Generally speaking, is it not possible to indicate 'was' or 'were' on '是‘ or '在‘？？

[hedwards]

@anonymoose, LOL, I thought that 是的 was more or less equivalent to the English correct. Where you're commenting on the actual sentence rather than giving a yes or no.

 

Sometimes yes and correct will be the same thing, but there's cases where answering incorrect will be the same thing as saying yes. Making things rather confusing.

 

I could be wrong about that, I don't typically use 是的 to give an affirmative answer, I'll give the verb they asked about back as the response.

[Demonic_Duck]

Re: "Do you mind if I borrow your book?"

"Yes" means you may not borrow the book.

"Yeah sure, go ahead" means you may borrow the book.

"Not at all, take it" of course means you can borrow it.

 

The first two answers are both in the affirmative, but the first one (to my mind at least) very clearly means you can't borrow it.

 

Anyway, at least in this case it'd be unambiguous in Chinese: “介意” or “不介意”.