Maru and Batsu
People from different countries have different ways of symbolizing the answers to any yes-no, right-wrong or true-false question. While the English uses the checkmark and the cross mark as symbols of opposite meaning, American often uses the cross mark to replace the use of the checkmark to symbolize the presence or the positive state of something as if the two are interexchangeable. In Japan, they use a slightly different system which is the “maru and batsu” —-the hollow circle dot and the cross mark. Maru, which means “circular” in Japanese becomes the representation of merit and excellency while batsu, which actually came from the word “bad” in English becomes the representation of all things negative. Because of all these subtle cultural differences in the usage of signs and symbols, confusion can sometimes be created.
Western cultures are very keen on the uses of the cross mark, which is the same as an “X”, or the 24th alphabet, to indicate new technology or breakthroughs in general. For example, Microsoft uses the name “Xbox” to represent their newest gaming system. While the Americans and the rest of the world love their innovation, the Japanese were skeptical simply because of its misleading name — the “Bad Box”. There are many other interesting uses of the “X” mark in America such as “X’mas” as the short-hand for Christmas, which my grade school art teacher who was deeply pious regarded as a sacrilege of the Christian religion, and the simple use “x” to replace “ex” to promote the power of many commercialize products like the “Xtreme” energy drinks or “Xterminator” anti-spam software.
Many linguists will say that English is the first true international language, a common language that promotes cultural and commercial exchanges. Today, 89% of the EU claimed that they are English speakers. Around the world, there are 375 million people who are English speakers. Although not every single one of them is of English descent and possess very distinctive local cultures of their own, many cities and countries who have used English as their official language, or rather the “unofficial” people’s language for a substantial amount of time such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, India, United States of Emirates and many more African countries such as Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria had adopted the British signs and symbols system together with the English languages over the years and continued their usage long after the British colonial rule. It is interesting to see, however, that the Americans have broken out of the pack and developed their own sets of rules, as for everything else. Of course, as one of the biggest, most powerful nations in the world, they can decide that the rest of the world should go through the trouble of following them while they make up rules that make their lives easy. This attitude can be exemplified even by the usage of something as trivial as the checkmark and the cross mark.
Sometime I cannot believe how arrogant Americans are with regard to filling out forms. Because of my work, I have administered many consumer research studies in which people were asked to answer a few very simple questions on the questionnaires regarding their impressions of the quality of the products of inquiry. They treated the instructions as if they were optional: When asked to fill in the circle next to one of the descriptions that fitted their situations best, there would always be people who put checkmarks, cross marks or even circle the descriptions themselves completely disregarding the space we provided for them. With respect to all these defiant behaviors, I could only attribute them to the traumatic SAT/ACT experience many Americans have to go through as teenagers, which forever disabled them from ever “filling in the box” again.
This is all just very fun to read about until the way how you express yes or no becomes life-threatening. For example when one travels across the borders to different countries, one is often given custom declaration forms to fill out. What if the question is “Are you in possession of firearms?” and with his/her unyielding Americanism, this stubborn American tourist puts an “X” in the “No” column. So what does that even mean? Does it mean he/she “is not in possession of firearms” ? Or he/she is saying that “I negate the fact that I am not in possession of firearms?” I’m certainly very impressed by the Americans for their linguistics dexterity.