Did you go to the bank to withdraw money?

你去银行取钱了吗？

So you didn’t. Is that right?

那么你没有去。是不是？

Why didn’t you just answer my question directly? Why would Chinese answer questions this way? I simply asked if you did it or not. It’s a very simple question. And Chinese often give the reason before they would give a direct answer.

你为什么不就直接回答我的问题？为什么中国人会这么回答呢？我只是简单地问你有没有去。这个问题很简单。而中国人常常先说明理由再给答案。

You know, today I asked a student if he brought his dictionary with him. It’s a rule I made for the class that everyone brings a bilingual dictionary with them because sometimes they don’t understand me. The funniest thing is that this student gave me a lot of reasons and no direct answer.

你知道吗，今天我问一个学生他有没有带字典来。因为有时候班上的人听不懂我说的，所以我跟他们定了一个规定，那就是每个人带一本英汉字典。最可笑的事是这个学生给了我很多理由，没有一个直接的答案。

Yeah, after all the explanations like, it’s too heavy, I was in a hurry…whatever.

是，在所有的解释之后，比如太重了，我出门时很急……等等。