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May 11, 2009 6:03 AM

Grammarfilter. The question: "Haven't you been to Italy?" The answer: I've been to Italy. Is the correct response yes or no?

In my mind, the question actually asked was, "Have you not been to Italy?" and I that I need to clarify by overriding the "not." But what is the correct response? "Yes, I've been," or "No, I've been?"

Replying to questions phrased like this always makes me pause. "Aren't you dressed yet?" or "Isn't there a meeting today?" -- I don't know what to say! My whole life, I've avoided answering either yes or no, and instead respond by repeating the salient points of the original query: "I'm dressed, dammit," or "The meeting's tomorrow."

And I've heard people answer every which way for either the affirmative or negative ("No, I've never been to Italy" or "Yes, I've not been," so maybe there's an entire context about the setup of the original query I'm ignoring). But that contracted not has me flummoxed. So, I'm asking 1) what is the technically correct one-word response, and 2) from your personal experience, how do you answer to make sure there's no confusion that you really have been to Italy?

posted by ohcanireally to Writing & Language (27 answers total)

"yes" seems right to me.
posted by delmoi at 6:10 AM on May 11, 2009

The correct answer is "Yes, I've been."

The negative on the 'have' is more of a pragmatic particle than a true negation. English speakers sometimes use negation to soften the directness of a yes/no question to make it a little more polite.

For example:
'Isn't your name Marie?' vs. 'Is your name Marie?'
'Aren't you going next week?' vs. 'Are you going next week?'
'Can't you see that?' vs. 'Can you see that?'

The answer to both questions would be the same:
'Yes, my name is Marie.'
'No, I'm not.' or even 'Nope.'
'Yes, I can.' or 'Yes.'
posted by Alison at 6:12 AM on May 11, 2009

Realistically, "yes" would be understood to mean you have.

Technically (if we're talking about being as formally correct as possible), there's no good way to answer the question. The French language has a special word ("si") to mean, "In answer to your question about whether I have not done X: yes, I have not done X." Unfortunately, the English language doesn't have such a word. (This is true whether your answer is you have or you haven't.)

I'm assuming you want to know if the question can be properly answered in one word. Of course, saying "No, I haven't" or "Yes, I have" clears it up.
posted by Jaltcoh at 6:15 AM on May 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

Regardless of what's correct, if you simply answer "yes" or "no," your audience will invariably be confused. Even if you're right and they're wrong about the meaning of your answer, for the sake of clarity, it's better to expand by saying, "yes, I have," or "no, I haven't," to make sure that you're understood.
posted by decathecting at 6:23 AM on May 11, 2009 [3 favorites]

Most people follow the yes or no with some other clue to whether they've been or not. Hardly anyone would say simply yes or no.
posted by electroboy at 6:23 AM on May 11, 2009

The sense in which people answer negative questions is subject to cultural convention. In the US it's common to reply in the sense of the answer: "Yes, I have been...". I know of at least on culture/language group in which people would reply in the sense of the question: "No, I have been...", meaning essentially, "No, that's incorrect. I have indeed been to Italy". In those languages, questions are made by making a statement inflected as a question, possibly preceded by an "asking word", essentially, "Is it(?) you have not been to Italy(.)", thus one is would be replying to the statement, which makes "No (I have been)" feel a little more natural to me.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 6:24 AM on May 11, 2009

The answer is yes. The question isn't "Have you not been to Italy?"
It's "Have not you been to Italy?"

To me, it's the same as, "Don't you love spaghetti?"
posted by artychoke at 6:36 AM on May 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've tried "Yes, I haven't", but people get confused and annoyed.
posted by originalname37 at 6:48 AM on May 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

To me these questions always sound semi-rhetorical - the speaker 'expects' you to have been to Italy, or be dressed, or that there is a meeting today, and would be surprised to hear otherwise. Answering 'yes' responds to that implied meaning, and not the meaning as indicated by grammar... which feels correct to me, but perhaps it differs from culture to culture.

Perhaps it's also how the question is asked. If it's someone showing up for work harried and everything that asks you, "Isn't there a meeting today??" then he probably expects there to be one, and the correct answer could be "Yes, run!"
posted by Xany at 6:52 AM on May 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

The fact that we don't have a good answer is a gap in English grammar. That is why we have all heard "yes you are or yes you aren't?" so many times in our lives. The "correct" answer is to give more information than just "yes" or "no", at least until a better word shows up. There is honestly no true default one-word answer in English that will avoid confusing anyone.

Like the French example already mentioned, German also has a word "doch" that is different from "ja" (yes) and "nein" (no), and it is used precisely to answer a negative question in the affirmative. If only we had this.

In languages like Japanese and Korean, the answer "yes/no" is used differently -- it basically means "the entire statement as you said it is true/false". So, they don't run into the ambiguity that we do in English. If you ask "Haven't you been to Italy?", then "yes" would be "it is true that I have not been to Italy", and "no" would be "it is not true that I have not been to Italy (I have been there)".
posted by kosmonaut at 7:01 AM on May 11, 2009

You can always omit the "yes" or "no" and simply answer with "I have not been to Italy" or "I have been to Italy." Straightforward, direct and difficult to confuse.
posted by andrewraff at 7:13 AM on May 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Rearranging the question may help demostrate why 'yes' is the correct answer: "You've been to Italy, haven't you?"
posted by jedicus at 7:45 AM on May 11, 2009 [3 favorites]

"Haven't you been to Italy?" [...] In my mind, the question actually asked was, "Have you not been to Italy?"

These two questions _aren't_ equivalent, which leads to the difficulties. The use of "have" here introduces some extra complications, so it might be easier to compare "didn't you visit Italy?" vs. "did you not visit Italy?" In the first, "yes" means you did, and "no" means you didn't. In the second, both mean you didn't (though the "yes" response strikes many speakers as a bit odd).

If you are really, really interested in this you might conceivably be interested in this paper (self-link, pdf) about answers to negative polar question in English.
posted by advil at 7:46 AM on May 11, 2009

As Xany said, these are often rhetorical. Few would ask, "Aren't you up yet?" or "Haven't you had breakfast?" if they didn't realize that you were still in bed or had not eaten breakfast. "Haven't you been to Italy?" sounds more like an expression of surprise at the realization you had not--perhaps asked of an Italian American.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:49 AM on May 11, 2009

The question is asking in a roundabout way if you have been in Italy. Yes, you have.
posted by JJ86 at 7:50 AM on May 11, 2009

I'm with andrewraff -- this question probably shouldn't be answered "yes" or "no." I would answer "I have" or "I haven't." If you have to add "I have" to clarify your "yes," then "I have" is your actual answer, and "yes" is just noise.
posted by kindall at 8:10 AM on May 11, 2009

To me, the actual question is "You have been to Italy, have you not?" and the assumption is implicit. "Have you been to Italy?" implies that the questioner has no idea about your travels, while "haven't" gives the question the assumption that they have some foreknowledge. Answering "yes" confirms the implicit statement.
posted by mikeh at 8:44 AM on May 11, 2009

I remember taking issue with this quite a bit when i was younger.

I've alwasy thought that technically the logically correct answer is "no" (if you have been). However the usuage in practice seems vague and muddled in english.

which is exactly why in response people will seldom just say "Yes" or "No". That is precisely becuase there is no correct response. most people will qualify it.
posted by mary8nne at 8:59 AM on May 11, 2009

Yeah, answering negative questions in English is a bit weird. "You didn't do the dishes?" If you didn't, you answer "No, I didn't", even though you could interpret it as the "no" negating the "didn't." If you have, in fact, done the dishes, I would tend to answer "I did" instead of "Yes, I did."

But there's no reason to try to impose logical rules on language usage. There are plenty of languages which form double negatives as a rule, e.g. "I haven't never done something" meaning "I have never done something."
posted by pravit at 9:36 AM on May 11, 2009

I'm not sure why this is so complicated.

First, as many have noted, the question is rhetorica. The speaker expects and hopes to be contradicted.

You affirm that indeed, you have been to Italy. Your Yes, I have contradicts the negative [No, I] have not that you would have to say to confirm the ridiculous notion that the speaker hopes to be false.

This phraseology can easily slide into contemptuous and patronizing mannerisms, but addressing that requires something other than grammatical correctness.
posted by Araucaria at 9:59 AM on May 11, 2009

s/rhetorica/rhetorical/.
posted by Araucaria at 10:00 AM on May 11, 2009

I've noticed a similar amusing trouble answering the (usually rhetorical) question: Will they stop at nothing?
posted by argybarg at 10:25 AM on May 11, 2009

The possible answers are divided into positive and negative: I have (+) and I haven't (-). If those are converted to Y/N, they are Yes (+) and No (-) respectively.

The answer, therefore, is Yes.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:55 AM on May 11, 2009

What most people do in practice when the answer to an implied-negative question is a positive is say "Actually, I have" or "In fact, I have" rather than simply "Yes, I have."

"You haven't been posting on MetaFilter lately, have you?'
"Actually, I have."
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:10 AM on May 11, 2009

This thread is sure bringing out the Vulcan element on MeFi.

Like pravit said, there's no point trying to force language use to be logical. Negative questions expect a positive answer, so "Yes" will normally be taken to mean "Yes, I have," but 1) some people might not get it, and 2) other people are the kind of dickheads who take pleasure in picking apart other people's supposed errors (these are the kind of people who pretend to take double negatives as positives: "Oh, you don't know nothing? That means you know something!"), so it's probably best, as decathecting and others have said, to expand: "Yes, I have" or "No, I haven't."

I hope that hopes.
posted by languagehat at 11:31 AM on May 11, 2009

There is a grammatical precedent in the world's languages for having multiple negatives used to emphasize the negativity of what is said. "I ain't never said nothing to nobody" exists in many dialects of English. It is used in the standard forms of languages like French and Spanish.

The use of "no" to carry over the emphasis of negativity ("He isn't here -- no, he isn't") follows the above pattern, and this does exist in the standard grammar of English. English is already not following boolean logic.

Any conclusion here that relies on boolean logic is, therefore, not addressing the actual issue. The logic behind the question and the answer is clear to everyone involved. The problem of what to actually say to convey the information is purely a grammatical one.

Throughout my life, I have run into the situation where someone ends up saying "yes you can or yes you can't?" or "yes you will or yes you won't?" in order to clarify what the answerer means when they say only "yes". This question here on MeFi reinforces the universality of the problem in English.

If a simple "yes" were the real, correct answer, then shouldn't it work without confusion most of the time? The only way I know to guarantee that there is no confusion is to say, "I have" or "I do", and the "yes" is, in this case, totally optional.
posted by kosmonaut at 11:53 AM on May 11, 2009

First of all, I think people come into trouble by thinking that "yes" is equivalent to "that statement is completely and literally correct." To me, "yes" has a more vague meaning of affirmation, ie, "I'm answering what you're asking me [in spirit if not literally] in the affirmative." So, "haven't you been to Italy?" in spirit means "have you been to Italy?" which you answer in the affirmative (if you have been) by saying "yes."

Second, the "not" is a politeness, or a remnant. There was a time when asking someone a direct question was rude. Haven't you been to Italy = You've been to Italy, haven't you? By tacking on the negative at the end, it's like you're allowing the person room to bow out if they haven't been to Italy without having to directly contradict you. But since we don't really have those social/communicative feelings anymore, the not is almost parenthetical, a rhetorical device, something that smooths over our language.

To me, it goes like this: Isn't this so? = This is so, isn't it? = This is so; is this not so? The negative really becomes meaningless. What they're almost asking is, "Which one is correct: that you have been to Italy, or that you haven't?" And you answer, "I have been to Italy," which is an affirmation of sorts, so it becomes "yes."

But I agree that we could do with a "doch" or a "si."

Derail, but how about "too" as an affirmation-emphasis? As in, "You haven't been to Italy!"..."I have too been to Italy!" I tried explaining that one to a German and wound up switching to "Doch!"
posted by thebazilist at 8:24 PM on May 11, 2009