Enchom's blog

Doubt about doubt
By Enchom, history, 11 months ago, In English

This is not really a programming-related blog.

I've noticed that a lot of Indian competitors use the word "doubt" when talking about a wrong solution they have or failure to understand some editorial. Most of the time it's quite an imprecise usage of the English word, as there is no specific thing that is being doubted.

My guess is that there is some word in Hindi (or one of the many other Indian languages) that has a richer meaning, but is taught to be translated as "doubt". Even when correctly used, it is disproportionately popular among Indians, so it must correspond to something very common.

So to satisfy my linguistic curiosity, could any Indian speakers elaborate on the effect I've observed?

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11 months ago, # |
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I can confirm all my indian friends say doubt alot. They also say things like "the food is very less" when a more natural translation is "there isn't that much food"

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11 months ago, # |
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nowadays hinglish is getting popular where words of english are used while speaking hindi. so doubt is a single word which fits well in hinglish and is spoken a lot in normal conversation as well. This might be one of the reason

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11 months ago, # |
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I am convinced that I had already seen blog like this, but I can't find it now. Nobody remember it?

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11 months ago, # |
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taught to be translated as "doubt"

When I was preparing for entrance exams for college admissions, coaching institutes used to organise doubt solving sessions. The expectation of these sessions was that you could ask any questions independent of progress made (including complete answers).

Google search: Doubt in Hindi
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    11 months ago, # ^ |
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    I don't think I actually ever got even a single doubt resolved in one of those doubt solving sessions.

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    11 months ago, # ^ |
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    I think doubt comes from a different source altogether instead of being a literal Hindi-English translation. I have never seen that Hindi word used for this context.

    It might come from this chain of events happening all the time: "I'm unable to solve this problem, so I doubt that my way of solving it is correct at all" -> turns out that you need something different completely, so the meaning of doubt changed for the student.

    Or something like teachers telling their students "when in doubt, let me know" and students using it to ask anything and everything.

    Then this terminology probably caught on with teachers (either old teachers adopting this terminology because it was easier for students or the new generation of teachers who were used to getting their "doubts" solved by their own teachers).

    I also know of someone in a teaching position who used to say that you shouldn't doubt yourself before an important exam, so the fact that you have questions about the subject matter is a doubt on your capabilities before the exam (they used to also say that if you have any "doubts" just before the exam while solving a few papers, just assume that the "answer key" is wrong, probably because ruining your mental state before an important exam is not worth it).

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