Yes? or No?

“Yes or No?”

A Linguistic misunderstanding

By Sohyun Lee  

When people come from different cultures, they often have problems understanding each other. Sometimes, it causes misunderstandings and even conflicts. Therefore, it is necessary to know about different cultures.

Why do these misunderstandings happen? We live on different continents and places, use different languages and have different customs. Everything is totally different. Of course, cultures are influenced other nearby cultures, but North America and Asia are far apart. Specifically, as we use different languages (e.g., Korean or English), it’s enough to make people confused.

When I talk on the phone with native English speakers, sometimes it can be embarrassing because listening is really hard when I can’t see the person I’m talking to.

Shortly after I came to Toronto, I found myself in an uneasy situation. I was living in a ‘homestay’ and my homestay mom was in a café about to buy doughnuts for her daughters, the other homestay student and me. She called me at home to find out whether my fellow student was there or not.

She asked, “Is she home right now?” Suddenly, I was embarrassed, and I had been taught about answering negative questions but still wasn’t sure, so I replied, “No”.

 My homestay mom asked me again just to confirm. “Oh, I see. so she is not home, right?” Then, I began to panic and said, “Yes” automatically. She asked again, “What? You mean she is home?” and then I replied again, “No”.

I could tell from the silence on the other end of the phone that my homestay mom was confused by my response. Therefore, we were both frustrated by now and eventually, I said, “I mean, she is not here now!”

Then, why are the responses in English and Korean different? What was the problem in that situation?

 If you are an English speaker, you just answer to the ‘truth’ of the verb phrase only. So whether the statement is negative (She is not home?) or affirmative (She is home?), you just say “no” in answer to her being home. However, if the verb phrase is true, you can just say “yes” (meaning that she is home).

But Koreans only care about the complete clause in the statement. For example, if someone asks in the negative something like, “You don’t like it, right?” and then if you don’t like that, you have to answer, “Yes” because the whole statement is true. Likewise, if you do like it, you say, “No”.

Such misunderstandings are common. Because we have different customs, habits and languages. Sometimes, misunderstandings like the one above can just be funny. However, if it had happened in a very important situation like a conference, it could have been a really big problem.

So next time someone calls you on the phone and asks you a yes/no question, don’t panic. Just say, “I’m not sure!”