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What part of “No, Totally” don't you understand?

157 点作者 moopling大约 10 年前

30 条评论

mapt大约 10 年前
Seems simple enough to me. The &quot;No&quot; is directed at defusing a redundant introductory lecture.<p>Translate as:<p>&quot;No, you don&#x27;t have to explain further, I completely understand&quot;<p>&quot;No, stop, I&#x27;ve already heard of that and I&#x27;m totally onboard with your opinion&quot;<p>I spend a lot of time being introduced to topics I&#x27;m already familiar with, but just nodding politely or saying &quot;yeah&quot; is interpreted as active listening, as &quot;I&#x27;d like to hear more&quot; rather than &quot;Yeah, you can stop right there&quot;, which is too confrontational to use directly. What&#x27;s your preferred way of expressing this sentiment, of interrupting someone in order to claim knowledge in their present topic, without indicating hostility or belittling them?<p>Extending one of the other posts, &quot;No, your assumption is incorrect, I am in fact already familiar with this subject and I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment&quot;.
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yathern大约 10 年前
I think part of the reasoning behind this type of response is that each response is dealing with a different level of abstraction.<p>&gt; A: Did you see any birds at the park?<p>&gt; B: Yeah, no - I didn&#x27;t see any.<p>B is first acknowledging the question and it&#x27;s intent - as well implying that maybe he did look for birds - which then flows into the fact that &#x27;no&#x27; - he did not see any.<p>This can be done with the &#x27;No, totally&#x27; example as well.<p>&gt; A: I wasn&#x27;t sure if you&#x27;d like to go to the park - do you want to?<p>&gt; B: No, totally! Definitely want to go.<p>B is first saying &#x27;No&#x27; to the implied &quot;You don&#x27;t want to go.&quot;. B is essentially saying &#x27;The assumption you made was wrong - I do indeed want to go&#x27;.<p>Granted, I made these examples to be easy to dissect, and it&#x27;s likely that from this pattern, it devolved into common vernacular despite being used in this way. But I think it still holds up for most uses.
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BFay大约 10 年前
The different possible origins of this phrase are interesting. The article mentions a couple, and there&#x27;s some in the comments here.<p>I&#x27;ve always seen it as I&#x27;m saying &quot;no&quot; to alleviate any doubt the other person had that I did not agree with their statement.<p>The conversation might go: A. I really think &quot;OK Computer&quot; is the best Radiohead album. B. No, totally!<p>But the implication is more like: A. I think &quot;OK Computer&quot; is the best Radiohead album. Am I crazy for not picking &quot;Kid A&quot; or &quot;In Rainbows?&quot; B. No, I don&#x27;t think you&#x27;re crazy for liking &quot;OK Computer&quot; the best. I totally agree with you.<p>Does anybody else see it this way? (Please respond with &quot;No, totally!&quot; (It&#x27;s okay if you don&#x27;t like &quot;OK Computer&quot;))
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greggman大约 10 年前
No, English is messed up :P<p>I learned about some of this from learning Japanese where I had to learn you answer the question directly rather than confirm the negative by repeating it.<p>In Japanese:<p>Q: You don&#x27;t like cigars do you<p>A: Yes (Yes I don&#x27;t like cigars)<p>In English<p>Q: You don&#x27;t like cigars do you<p>A: No (it&#x27;s effectively confirming the negative of &quot;like&quot;)<p>My Japanese friends learning English of course found English very confusing. I&#x27;d point out if you answer the question with more than just &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; it&#x27;s almost always clear.<p>A: Yes, I don&#x27;t like cigars<p>A: No, I don&#x27;t like cigars<p>Both have the same meaning, whereas just Yes or just No is ambiguous.<p>Of course the article had examples of just yes or just no. To someone of the same language background they are probably unambigious
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arfar大约 10 年前
In New Zealand we say &quot;yeah, nah&quot;, which is sort of a similar thing to this.<p>We&#x27;ve even got ad campaigns with it now:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alcohol.org.nz&#x2F;alcohol-activities-services&#x2F;campaigns-communication-work&#x2F;say-yeah-nah-1" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alcohol.org.nz&#x2F;alcohol-activities-services&#x2F;campai...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QFQzcWkKbbA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QFQzcWkKbbA</a>
zamalek大约 10 年前
In South Africa we say &quot;Ja, Nie&quot; (which translated is &quot;Yes, No&quot; or &quot;Yes and No&quot;). In this case there does happen to be a theory as to where it came from. The story goes that during the Anglo-Boer War[1] when Afrikaaners were captured they would use it as a response during interrogations - an exceptionally defiant phrase. There is no explanation or story for how it entered common use but you do hear it almost on a daily basis.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Second_Boer_War" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Second_Boer_War</a>
ryguytilidie大约 10 年前
One of my favorite racing drivers was recently interviewed, made this mistake and then immediately mocked himself for doing so, pretty funny: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BuJ4trSKS-0&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=39s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BuJ4trSKS-0&amp;feature=youtu.be...</a>
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jasallen大约 10 年前
I think with &quot;No, Totally&quot; in particular, the &quot;no&quot; is refuting something implied. So with &quot;Makes you want to hit them&quot;, you are instinctively saying &quot;no&quot; the cultural prohibition against violence. &quot;No that&#x27;s not normal behavior, but yeah, totally I want to hit them.&quot;<p>For &quot;Would you like ice cream?&quot; you&#x27;d say &quot;Totally&quot; because the connotation is good. &quot;Don&#x27;t you just want to eat the whole tub of ice cream&quot; -- &quot;no, totally&quot;, is a reasonable response because you&#x27;re resisting the negative connotation of pigging out.<p>I think this is actually unrelated to the &quot;Yeah, No&quot; phenomenon.
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aptimpropriety大约 10 年前
This is pretty crazy analysis for what I see to be a pretty simple phenomenon. Put the truncated &quot;Oh&quot; in front of the &quot;no&quot;, in order to indicate emotional sentiment, and you have your simple explanation.<p>&quot;oh no&quot; = hat tip to an [unexpected] unpleasant feeling<p>&quot;oh yes&quot; = hat tip to an [unexpected] pleasant feeling<p>Take the &quot;Did you see any birds at the park?&quot; &quot;yeah, no, I didn&#x27;t see any&quot; = &quot;Oh yeah, it would have been nice to, but no I didn&#x27;t see any.
dotsamuelswan大约 10 年前
I see this more as &quot;No, you&#x27;re not taking it far enough. It&#x27;s even more of that thing you said than how you said it,&quot; and less as an auto-antonym.
shasta大约 10 年前
&gt; At first blush, “no” does not appear to be the kind of word whose meaning you can monkey with. For one thing, there is its length. At just two letters and one syllable, it lacks the pliable properties of longer words. You can’t stuff stuff inside it. [...]<p>I guess these &#x27;long form&#x27; articles have to be long, but some of these paragraphs seem pretty forced.
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mbubb大约 10 年前
It feels almost like there is an implied leading question like: &quot;Am I wrong?&quot;
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smcl大约 10 年前
Weird, I remember when I was in NZ a few years back &quot;yeah nah...&quot; meant &quot;yes&quot; which confused me. I think Australia had it too, but I&#x27;m not sure.<p>Another semi-related but confusing thing was while I&#x27;ve been living in Czech Republic I visited South Korea. I ended up getting twisted up trying to answer yes\no in Korean because...<p>English: Yes | No<p>Czech[1]: No | Ne<p>Korean: Ye\Ne | Anio<p>Each language has one that&#x27;s annoyingly similar to the opposite in at least one different language. Trying to get this right after a few beers is <i>hard</i>.<p>[1] = &quot;No&quot; is a common contraction of &quot;Ano&quot; but even then that conflicts with Korean &quot;Anio&quot;.
polarix大约 10 年前
Here&#x27;s another possibility, the first one that occurred to me: the &quot;no&quot; is a rejection of the implicit alternative to what was stated.<p>The author ends up at a fairly convincing alternative explanation, though.
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pbreit大约 10 年前
I&#x27;ve always wondered how &quot;awful&quot; came to mean &quot;bad&quot; (the opposite of &quot;awe full&quot;) and then has apparently added the meaning &quot;very&quot; (&quot;awfully good&quot;?)?
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jsbg大约 10 年前
This part, though somewhat unrelated to the topic, is pleasantly insightful:<p>&gt; Saying yes as often as possible is, famously, the first rule of improv, vital to maintaining energy, imagination, and humor. It is also, I have long thought, a sure sign that you’re falling in love, not to mention crucial to sustaining that love over the long haul. And, while sometimes impractical, dangerous, or just plain dumb, saying yes to as much stuff as possible is, over all, a pretty good strategy for getting through life.
ableal大约 10 年前
I didn&#x27;t know this bit:<p><i>&#x27;Back when English was a four-form system, it, too, had a si—a word used specifically to contradict negative statements. That word was “yes.” To affirm positive statements, you used “yea”&#x27;</i><p>(Then continues about the similar no &#x2F; nay.)<p>Anyway, I&#x27;m surprised the writer did not work in the joke about the lecturer saying:<p>&quot;As you know, a double negative becomes a positive, but the reverse does not happen.&quot;<p>Voice from the back of the room: &quot;Yeah, yeah ...&quot;
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jamesrom大约 10 年前
It kind of grates on me when someone always answers in the affirmative with &#x27;No, [affirmative]&#x27;. It has become more and more common (especially when I speak with people from California).<p>I think there&#x27;s combination of forces at play. But I think a big factor is that people are afraid of appearing too agreeable. It would just be way to overt and enthusiastic to just say &#x27;Yeah, totally&#x27; for Californian sensibilities.
grownseed大约 10 年前
French has an interesting word which somewhat clarifies this situation: &quot;si&quot; (not the conditional &quot;if&quot; in this case).<p>For lack of a better explanation, it&#x27;s essentially a negative &quot;yes&quot;, used to negate a negation.<p>For instance:<p><pre><code> A: &quot;Don&#x27;t you understand?&quot; B: &quot;Si&quot; </code></pre> Meaning &quot;No, I don&#x27;t agree with you, but yes, I do understand&quot;.<p>I find it very simple yet quite powerful.
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genericuser大约 10 年前
The edge case where it is expected that one would not understand a spoken response of &quot;No, totally&quot; is where the thing it was said in response to both was phrased such that a negative answer could be one of absolute agreement and where the previous thing said contained in it the word totally. This case could give the interpretation that while you more or less agree you would like the word totally omitted from your agreement.<p>Example(leveraged from jasallen&#x27;s example in another post): Don&#x27;t you totally want to eat the whole tub of ice cream?<p>As a spoken response in this edge case &quot;No, totally&quot;(yes I very much want to eat it all) would be indistinguishable from &quot;No totally&quot; (yes I want to eat it all, but I am not as enthusiastic about doing so as you are).
talles大约 10 年前
As a non-native English speaker &quot;No, Totally&quot; doesn&#x27;t sound natural at all to me (&quot;Yes, Totally&quot; sounds better and makes way more sense).<p>I only understood what the author was really talking about when he introduced other examples (like <i>to dust</i>).
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zaroth大约 10 年前
Made me wish for a comeback of the yeas and nays of yonder. It&#x27;s pretty amazing how many different languages struggle with this, and how some have tried to deal with it using a 4-tuple instead of a 2-tuple.
mrbig4545大约 10 年前
I can&#x27;t say I&#x27;ve noticed this before, which leads me to think it&#x27;s probably an American colloquialism, but that&#x27;s my default response to these kinds of things.<p>Could be that I&#x27;ve just not noticed it.
pm大约 10 年前
In Australia, we have &quot;yeah nah yeah&quot;, which is a similar phenomenon. I have no idea where it originated. I think &quot;nah yeah nah&quot; may also be prevalent.
ddingus大约 10 年前
It could read as, &quot;No, I was not going there, but since you did, I agree&quot;<p>The &quot;NO&quot; indicates a mismatch in the train of thought and logical flow, or expected logical flow. So it&#x27;s noted, communicated, followed by a basic response to the unexpected dialog.<p>Where the flow is expected, seems like this would be awkward, and just a &quot;totally&quot; would work.
ggchappell大约 10 年前
The four-word system (yea, nay, yes, no) is interesting. Might the modern &quot;yeah&quot; be a relic of &quot;yea&quot;?<p>The following sounds strange to me:<p><pre><code> Shoot, there aren’t any open pubs in Canterbury at this hour. Yeah. </code></pre> But the following sounds just fine:<p><pre><code> Is Chaucer drunk? Yeah.</code></pre>
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lazyant大约 10 年前
Reminds me of German &#x27;doch&#x27;
powrtoch大约 10 年前
&quot;No, you&#x27;re not crazy&quot; seems to fit the sentiment most closely.
rasz_pl大约 10 年前
I would blame the French. Frenchmen speaking English badly often say Borat like phrases, for example &quot;its great, no?&quot;. It happens when you learn vocabulary without grammar rules.
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pikewood大约 10 年前
Are we sure we&#x27;re spelling it right? Is it an abbreviated version of &quot;I know, totally&quot;?