The architecture of “not bad”: Decoding the Chinese source code of the void

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.

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?

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

I think Hiberno-English uses them even more.

Yes, that sentence is simply untrue for, at the very least, BrE. For example: https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/chart-show... (2015)

Really? I read the same sentence (as an American) and immediately thought that they must be referring to British English. Certainly nobody says brilliant as an affirmation here.

And "no problem" and "not bad" are both common colloquial statements in American English.

This is all very familiar with this North Eastern American English speaker except the "quite good" one. The rest seem normal to me in my American English. Perhaps it's too many Dr Who and or Monty python as a youth. Though in New England the language can be very sarcastic and indirect.

According to Wikipedia, bu-chuo is a Chinese litotes

You're quite not wrong :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes#Chinese

> 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?

No? Assertion by assertion is the ordinary case, just like you'd expect for everything.

But it's easy to say 他没猜错, because it takes advantage of a common element of Chinese grammar that doesn't match well to English.

Think of 猜错 as a verb with an inherently negative polarity, like "fail" or "miss". There is no difficulty in saying "he didn't miss", even though there is difficulty in saying "he didn't not hit" and missing is always the same thing as not hitting. 猜错 is similarly easy to use. (Though it's less opaque; it is composed of the verb 猜 "guess" and the verbal result complement 错 "wrong".)

The opposite of 猜错 is 猜对 ("guess right"), and it's very common.

You would absolutely say "not bad" as an idiomatic variant of "good" in American English.

I (American) regularly use litotes both for ironic emphasis (like saying "not bad" at an amazing restaurant) and when I genuinely mean "it's not great but it's not terrible". Honestly not sure which is more common. It all depends on context and tone.

American english doesn't use them as much. But british english uses them more. English spoken by someone from finland, sweden or norway would use them even more