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BGonline.org Forums
Ruling
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Ruling (Casper van der Tak)
Date: Tuesday, 1 November 2011, at 3:20 p.m.
Casper wrote:
But in any case my understanding of English is different from most of the others here, who are native speakers.
I'm a native speaker, but I've also had a lot of exposure to non-native speakers from all over the world. I would say that, paradoxically, native speakers are more likely to say something confusing in this sort of scenario. If a non-native speaker were to say, "take it," I would assume that "I take" was intended, and I'm confident that I would nearly always be correct. Native speakers, on the other hand, have a tendency to come up with all kinds of creative synonyms for "take" or "pass" and there have been times when I have been completely in the dark as to which was intended. In this particular case, I would probably have first interpreted the response as "I take," then realized that "take it" is a slightly odd way for a native speaker to say "I take," and, if I were alert enough, would have asked for clarification. But if I were not alert, I might have just assumed it meant "take."
Here's another example that I've observed. The taker/passer simply says, "O.K." and moves the cube to an ambiguous location, off to the side of the board near the center but slightly closer to himself than to me. Does that mean take or pass? Can't swear to it but I think I've seen it go both ways.
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