Quote:
Originally Posted by travger
Well, in movies they are always yelling hai! and running to fulfill the order. (1. I have not seen many of them, 2. it was 1 of maybe 3 words I could make out during the movie  ) |
That's because they're responding to a positive statement - in this case an order.
Quote:
Originally Posted by travger
And to my mind, confirmation of negative is logically 'yes' - eh, of course there are exeptions - but mostly.
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The key is the word "confirmation". Think of it more like an agreement with what's actually being said - so if someone makes a negative statement such as "that dog isn't black", then "Hai" is really saying "That's correct, the dog isn't black". In English, when we say "Yes", meaning "yes, it
is black", we're simply being lazy, and leaving out the affirmative statement and assuming the "yes" carries the full meaning. But we also apply tone and stress to the word - if you were saying "Yes" meaning "I agree, it isn't black", that "Yes" is going to be spoken very differently from if you were to say "Yes" meaning "Yes it is black, you're wrong."