Sorosoro...

I like this Japanese expression: sorosoro そろそろ cannot be translated litteraly, but it means something like “soon”, “gradually”, “slowly”…

Another uncompleted sentence…

Another example of an “uncompleted” sentence is the word commonly used to great one another: “konnichi-wa”. While in English, we great each other with an exclamation (“hello!” which was first used over a telephone line), the Japanese will say “in this day…………..” and it is up to the greated person to imagine what’s going on “in this day”…

An example is worth a thousand of words:
Ex1- “sorosoro tsukarete kita” (そろそろ疲れてきた) = “I’m starting to get tired”.
Ex2- “sorosoro dekakeyô” (そろそろ出かけよう) = “it will soon be a good time to go out”.
I agree, so far, nothing really funny.

But what I find interesting is that this expression sometimes implies a whole eluded sentence. So, for example, when a Japanese is invited at a friend’s place, she won’t say “I’d soon be thinking to go”, no this would be far too rude! Instead, she’ll say: “sorosoro…” and her friend will understand.