<story><title>Ask vs. Guess Culture</title><url>https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs-guess-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wccrawford</author><text>While I was studying Japanese, I learned that they go out of their way to make it so the other person doesn&amp;#x27;t have to refuse with a &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;.  For instance, they&amp;#x27;ll ask, &amp;quot;Do you not have X?&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;Do you have X?&amp;quot;  The person can answer &amp;quot;Yes, we don&amp;#x27;t have it&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s over here&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I actually made this mistake, asking for a product directly instead of negatively, when I was in Tokyo.  The clerk took me to the aisle and said, &amp;quot;If we had it, it&amp;#x27;d be here.&amp;quot;  And there was no space for it.  Took me a couple times to realize what had happened.</text></item><item><author>jzb</author><text>&amp;quot;It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad &lt;i&gt;went off&lt;/i&gt; on me after we visited someone&amp;#x27;s house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.)&lt;p&gt;Even though his reaction was way overboard, I still believe this. Let people offer things, don&amp;#x27;t ask. (With a lot of caveats depending on context...)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alexjm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve heard that the &amp;quot;do you not have&amp;quot; phrasing was used in polite Soviet-era Russian, leading to a joke about a customer who walks into a shop and sees all the shelves are empty:&lt;p&gt;- Excuse me, do you not have any bread?
- Sorry, this is a butcher&amp;#x27;s shop.  We don&amp;#x27;t have any meat.  The bakery is across the road.  They&amp;#x27;re the shop that doesn&amp;#x27;t have any bread.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask vs. Guess Culture</title><url>https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs-guess-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wccrawford</author><text>While I was studying Japanese, I learned that they go out of their way to make it so the other person doesn&amp;#x27;t have to refuse with a &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;.  For instance, they&amp;#x27;ll ask, &amp;quot;Do you not have X?&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;Do you have X?&amp;quot;  The person can answer &amp;quot;Yes, we don&amp;#x27;t have it&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s over here&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I actually made this mistake, asking for a product directly instead of negatively, when I was in Tokyo.  The clerk took me to the aisle and said, &amp;quot;If we had it, it&amp;#x27;d be here.&amp;quot;  And there was no space for it.  Took me a couple times to realize what had happened.</text></item><item><author>jzb</author><text>&amp;quot;It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad &lt;i&gt;went off&lt;/i&gt; on me after we visited someone&amp;#x27;s house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.)&lt;p&gt;Even though his reaction was way overboard, I still believe this. Let people offer things, don&amp;#x27;t ask. (With a lot of caveats depending on context...)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sircastor</author><text>There may be an obvious language barrier here, but the coupling of a positive with a negative response feels very odd to me in English. I&amp;#x27;m reminded of the old song (it was used for an advertising jingle for a product or company I can&amp;#x27;t remember) &amp;quot;Yes, we have no bananas!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Adjacently, I really dislike the courtroom phrasing &amp;quot;Isn&amp;#x27;t it true?&amp;quot; that is sometimes depicted in legal dramas.</text></comment>