

You can divide culture and grammar. It’s simple: your hypothetical long exchange can trchnically be expressed in the Japanese language at 1/5 the length and still retain grammatical correctness and meaning. i.e. the long exchange is not a result of the technical aspects of language, i.e. it has nothing to do with pronoun ommission. The cultural aspect of language is what makes the conversation long. And you’re making a huge assumption about the context of the exchange. Is it between two strangers? Family members? Sibling? Friends? A king and a peasant? Classmates? All of these situations would have exchanges with different lengths and grammar, but this arises from the culture. We do the same thing in English too. On average, an email between a boss and an employee will probably be longer and more formal than between two friends, no? Not as long as an equivalent email in Japanese, but the same trend exists in both languages is my point.






Gillian Anderson