• floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    In Chinese, affirmation is often compiled through negation:

    没错 (méi cuò) = “not wrong” = Right

    不差 (bù chà) = “not bad” = Decent

    还行 (hái xíng) = “still passable” = Okay

    没事 (méi shì) = “no problem” = It’s fine

    In English, this feels bizarre. If something is good, you say:

    Nice

    Great

    Perfect

    Brilliant

    You name the quality directly. You point at it. You own it.

    In American positivity-laden, self-marketing, businessy English perhaps. But in the UK “not bad”, “could be worse”, “not wrong”, “can’t complain”, “I’ve had worse” and so on is often as positive as it gets, or at least was for a long time. American positive-speak gets on British people’s nerves; it’s perceived as boorish, boastful and unsubtle. And “no problem” is common in English all over. British people do say “brilliant” but only when they’re being unusually enthusiastic, or fake, or sarcastic.

    • 10MeterFeldweg@feddit.org
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      14 hours ago

      A German proverb translates like "No complaint is praise enough ".

      An American friend who plays in a band called it the German compliment after her first gigs in Germany. Phrases along the line of “you were bit not as shitty as I thought” have been heard quite often and were really meant as a compliment.

  • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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    15 hours ago

    I feel like the author is exaggerating how the languages work, people say 对 and 好啊 in Chinese and “not wrong” and “not bad” in English pretty frequently.