Have you ever noticed that English speakers may answer certain yes or no questions differently from non-native speakers?
Suppose there was a table with apples on it, but you happened to not take any of the apples. Would you answer yes or no to this question?
- A: You didn’t take any?
For English speakers, the answer would be:
- B: No (I didn’t take any).
For some people whose native language is not English, this is counterintuitive. They may be tempted to say affirm the statement and say “Yes (I didn’t take any).” Although this may seem like the logical answer, in English, the correct way to answer to question would be to say “No (I didn’t take any). Responding no means you did not take the positive action, which in this case is taking apples. When asked a negative question, you would simply answer the question the same way you would if the question was a positive question:
- A: Did you take any?
- B: No (I didn’t take any).
If you’re worried that the correct message may not be conveyed, feel free to reply with the whole sentence “No, I didn’t take any.” to reduce any possible confusion. If you’re still unsure whether the correct choice is yes or no, you can also just answer “I didn’t take any.” If you are the one asking the question, you can also reduce any chance of confusion by simply asking a positive question (”Did you take any?”).
Here is another case of a negative question.
- C: You didn’t go to the party?
- D: No, I didn’t.
- C: Why?
Do you notice anything wrong with the conversation above?
A native speaker of English would actually ask “Why not?” instead of “Why?” When asking the reason for a “negative action” such as not going to a party instead of going to it, you would ask the negative question “Why not?”. You can think of it like “Why (did you) not (go to the party)?”
An English learner may be tempted to ask “Why?” because in many languages, the question “Why not?” does not exist and “Why?” covers the role of both questions. In English, however, you would ask “Why not?”
Now, what could possibly be wrong with this conversation?
- E: I didn’t go to the party.
- F: Me, too.
In this conversation, the second speaker is agreeing with the first speaker’s negative statement that they did not go to a particular party. In other languages, simply agreeing with the negative statement as you would with any positive statement would be suffice, but in English, people would say “Me neither” to agree with this negative statement. It is the equivalent of answering with “I didn’t go either.”
Here is another example where the second speaker correctly agrees with a negative statement:
- G: I couldn’t understand anything he said.
- H: Me neither.
You may wonder why English makes such distinction between positive and negative questions and statements, but that is a question to be pondered about even by native speakers.
You may also wonder what is the point of have negative questions in the first place if they are to be answered like positive questions. But that becomes a borderline philosophical question that may have no answer, isn’t that right?
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