My wife and I communicate in English. She's Japanese, I'm Norwegian and we're both language enthusiasts; this makes for a lot of interesting language discussions.
This is something that surfaced today:
"Is this not so good anymore?", says my wife, holding up an old container of barbecue sauce which she thinks has gone bad.
"Yes", I answer, meaning that the sauce has gone bad.
Disregarding that a) the question could probably have been formulated in a different way to make it less ambiguous and b) I could have been more verbose in my answer; would answering "Yes" or "No" to this question, in English, indicate that the sauce has, indeed, expired?
Both of our native languages handle these kinds of "negative questions" a bit differently and we can't seem to figure it out in English.
Answer
This is tricky! I can see why you would get confused.
First of all your wife's question should be reformulated as: "Has this sauce gone off?"(UK) or "Has this sauce gone bad?"(US) to which your answer: "Yes" would be unequivocal.
However, when a question is negative interrogative it is usual to reply positively to confirm the speaker's suspicion/doubt. For example: "Isn't he married?" the answer: "Yes, he is" confirms the fact the subject is married. "No, he isn't" means he is single. If however, the question was: "Is he not married?" The speaker is asking a completely different question, it is no longer a negative interrogative question but whether the man is single/unmarried, hence the short positive reply would be contradicting as in: Yes, he is (married)!.
So to go back to your wife's original "question"
"Is this (sauce) not good?" OR "Isn't this (sauce) good?" The first question is not technically a "negative question" She was asking if the sauce was bad (not good) so your reply: "Yes (it is)" was actually saying the opposite!
http://www.englishspark.com/en/students/455-negative-questions
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv330.shtml
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