I used to work in Japan where folks answer negative questions the other way round. I had conversations like this:
Me: Can I have everyone’s homework? <Hiroshi, looks flustered>Haven’t you done your homework, Hiroshi?
Hiroshi: Yes (meaning ‘Yes, I haven’t done it’)
Me: Oh good, can I have it then?
Hiroshi: <head tilted to the side and puzzled expression>
Me: Sorry? Didn’t you say you’d done it?
Hiroshi: Yes (meaning ‘I didn’t say I’d done it’)
Me: Have you left it at home?
Hiroshi: <confused silence>
Hiroshi’s answers are compellingly logical – much more logical than mine if you think about it. Before I knew it, I was answering negative questions the Japanese way too. When I went back to the UK, it took me a couple of years to get my head back to a point where I could teach the English answers confidently in a classroom again.
Now the thing is, this was a structuring problem and it was pretty apparent to Hiroshi and myself that we had a problem here. But there are other things that can go on with negative questions to do with pragmatic force that are harder to spot.
For example, in the Slovak and Croatian languages (Slovak and Croatian speakers – please put me right if I’ve got this stuff wrong) they use negative questions a bit like we might use modals in British and American English to make a question more polite. We can do this in English too, as in a cooingly sympathetic ‘Oh, aren’t you feeling well?’. But more commonly we seem to use negative questions to express (mild) irritation or to indicate that something is not quite what we expect it to be. Eg compare the intent conveyed by ‘Can you hurry up?’ and ‘Can’t you hurry up?’
In Slovak, I gather you’d use a negative question form to sound extra polite and friendly. So you might say things like ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’, and ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ to enquire about someone’s progress when you want to sound extra pleasant. And obviously native English speakers hear this and think ‘Give us a chance!’ or ‘What are you breathing down my neck for?’
So there’s potential for some relationship damage here. If you don’t know what’s going on, it’s easy to conclude someone has a difficult personality or attitude.
Has anyone else got into trouble with negative questions?
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Hi Vicki,
queries about negative use always remind me of the brilliant spoof travel guide about a non-existent Central European country,
“MOLVANIA – a land untouched by modern dentistry”
In the page devoted to the Molvanian language, you’ll find the following:
“Remember that the syntactical structure of written Molvanian can be rather complex, with writers routinely using the triple negative.
Hence ‘Can I drink the water?’
becomes ‘Erkjo ne szlepp statsik ne var ne vladrobzko ne?’
(literally, ‘Is it not that the water is not not undrinkable?’)
Fortunately, conversational Molvanian for the native speaker is a little less formal, and a native speaker wanting to know
‘Can I drink the water?’ would only have to say ‘Virkum stas?’ while clutching their stomach in a gesture of gastric distress.
You can read more about Molvania here:
http://www.molvania.com/molvania/useful.html
Oh many thanks for sharing this link, Ken. Any fans of Borat out there? You will love ‘Molvania’ if you haven’t already read about it.
Brilliant! It reminds me of a 1001 misunderstandings in Russia. Where we say ‘yes’, they say ‘no’, and if we need one negative, they need two. The trouble is, as you say, you get used to translating the syntax in your head, then forget you are still doing it when you return to an English-speaking country.
Ok not exactly negative questions…….. but gestures.
I was in Greece, camping in a secluded bay miles from nowhere and it was my first trip to Greece, one of my first trips outside of SE England.
On one side of the bay was a small house and there lived an ancient lady who one morning appeared at the front of the house and started gesticulating in our direction.
She was using the Greek up and down hand movement that means “come here” but looked to my suburban eyes like the SE Engish ‘go away’.
So i moved backward.
She flapped harder.
I moved even further away.
She flapped even more.
I started to run.
If i hadn’t stopped to think i never would have drunk her most beautiful cup of coffee.
Ah yes, the negative question. A source of potential marital discord for me (my wife’s first language is Hungarian and negative questions are used in Hungarian as you say is the case in Slovak and Croat). However, when translated into English (despite my best efforts, still the language of our marriage), they sound an awful lot like nagging.
“Haven’t you paid the bill?”
“Aren’t we going out?”
etc.
It took me a while to realise this, and I still (6 years in) have a natural defensiveness when a question is posed in this way, which I have to overcome before answering. I have no idea whether it will at some point become completely easy to hear a negative question and automatically see it in the way intended.
Oh welcome, Sputnik – not related to this posting but I wanted to say I’ve been enjoying your blog. For folks who’d like some sideways angles on TEFL, it’s over at http://theteslacoil.wordpress.com/ folks.
Gestures – oh another idea! Chris, you’re a gem. And I’m about to head off to a land where I think they might have some exotic gestures – hope to return with some tales to tell.
Your examples are unbeatable,. Andy. They’re classics! Really love ’em and thank you so much. They’re exacly how to get right up a Brits nose.
I indentify with that ‘natural defensiveness’ you mention. And I rather doubt things will get easier for either of us. I still have to think twice. The structural stuff, no problem. It’s the the deeper pragmatic stuff still has me doing double takes.
Cheers for the welcome and the kind words, Vicki.
I love Chris and Andy’s linguistic experiences… yes, Andy, it’s so difficult not to react naturally even when you *know* the question wasn’t meant to be nagging or negative… Same with gestures : I used to be told that I had a “gallic shrug”: I did not know what a “gallic shrug” was! then I realised the so-called gallic shrug annoyed my Brtish friends, whereas I was not fully aware that I did it when I did the shrug!!
Vicki, I realised the same thing with Japanese people. Now I avoid asking yes/no questions, because I know they won’t say no. It has also to do with not willing to appear immodest. For instance, If I say “is that clear?”, they don’t want to say yes (because then they could appear immodest to those who did not find it clear) and they did not want to say no (because then it could mean the teacher was unclear). So I just look at them and smile : if they smile back, I assume some clarity!
The most meaningful gallic shrug I ever saw was about six months after 9/11. I had the misfortune to fly back into the weekend after US immigration had posthumously issued visas to some of the pilots who flew into the World Trade Center and the media was all over them.
It was a hellish time to return.
After a three hour wait in line, along with many other aliens, I was sent to the back room at immigration that day to await my turn. I saw lots of things I’d rather not have seen like an old Japanese lady reduced to tears when she didn’t understand the questions being fired at her. And I also saw two French guys who were working on a large engineering project.
‘But you’ve been coming back and forth for six months’ the official said. ‘Why is it taking so long? You can’t be any good at your jobs if you haven’t finished by now’. The gallic shrug and ‘pfff’ sound that he received in response said it all to me. Think it went over the official’s head though.