[HN Gopher] The architecture of "not bad": Decoding the Chinese ...
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The architecture of "not bad": Decoding the Chinese source code of
the void
Author : Suggger
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-12-11 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (suggger.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (suggger.substack.com)
| skybrian wrote:
| Maybe there's a difference in frequency of usage, but we also say
| things like "he's not wrong" pretty often in English.
| crote wrote:
| I reckon a decept part of that is due to American English vs.
| British English.
|
| A great example of this is the Korean War, where a British
| brigadier in an extremely difficult situation told an American
| general "Things are a bit sticky, sir" - who interpreted it as
| "Could be better, but we're holding the line". The
| misunderstanding resulted in 500 dead and captured.
| BalinKing wrote:
| FWIW I'm not quite convinced there's _that_ much of a
| dialectical divide: "Not bad," "he's not wrong," etc. sound
| entirely natural to me in American English.
| t-3 wrote:
| "American English" has so many dialects and regional
| variations that aren't even mutually intelligible that
| making statements about it is pointless anyway.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I'd argue there's few Americans I flat out couldn't
| understand, even if it sounds like they're putting their
| words through a blender. And I say that having lived all
| over the country, Northeast, Midwest, West, and deep
| South. Accents can be thick but they're largely
| intelligible. Unlike, say, the Scots.
|
| Especially compared to a language like German. I took 6
| years of German and still didn't have a damn clue what
| anyone was saying if they were talking in dialect.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The main difference may be in the range of meanings.
|
| In a scale of 0 to 10 where "bad" is 0, one side will take
| "not bad" as a 4~5 while the other side meant it as 7~8.
| mercer wrote:
| ngl
| tomlockwood wrote:
| As an Australian can I just say of this article: yeah nah
| deadlyllama wrote:
| As a New Zealander, I can say: it's not bad.
| astrange wrote:
| One thing I remember from languagelog is that almost all
| English speakers have a form of "yeah no" and they all think
| they invented it.
|
| https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=30758
|
| Might be Scottish.
| BurritoAlPastor wrote:
| The language pattern the author refers to is called litotes
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes), but to say that English
| doesn't use them is... not quite right.
| alwa wrote:
| Not quite right, but not quite wrong, no? The pattern seems
| similar, but I think of litotes (as the Wikipedia article
| suggests) as a rhetorical device: the assertion-by-negation
| carries an ironic charge, and strikes the (Western) ear by
| standing out from the ordinary affirmative register.
|
| If I'm understanding the author's account of Chinese assertion-
| by-negation correctly, doesn't it sound like assertion-by-
| negation is the ordinary case in that linguistic tradition, and
| it's the assertive case that jars the ear? Same pattern,
| different effect?
| seszett wrote:
| I think it's especially American English that doesn't use
| litotes as much as British English or the other Western
| European languages.
|
| This piece seems to be very much about American English, when
| I read something like:
|
| > _In English, this feels bizarre. If something is good, you
| say: Nice Great Perfect Brilliant_
| messe wrote:
| I think Hiberno-English uses them even more.
| Bengalilol wrote:
| The debug log was not without its charms. The article was not bad
| yet not my favorite.
| sph wrote:
| That's not ideal. I'm not a fan of this.
| kimixa wrote:
| As a Brit, I'm not quite sure this article is right in it's
| declaration it's a universal "English" thing and not more
| "American English".
| tomww wrote:
| Yep, "not bad" is very very common here - definitely more so
| than "decent".
| sph wrote:
| "How are you?" "Not too bad" always makes me smile. Such a
| British answer.
| AStrangeMorrow wrote:
| Yeah, same as a French speaker first living in the US, I have
| to sometimes refrain myself from calling things "just fine",
| "will do" or "not bad". These are still used in American
| English, but I tend to use them for cases were people normally
| use more positive/stronger version.
|
| Like at a grocery store: "is that enough? That will do yes ->
| yes that's perfect"
| chris_armstrong wrote:
| I would say Australian English relies on this negation even
| more than British English, to the point of being confusing
| without more cultural context.
| sitharus wrote:
| I've had this discussion with American friends quite recently,
| it's very much an American English thing to not use those
| constructions. Certainly in British, New Zealand, and
| Australian English we do all the time.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Two countries divided by a common language . . .
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You name the quality directly. You point at it. You own it.
|
| Fun thing: it works even better with Americans and Germans when
| it comes to negativity, because Germans also express _negativity_
| directly. For me, as a German, Americans want to be coddled and
| they _do not_ like it if you clearly express to an American that
| he is bullshitting you. Germans (and I 'd say, Germanic/Nordic-
| origin cultures as a whole) don't like wasting time coddling
| around and sucking up for no reason at all. We're an efficient
| people, after all.
|
| That's also a part of why Linus Torvalds is such a polarizing
| figure across the Internet. To me as a German, yes, he could dial
| down the ad-hominem a bit but that's it. The constant American
| whining about his tone however is... grating on my nerves. He's
| speaking the truth, accept it for what it is and move the fuck
| on.
|
| Oh, and it's also why Wal-Mart failed so disastrously many
| decades ago when they tried to enter Germany. Ignoring labor
| rights was bad enough, but we could have let that slide (given
| that _our own_ discounters were all heavily embroiled in
| scandals)... but what was just way too uncanny from what I hear
| from older people who actually lived during that time was the
| greeters. And it matches up with many a write-up [1].
|
| [1] https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/why-walmart-
| failed-...
| Stevvo wrote:
| Poetic racism. Very odd reading.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Is identifying a difference between two cultures racism? Or did
| I miss something?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Something about this article strikes home for me. I default to
| 'not bad' for something I don't actively dislike; past that it's
| a pretty substantial jump to get to 'good', at probably about the
| same point I'd be willing to actively recommend something to
| someone else, and then even more substantial to get to anything
| like 'great'.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| This makes me think of a tool from semiotics called the Greimas
| square where you can have opposing concepts e.g. A and B (ugly &
| beautiful, for & against, legal & illegal).
|
| At the surface level they can appear as binaries, but the
| negation of A is not equivalent to B and vice versa (e.g. illegal
| is not equivalent to not-legal) and encourages the consideration
| of more complex meta-concepts which at surface level seem like
| contradictions but are not (both beautiful and ugly, neither for
| or against).
|
| --
|
| Others have pointed out that English speakers do have the
| capacity, and do use these sort of double negatives that allow
| for this ambiguity and nuance, but if you are an English-only
| speaker, I do believe that there are concepts that are thick with
| meaning and the meaning cannot accurately be communicated through
| a translation - they come with a lot of contextual baggage where
| the meaning can not be communicated in words alone.
|
| --
|
| As a New Zealander who's lived in the U.S. for the last 15 years,
| I've realized in conversations with some native Americans where
| despite sincere (I think) efforts on both sides, I've not been
| able to communicate what I mean. I don't think it's anything to
| do with intelligence, but like author hints how language shapes
| how we think and therefore our realities.
|
| --
|
| I've never found poetry to be interesting, but recently I've come
| to appreciate how I think poets attempt to bypass this flaw of
| language, and how good poets sometimes seem to succeed!
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