[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

[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'! :)