By Akeem Lasisi
In spite of the sweet promise in the above question, many people may miss the gift if the poser comes up in a real life situation. They will bungle the opportunity not because they do not need the money — and not because the person asking is not ready to part with the bountiful cash. But they will miss it on grammar grounds. They will wrongly answer the question by saying, ‘Yes’. Once they say so, it means that they mind being given the money. Put differently, they do not need it!
The fact is that do-you-mind questions are among the trickiest in the English Language. No wonder, they regularly feature in popular examinations such as the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). Unlike what many other questions require, when you say YES to do-yo-mind questions, it means you don’t want the offer:
Do you want me to give you N100m? (A simple, direct question.)
‘Yes, I want.’
‘No, I don’t want.’
The answers are equally direct and uncomplicated. However, compare the question and answers with the following:
Do you mind bread and butter?
‘Yes! Indeed, I’m very hungry.’
What a contradiction! The guy is very hungry but he has sentenced himself to further hunger by wrongly answering YES!
Do you mind giving you N100m?
‘Yes. (I mind.)’ This means you don’t want it.
‘No. (I don’t mind.)’ Means you want the money.
Lesson: Always be careful whenever responding to do-you-mind posers.
How do you do?
This is another question that sparks errors. The reason is that a lot of people think it means ‘How are you?’ whereas its meaning is totally different. ‘How do you do’ is a formal greeting not really asking a question but meaning ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you’ or ‘Pleased to meet you.’ So, how do you respond? The appropriate response is, ‘How do you do’, indicating that you are telling the speaker it’s a pleasure meeting them too. So, it’s wrong to say ‘Fine.’ or ‘I’m doing well.’ when someone tells you ‘How do you do’?
Didn’t I ask you to wash the plate?
Here is another kind of intriguing questions. It’s meaning is not hidden or dramatic like that of ‘How do you do’. It is also neither a figure of speech nor an idiom. Yet, responding to it can be complicated when the answer is in the negative. The overriding rule is that when the answer is positive, you normally say ‘yes’ but when negative, ‘no’ is the answer — no matter the way the question is framed:
Did I ask you to wash the plate?
‘Yes, you did.’ (Correct)
‘No, you didn’t.’ (Correct)
Didn’t I ask you to wash the plate?
Yes, you did. (Correct)
Yes, you didn’t. (Wrong)
No, you didn’t. (Correct)
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