesting thread I’m a bit disappointed. According to all the guidebooks, it is supposedly much appreciated by the Japanese when tourists make an effort at speaking the language. But now it seems to me that this along with so many other things written in Rough Guide et al (such as the story that people will start chatting to you on trains to practise their English) are all untruths or based on one or two isolated instances. I’ve made reasonable efforts to learn some basic Japanese over the last 6 months or so for my upcoming visit and now I’m thinking that it will be little more than a source of mirth for many Japanese.

I don't feel that any of the comments written on this thread so far contradict with the fact that "it is supposedly much appreciated by the Japanese when tourists make an effort at speaking the language."

Phil,

I don't think there is any reason to feel disheartened or to feel discouraged about learning Japanese. Despite other posters' experiences, I myself cannot recall ever having my attempts at speaking Japanese laughed at by Japanese natives - except for a few real howlers. The more awful your Japanese is the more praise about your fluency you are likely to receive.
My view is that a large majority of Japanese still have this image that foreigners are totally incapable of speaking Japanese, so when they encounter someone who can stutter even a few Japanese words, they laugh or smile out of embarrassment about how to proceed, and possibly embarrassment at their own total inability to speak English.
The story about being collared on trains for English practice is no myth either, and it can get somewhat tiring after you've had it few times.

I use that when people compliment me on my Japanese, and that makes them laugh.

Uco san, I think you are probably right about the Japanese in Kill Bill- it was a bit amusing. I was just quite amazed and a bit irritated with the students at our yoga studio for laughing every time a visiting teacher tried a phrase like "ashi o nobashite" or "shinkokyu shite"- nothing amusing there, and it wasn't as if the pronunciation was really off either. While I realise there are cultural reasons they did so, I just wonder how they would feel if people laughed every time they came out with an English phrase- probably not too happy.

In any case, people are right that it doesn't happen all the time, and it will most often be appreciated, but there are definitely some situations where an attempt at Japanese will be met by laughter, which can be quite perplexing and disheartening for learners.

As for people speaking to foreigners on the train in English, Dave in Saitama is right, that definitely happens, and it can get old very quickly if you are in Japan for more than a few weeks.

Well...Thanks for being upfront with your answers. I really do appreciate the explanations.

A few comments to clarify some things:
- I wouldn't really say such phrases are the focus--grammar et al is also taught, but it *is* very tightly integrated. Questions along the lines of the OP appear on every test/quiz, usually requiring some kind of honorific language or one of those phrases as part of a longer answer.
- Well I didn't really want the 少しは出来ます thing to take the focus at first (I am glad the error was pointed out to me), but I also didn't realize...Well, yes, I always used that with the は. Wasn't trying to be clever... I'm kinda frustrated/discouraged/angry, because this should have been caught a long time ago--when first learned, I asked a teacher (native speaker at the time) about it because the は seemed out of place. His answer was that it's like saying "as for a little, THAT is what I can do," so it's really like saying "I can get by, but I'm not really good at it." Seemed like a viable explanation, and I had no idea that it could backfire so terribly. But even then, this is only one case...
- I know sticking to the textbook/course material can come off as a bit stiff...But I've always been told learning those phrases in an important part of the language, and polite (I know "everyone wants to speak casually (using plain forms)," but politeness actually sounded appealing to me), and also that you're often very limited in how you can change them, because the phrase as a whole has come to have a different meaning than the literal meaning of each word.
- I don't know if I should call myself a beginner or not, but definitely not fluent. Not a beginner in the sense that I'm fresh off the boat, though, but quite possibly in the sense of naivety if nothing else. And also, thanks suggestions for alternatives.
- I'm not going to ask why or say stop...it's difficult enough to consistently find native speakers here to practice with, and besides, it seems like an uncontrolled reaction, something they can't help...
- Ye-es, the more compliments for worse 日本語 thing was taught early on...

Well...thanks again. Not really sure where to go from here though...

I should proofread a little more...Anyway, thanks for the suggestions for alternative phrases and such.

The Guidebooks are pretty wrong, as is most of the Japanese in them.

Japanese laugh all the time when your ability is below advanced. I said Chari instead of jitensya. Chari is the cool way to say it. The girl I said it to busted out laughing.

They don't see many foreignors speaking Japanese, so it's new and funny to them.

So having read the various responses since my post, it now seems that efforts at speaking Japanese are appreciated generally but might well still cause some amusement. I guess it depends upon whom you’re speaking to and the circumstances. I shall stick with my efforts to learn and just see how it goes when I get there.

Another thing that I have read in various guidebooks is that even a poor effort at speaking Japanese will be met with great praise as to how skilful you are – even though they don’t really mean it. I suppose that this is pretty much akin to laughing anyway!

As for the impromptu train conversations; as a tourist I’d love to be used by a Japanese for practising their English. But I can see how it could become irksome if you live there and your daily commute is spent discussing the weather or where you come from.