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Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by reddit_clone on Friday August 18, 2023 @02:32PM (#37180073)
Indeed.

>"Do you not have X?"

In my head it sounds belligerent and accusatory. While the other form sounds polite.

This negative phrasing to induce a positive response, may be a Japan only thing?

Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by galaxyLogic on Friday August 18, 2023 @03:16PM (#37180684)
It's interesting, it somehow means you are agreeing with them if they don't have it, so they don't have to feel so bad about not having it.
Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by MountainMan1312 on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:41PM (#37184152)
I'm from Appalachia and we have the same thing, and yeah at least for us it's like you're agreeing with them that they don't have it.

"Do you not have bananas?" is like "is it true that there are no bananas?". Then if there are bananas, the host can gleefully surprise you with them and feel like they solved a problem for you. This is only if it's said in a constantly upwardly-shifting tone, though.

It can be said another way, same words different tone, which sounds more like "how perplexing, there's no bananas, let me just make sure I didn't miss them because I thought they should be here". The host usually backs their answer up with an explanation of why there are no bananas.

A third form exists where it does sound accusatory. Like "you should have bananas you piece of crap". Usually said in a huffy puffy I-dont-have-time-for-this tone.

Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by galaxyLogic on Saturday August 19, 2023 @02:50PM (#37191842)
I read somewhere that a good negotiating strategy is to start with something that both can agree to.
Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by satvikpendem on Saturday August 19, 2023 @06:52PM (#37194150)
Speaking of negotiating, the book Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss who was an FBI hostage negotiator is an incredible book that showed me how compromising may not always be in one's best interest (because, given his experience, you can't compromise on only having X hostages be killed).
Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by guythedudebro on Friday August 18, 2023 @10:53PM (#37185012)
Interesting. Maybe more like a "You don't have x, right?" than a "do you not have x?"
Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by contravariant on Friday August 18, 2023 @05:28PM (#37182378)
It's probably more like "You wouldn't happen to have any X?". I assume the idea is that you put the emphasis on the asker being the one to ask a silly question if they indeed don't have it.

Maybe it also helps that all the sentence markers that make a sentence polite, negative, interrogative all get added on to the end (to the verb) in japanese, which probably makes the construction slightly less awkward. In this case it may go something like motsu (to have) -> mochimasu (to have, polite) -> mochimasen (to not have, polite) -> mochimasenka (to not have, polite, interrogative).

I'm making a lot of assumptions here though, I don't know if this is anywhere close to correct.

Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture by pulsarmx on Friday August 18, 2023 @05:54PM (#37182665)
"Do you guys not have phones?"