[communication] acknowledging information obtained

[wispfox]

So, when I get information via phone message or email or other asynchronous medium, my first impulse is _always_ to reply with simply an 'ack'.

Except that, while I'm sure most of the people communicating with me would understand that, I'm not certain that all of them would. And, well, 'ack' if not meaning 'acknowledge' could easily be an expression of distress - _not_ the information I would want to be conveying!

So, much as my first impulse is to say 'ack', what I actually _do_ is convey the same information in a slightly less... computer-ish manner. I simply thank them for the information and let them know that it arrived and was appreciated. Never fails to amuse me, however, that I want to just say 'ack' and be done with it. Especially when I'm dealing with a phone message. Phones are _not_ methods which I enjoy using to write messages, and are an excellent way to demonstrate that I _can_ be brief if I need to be. ;)

*shakes head* It's funny sometimes, watching the ways in which I trained myself out of first impulses so as to be able to better interact with people the way they tend to expect to be interacted with.

Then again, it's also pretty funny watching me around people who comprehend my various shortcuts and methods with which I will ping them verbally. (I appear to have added 'beep' to my more normal method of using various types of meows to ping people and to reply to verbal pings. Hell, I frequently answer the phone - although only if it's australian_joe - with 'meow'. I don't think I do that to anyone else, and don't even always do it to him!)

Comments

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

I've been dealing with communications protocols/electronics professionally, if infrequently for a long time, yet when I see "ack" my first thought is still about Bill the Cat. Silly brain, it was the first mem in that brain slot and it does not want to give up dibs.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

My dad sometimes randomly answers the phone with "nanu nanu."

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Nice. :)

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Someday, you and my dad should be in the same room. It would be vastly amusing. You could talk about Australia and be random together!

(Wait -- this happened! And it *was* amusing! I am vindicated!)

[rosefox]

I always want to answer "Ghostbusters, whaddya want?" but resist, mostly because I work front desk and switchboard at work and that would be a very bad habit to get into.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*cough* *laugh* You know, that would possibly send me into hysterical laughter, regardless of if I was calling you or around while you were being called by someone else. :)

[rosefox]

Janine Melnitz is my hero.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

At work, we use these numeric codes to indicate spending categories in the budget. Next to it, in our internal budget, we put the name of the code, but on forms we submit to other people, it's just numbers. These codes are university-wide. My university includes both a med school and a vet school.

Thus, I am constantly begging to be allowed, even once, to just slip in the code for "teeth."

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

"Sadistic Catering Service -- may I hurt you?"

Thing is, in college I used to answer the shared phone at the end of the hall that way sometimes. Many people failed to even notice what I'd said. A few laughed or got confused. One got extremely flustered, stuttered a bit, then finally blurted, "Glenn? Is that you?", and one very calmly and matter-of-factly, without hesitation, started placing an order for decorations and toys for an S&M party as though that had been her intent all along when she'd picked up the phone.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Dan and I "ack" a lot, sometimes just by saying that to each other. I hate phones, so I much prefer email. And acks by email are so easy. I need to get my new co-workers trained in that, though.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I hate phones, so I much prefer email.

Ditto, although there are exceptions when I don't hate phones, and sometimes there are things for which they are too urgent to rely on email.

Besides, giving me information verbally will _always_ be less useful in terms of my ability to remember it (if it's something factual) than if it's written.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Augh! I have the same impulse. Dire.

So...the live-in beau, Jodawi, he has this THING (or used to -- he's speaking more standard English these days after some concerted effort) where he'd just say "ribbit" as generic acknowledgement. It took almost everyone some time to get used to it, and some people just never
got it and kept being weirded out (he's very introverted, so it wasn't like he could make up for the weird factor by being a Fun Fun Guy). But it's what he did. And it was so...efficient, really, once you learned the lingo. (Which did extend well beyond "ribbit" and which has proved dreadfully infectious in my circle, if sometimes irritating to certain people when they are in an ill humor, demanding that I speak to them in their own dialect, which, sigh, fine, but it's not *natural* anymore.)

AAAAnyway. Firecat's OH e-pings me with meows once in a while, too. And CK would fill phone silences with them. :-)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

demanding that I speak to them in their own dialect, which, sigh, fine, but it's not *natural* anymore.

*amused* It's never been natural for me. I'm just so very accustomed at this point to putting lots of words around most interaction that it always comes as a pleasant surprise when I find people that I'm confident _don't_ require all the extra words.

(Of course, when I _do_ have things which require effort and thought to communicate, I put ridiculous amounts of words around them. Might be why I want to use fewer words when I _don't_ feel like I have to. Interesting idea)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I think I was just supposed to figure out what *sie* meant by certain words and phrases, and accept that and use it, without any discussion or qualification.

Yuck! That's... unpleasant!

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

My first instinct is frequently "ACK"; I usually slow down enough to consider whether it'll be correctly interpreted by the person I'm speaking to, and a significant amount of the time it's safe to go ahead and use it. I've also received "ACK" messages from friends (for both meanings).

Once in a blue moon, it's "NAK". (Which counts as saying more than "I heard you", but still seems relevant here.)

In person or on the phone, I may just meow. This seems utterly natural to many of my friends who register the meaning without quite noticing consciously that it was conveyed with a meow[*], and either natural or odd-but-cute-and-understandable to other friends who notice that it's a meow ... and absolutely confuses other friends who want to know a) why I'm meowing, and b) a literal translation into English. (The problem with the latter is that it's extremely context-dependent, and some of the meanings do not have clear English translations. But the friends who get it at all seem to get all of it.)

Unlike "ACK" and "NAK", the meow nearly always slips out before I remember to consider whether the person I'm talking to will understand it. I think I picked it up after learning ACK/NAK but I don't remember when or from whom.

[*] These are the folks who hear and understand my meow and frequently meow back and seem to think it's completely ordinary until someone else points out that we just meowed to each other and asks what that's all about. Then they're like, "We did? Wait, why didn't I realize that's what we were doing and how on Earth did I know what it meant? Wow, I guess I meow."

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Given that cell phone communication is so terrifically fallible due to line quality but also due to the unavoidable signal delays, I have often wished that there was a one-syllable way to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Could you please repeat that?" Fewer syllables would also tend to avoid the all-too-frequent rippling talking over each other when sorting out turn-taking when sorting out missed phrases. For this purpose I would think "NAK" would work well. It'd have the additional benefit that we could just extend the context of use of the original semantics, rather than having to twist it much. I also like ACK but I think it could kill NAK in the cell phone context.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

have often wished that there was a one-syllable way to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Could you please repeat that?"

I think that, in that case, I have tended to shorten it to "sorry, what?". But yes, it doesn't really make it clear what I missed; whether it's a parsing issue or a hearing issue or a connection issue.

But yeah, interesting use of 'NAK'! :)

[rosefox]

You could have "ack"ed my text. *)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I suspected that, but I wasn't sure of that. And the funny thing is, even though I got around to writing this post, I forgot to send you email _asking_ if I could have. ;)

[deyo.livejournal.com]

.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

!

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

And I read that as "ok, so you're escaping to the shell... but for what?"

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

I read that as "ok, so you want to execute something... but what?"

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

Roger Wilco.

Over.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I see your problem! You need the original syn. Without it the "ack" just isn't a comprehensible part of human experience.

[eclectic-1.livejournal.com]

Huh. I thought I was the only only to ping people with various meows, other than the boyfriend I started that with and ian_gunn.

I never thought about it being pinging either, but that is exactly what it is.

It is nice to have people close enough to you to get those kind of short-cuts. I don't think I could list all of the short-cuts that Ian & I use.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

I keep a mental list of my friends' usage of "ack". I know some use it to acknowledge, and some use it for aggravation, and I can usually keep track of who's who. Incidentally, depending on who it is, I may be perfectly content with getting an "ack" or I might want more confirmation that they actually got the message rather than half-listened to it and heard that I stopped talking.

I rarely answer the phone with a "meow" (and then only with a couple of specific individuals), but I have been known to call people and meow at them.

(I also yell "ping" to locate a person. It carries much better and is easier to shout than the names of the people I'm likely to want to locate.)