On Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:34:39 +1100, David Strike <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Talk of acronyms is probably a good time to introduce next month's
>'CounterStrike' offering, that's titled, "No Fear!"  :-)

Wonderful essay, characteristic of 'CounterStrike', which inspired
this 'CounterFeeesh' essay.  :-)

In Chinese, as in a few other Asian and European languages, an
answer of "No" depends on how the QUESTION is phrased.  :-)


>Acronyms can be equally confusing.  Diving has lots of them.  AAS's; ABT's;
>AGE's; ATM's; ATA's; BCD's; BT's; CNS'S; DCS's, and on through the entire
>alphabet.

Let's take my question, "Do you know that there are 21 acronyms for
NO and 3 for YES?" (according to an acronym finder webpage).  Let's
say you don't know.  You would answer "No."

If I rephrase the question, "Do you NOT know that there are 21
acronyms for NO and 3 for YES?".  You would still answer "No".
Would you not?  :-)

But if you ask that same question in Chinese, the proper answer to
convey "No, I didn't know that" would have been "Yes".  :-)  To be
explicit, the answer would have been, "YES, I do NOT know ...".
The 'Yes' refers to the correctness of YOUR statement in the question!

Here is a typical conversation in my English class in high school,
taught by an Irish priest (IP) to Chinese students (CS).  :-)

IP:  "Do you not like to eat frogs?"

CS:  "Yes."  (CS doesn't like to eat frogs)

IP:  "Don't you mean 'No'?"

CS:  "Yes."  (CS didn't mean 'No' when he said 'Yes')

IP:  "Do you like to eat frogs?"

CS:  "No."

Now the IP is thoroughly confused, while the entire class of
CS knew precisely what said CS meant!  :-)

When your CounterStrike article appears in the Asian Diver, there
may be some thoroughly confused Asian divers reading it.  <BWG>


>Sadly, however, it's a learning process in which it's easy to forget the
>importance of simple language and the value of phrases like, "I don't
know",
>or, "I don't understand" - and even the difference between "Yes" and "No".

This being an INTERNATIONAL list, aka Sidney and ELSEWHERE :-), let's
not forget that in some languages/cultures, it's not a matter of
forgetfulness about the difference between "Yes" and "No", but the
importance of the listener to listen to how the QUESTION is phrased, in
order to say "No" when it means "Yes", or "No" when it means "No".

"Don't you know?"   :-)))

Of course, even in the Western and Oz culture ... if you still
remember those ancient days when you were courting young ladies ...
that a "No" from them is often SUPPOSED to be properly interpreted
by YOU as "Yes".  <BG>


>"Yes!  But only 'cause I was confused by all of those acro-thingies and I
>was too embarrassed to admit that I don't know my AAS from my elbow!"

No!  It's the AAS from a hole in the ground!  :-)
>
>"And then when I asked - just before you and your buddy entered the water -
>'Do you both understand the time, depth and air supply parameters of this
>dive?',  and you said 'Yes', you really meant to say, 'No'? "
>
>"No.  I meant 'Yes' because my buddy seemed to understand what you said.  I
>didn't know that he'd said 'Yes' because I hadn't said 'No'!"

Were you talking to the IP or the CS?  :-)

>Which is just about as silly as me saying, 'Yes' when asked:  "Was it you
>who put live frogs in the lavatory bowl?"

It wouldn't be so silly had the question been "WASN'T it you who put
live frogs in the labatory bowl?" in Chinese, and EVERYONE answers
'Yes'!  :-)
>
>---ENDS---

Do you know that the acronym finder lists ENDS as an acronym to mean
the 'definition' "End Segment"?  Silly author.  "Don't you think an
acronym for "End Segment" should have been ES?"   No?  Don't you
mean 'Yes'? ... Do you think the author can tell his ENDS from a
hole in the ground?  Or his elbow?

Here's a true story on "Just say 'No'" to end my CounterFeeesh.

I have published quite a few scientific papers.  The usual process
of a published paper (because of the scarcity of journal space
and the abundance of BS resulted from 'publish or perish' in
academia) is for the editors/referee to tell the author
to cut the length of the paper to such short length that it's
sometimes impossible to convey the substance within the length
suggested.

Some clever souls would reduce the size of the FONT and line
spacing to make the paper APPEAR shorter.  :-)

A friend of mine, who is a chaired professor at Harvard, said
he received a 'referee report' telling him to cut the length of
his submitted paper to 1/3 of its length, and he told his
secretary to simply resubmit the paper, deleting every 2nd and
3rd LINE in the manuscript.  :-)  But I digress.

Which leads to the fact that I have exactly ONE published paper
which was "published as is" (without a suggested change of a
single word in the text of the original manuscript by the editor).
Instead, he suggested (which I hearily concurred) that the TITLE
of the article be changed to "Just Say No to Binomial (And Other
Discrete Distributions) Tables" which appeared in The American
Statistician (1992).  :-)   That may be the ONLY article in a
scientific journal that starts with "Just Say No"!  Does anyone
know of another one?

-- Bob.

== Bob.