Hello and Goodbye, cultural differences

There’s a woman living across the street from us who often walks her two little papillon dogs around here. We don’t really know her, and we’re unlikely ever to be friends. She’s cordial enough but her house suggests a rather higher income bracket than ours, and that’s never a distinction it’s easy to bridge.

A papillon, like the one of the dogs our neighbour walks

Still. When we meet her with her dogs, while we’re out with ours, we always have a brief but pleasant conversation. And, inevitably, it starts with a courteous exchange of greetings.

Recently, I came across her as I was returning from the last dog walk of the day, at about 10:00 at night.

“Buenas tardes,” I said to her, because in English I would have said “good evening”. Since this is Spain, I simply translated the English greeting into the nearest expression I knew in Spanish.

“Buenas noches,” she corrected me, with firm emphasis on the second word.

It was dark, so it was night time. It seems that the correct greeting, for a Spaniard, is “Good night”.

That’s not easy for me to adapt to. “Good night”, as far as I'm concerned, is what you say when you’re parting company, or at least when one of you is about to fall asleep (which is a kind of parting, after all). Here it seems it’s a greeting too.

I had a similar problem in French, years ago. “Good evening” in English can be both a greeting and a parting. In French, “bonsoir” is the same. But “bonne soirée”, which would translate literally as exactly the same thing in English, means “have a good evening”, and you’d only say it on parting company.

French also doesn’t have a “good morning” or a “good afternoon” either, so it’s “bonjour” all day, until a slightly indeterminate time, usually when it’s starting to get dark, when you move to “bonsoir” instead. 

We English speakers shouldn’t get too superior about the French lack of those two greetings. After all, unlike French, Spanish, Italian, German or even Japanese (we'll be returning to that), English doesn’t really have a “good day”. I mean, it does, but anyone who actually used the expression “good day” would be indelibly marked as a foreigner, and probably one who learned the language from a book.

I have to say, that I don’t know when “buenos días”, “good day” in Spanish, glides into “buenas tardes”, though I think my experience of the other night has made it pretty clear that “buenas noches” takes over once it gets dark. But since “tarde” can also be translated as afternoon, I’d like to know when it starts, given that I now know when it ends.

I’ll get there some day. Or possibly some afternoon.

I’m confident of that because I carried out a similar research exercise once before. 

In preparation for a visit to Japan, for the wedding of two friends, I put a lot of effort into learning some Japanese. It was an exciting challenge which I took on with enthusiasm. Sadly, I now remember practically nothing of all I learned.

However, I do still remember that “Good morning” in Japanese is “ohayo gozaimasu”. “Good day”, on the other hand, is “konnichiwa”. 

So here was the problem I set myself to solving: when does “ohayo gozaimasu” meld into “konnichiwa”?

Danielle and I travelled to Japan a few days before the wedding. On our second night, we were in Hiroshima – all very moving, and seeing the A-bomb dome really sent a shiver up my back.

The Hiroshima A-bomb dome
One of the only buildings to remain standing after the blast

We wanted to visit Miyajima, which isn’t that far away. It’s an island the whole of which is considered a temple. So it has a temple gate set in the water, which is nothing short of magical. Or, rather, it’s set in the water when the tide is in. At low tide, it’s set in mud, which is rather more prosaic.

I checked the tide tables and high tide the next morning was going to be at 7:00. Which was disappointing, since we’d never be up in time to get there. But then, for the only time in my life, jet lag proved a blessing. We were both awake at 4:00. We got dressed in a hurry and rushed to station. We arrived in time for a boat which got us to the island just as the sun was rising.

And dawn was flooding the gate, with its feet washed by the sea, in light.

The Otorii or temple gate at Miyajima

It was truly magical.

We spent the next few hours walking around the island, spellbound by all we saw. As time went on, more and more people turned up. The Japanese tend to exchange greetings with others, even complete strangers, when their paths cross.

For two or three hours, it was “ohayo gozaimasu”. But as 11:00 am approached, I started to hear the first instances of “konnichiwa”. As my watch hands crept past 11:00, “ohayo gozaimasu” vanished and we heard nothing but “konnichiwa”.

So in Japan, for greeting purposes, day starts at 11:00. Before that it’s morning.

I enjoyed that small research success. Though, of course, what’s most interesting is what it demonstrates about the differences between cultures. We English speakers probably have a fairly clear notion of morning, afternoon, evening and night. But it’s fascinating to discover others don’t see things quite the same way.

And doesn’t it just show how terribly unreliable literal translation can be?