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Suppose I was asked this negative question:

You are not a student, are you?

and I'm not a student.

Years ago I read in a book that in American English the answer would be

No, I'm not a student

But in British English, the answer would be

Yes, I'm not a student

Apparently this allowed the character to identify someone's allegiance not unlike the way you count with your fingers. But is this true? Because I can't seem to find anything that supports this, only the usual "4 way system yes no yea nay"

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    No, it's not true. Do you mean a shibboleth?
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Apr 4 at 8:21
  • That business about "identify someone's allegiance not unlike the way you count with your fingers" isn't really true! It's depicted in the film Inglourious Basterds that Germans would signify the count of three using their thumb and two other adjacent fingers while Anglo-Saxons, Americans, and Asians I presume use the three middle fingers.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 4 at 10:40
  • @FumbleFingers - I just did a test - I instructed myself to signify three with my fingers, and, indeed, I held down my little finger with the thumb of the same hand, and held up the remaining three.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 4 at 12:07
  • @FumbleFingers That film was a big load of bollocks from a/an historical point of view. This was possibly deliberate, the aim being satirical (the film being seen by some as a Tarantino 'challenge to the glorification of heroism and cultural superiority embedded in the American collective memory of WWII'. I think it's just a crappy film. The three-finger thing reminds me of the alleged WWII British belief that no German could say 'Wolverhampton Wanderers', so enemy agents could be caught out by making them repeat it. My lovely Birgitta from Hamburg certainly could say it, 50 years ago....
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 4 at 12:17
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    Separate but related is the bewildering tendency to start such responses with a combination of both positive and negative. This video connects it to the American Midwest and posits that the order matters, but I'm not sure that's sociolinguistically solid.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Apr 4 at 17:44

2 Answers 2

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Use of "Yes, I'm not ...", if any at all, is likely to be confined only to careless use in conversations. This use is not in written form in BrE or AmE.

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  • Yes can be used to contradict but it depends on the precise context. It normally suggests you're agreeing with something the person says or means, just perhaps not what they immediately said.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Apr 4 at 13:31
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I'm British and I could answer it either way, but it depends on how the question is asked.

If it's a statement with "aren't you?" on the end looking for confirmation then I would say "Yes, I'm not." The yes is agreeing with their statement that I'm not a student (not my state of studenthood). If they were wrong, I'd say something like "No, I'm actually a student."

If they had no preconception whether I was a student or not, I'd answer with no.

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