I have written a book, in Portuguese, where I give solutions to this problem. You may have not, yet, realized yourself, that people commonly reply wrongly to negative questions. This article explains, how to deal with negative questions.
A negative question is a question that has a "no", or a "not". For example, "Don't you like this?".
Some people, when confronted with a negative question, normally reply incorrectly to this type of question. Let me give you an example.
With the question, "Didn't you drink water?", a common person may reply "No.", referring to "I didn't drink water". Which is wrong. The question was in the negative, so, to say that you have not drunk water, you reply with a "Yes, I didn't drink water.". "Yes." to the "Didn't/Did not" in the question.
When the question is in the negative, and you didn't do what the action in the question is referring to, you reply "Yes.". When the question is in the negative, and you did do what the action in the question is referring to, you reply "No.". Taking the question above, you correctly reply saying "No, I did drink water.".
You may live in an English-speaking country where there are a lot of double negatives. Here is how to deal with double negating questions.
If the question is "Didn't you do nothing?", if you didn't do a thing, you say "No, I did nothing.". If you did do something, you reply "Yes, I did something." or "Yes, I did everything.", accordingly.
The double negatives, for example "not" plus "nothing", invalidate each other, resulting in a "thing" (because this case I am using "nothing" that is the contrary of "thing"). Double negatives result in no negative.
tags: #question #negative #english #speaking
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