A zillion years ago, before I came to Japan, I took a short introductory course on Japanese. In it, they showed a video of a business meeting where an American businessman is speaking to a Japanese businessman.
The Japanese businessman kept saying 「はい、はい」 throughout the business meeting. The result being that the American assumed that the Japanese guy had agreed to the proposal they discussed. However, the Japanese person was only saying はい as a way of expressing agreement that he heard and understood what the American was saying.
From there, it was explained that in Japanese, agreement is often about the person making the statement, not the topic. はい can be used to mean "I agree to the degree that it allows this conversation to continue." A little like saying "sure, okay" in English.
In English, I can differentiate between agreeing with a premise and agreement with a person. If I say "yes", I am definitely agreeing with the premise. If I say "sure", I'm going along with the person, leaving room to be ambivalent about the premise.
I'd like to get better control of the same thing in Japanese. Without resorting having to express myself with lengthy sentences or explanations, how can I be sure I'm conveying that I agree with a premise or with the person?
Are these appropriate for stating definite agreement with a premise:
確かに
そうだ
Are these more ambivalent?
はい
うん
ええ
Are there other phrases and words I can use to be clear in differentiating whether I'm agreeing with a person or a premise?
Please note I'm specifically looking verbal ways of handling this, not other contextual clues like gestures or facial expressions. I would like to be able to express myself clearly in writing and on the phone as well as in person.
Answer
I would say that ええ (not え) is even more vague than はい, and that even to a direct question, ええ could mean that you understand the question but are still thinking about it.
うん is a colloquial version of はい, and I wouldn't use it at business meeting. On the back-channel-scale, I'd put it approximately in the same place as はい.
確かに does mean surely or certainly, but it carries the nuance that there might be a "but" coming, so I wouldn't use/read this as an absolute affirmation.
そうだ/そうです are in the affirmative end, while そうだね/そうですね can be quite back-channel.
Even if you don't want gestures or facial expressions, in verbal communication a lot can be told from prosody and intonation. For example はいっ with a glottal stop after the い sounds more affirmative and less back-channel than just はい.
If you want there to be no doubt, you should really give/expect a full sentence, like
- おっしゃる通りです
- その通りです
- そう致します
- 全く同感です
etc.
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