missing nots

[darkoshi]

Work emails from colleagues in India and Vietnam often seem to suffer the problem of missing the word "not" in key places. When taking the statements as written, they seem to indicate the opposite of what the colleagues are intending to say, based on other cues in the email.

I wonder if it is due to negation being handled differently in their native languages.

For example: ...but I did see any differences...
instead of : ...but I did not see any differences...

For example: I doubt build was performed. I checked and could see latest build having changes.
instead of: ...I checked and could see the latest build NOT having the changes.

Comments

[frith]

Looking at the word pairs of 'did' and 'not' as a mathematical statement, they do look like they should cancel each other out. 8^D