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  • 工作学习 / English / Jabber's English Note----006 -jabber(jabber); 2001-7-4 {867} (#120321@0)
    A small trick.

    "You don't like Italian food?"
    "You don't wanna come?"
    "You aren't happy?"

    Indeed, many Chinese people are not used to Italian food. However, most of us have difficulties in answering such a negative interrogative.
    One of my friends have been in the America for 15 years, but he still don't know how to answer this type of questions.

    Occasionally, I make mistakes with such questions, too. However, I can handle them gracefully in most cases. My trick is never using simple "yes" or "no". I do my best to say "Yes, I do", "Yes, I can", "Yes, I am", "Yes, I have", "No, I am not", "No, I don't", "No, I can't"... In doing so, I find I can correcty express myself.

    For me, improving my English is securing my life. Unfortunately, I will never be able to speak as those native English speakers.
    • Useful tip for me, thank you. -bingle(bingle); 2001-7-4 (#120372@0)
    • tell them " I don't like italian food yes, my wife is Italian so I do like Italian pussy" -guest:Slim Piggy; 2001-7-5 (#120514@0)
      • The Italian pussy is like the Mideterranean (sorry for misspelling), please be sure not to be drowned in it. -jabber(jabber); 2001-7-5 (#120819@0)
    • Sure, you are realy a careful man. The same phenomenon happened everyday in my company. -pyramid(金字塔); 2001-7-5 (#120888@0)
    • yeah, it's quite a funny thing. At the begining, .... -tutu(lazy tutu); 2001-7-5 {580} (#121068@0)
      At the begining, I was not used to answer this kind of questions. I always translated the Chinese word 是 to yes, 不 to no directly. There is one time I was asked "you don' t like China?". My first reaction was surely 不是. So my answer was "no...". My staff was really surprised to hear that and asked "WHY?". I realised what a big mistake I had made. So I went to this way, "no, it's not true." Though it seemed to save myself from that topic, But at that moment, I really felt bad about myself. And it's from then on, I started to force myself to adjust this point.
      • The rules for answering this kind of questions -guest:RedBird; 2001-7-24 {507} (#143342@0)
        It sucks if you use Chinese thought to answer this kind of Qs. The rule for this in English is always make comment on the truth, not on the sentence of the question. Or simply approve or disapprove on the verb. i.e. "You don't like China?" or "Don't you like China?" If you like China, say YES. If you don't like China, say NO. The Yes or No is about "like", not about the "Don't".

        Let's have some fun now:

        Q: Now you still don't clear?
        A1: No ( still not clear)
        A2: Yes ( I'm clear)
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