Borrowing a page from Bislama

(I told this idea to about a dozen people already today, but I think it's so great that I need to share it even more.)

In the English language, questions with negative modifiers are terribly open-ended. A straightforward question is "Have you heard the news?" This question can be answered in two ways with two distinct meanings:

"Yes, your statement is true and I have heard the news"
"No, your statement is false and I have not heard the news."

However, if one adds a negative modifier, making the question "Haven't you heard the news?" there are suddenly four ways to answer:

"Yes, your statement is true and I have not heard the news."
"No, your statement is false and I have heard the news."
"Yes, I have heard the news. Your statment is false."
"No, I have not heard the news. Your statement is true."

This generates confusion and inevitably requires some level of clarification. This question-response process needs streamlining, and Bislama knows how to do it!

Bislama, as you may recall, was created by people who though English was nutty enough as it was already, and created a rather minimalist language that simplified many of English's intricacies. One of the ways they did this was by changing how people respond to questions. A standard question, like in English, can be answered in two ways: Yes and no. However, to eliminate the ambiguity of English questions with negative modifiers, one would instead answer with si or no. Personally, I'd change no to something else, like na or ni, but the first one might still be confusing and the other is actually used as a weapon by some knights.

Anyway, "si" is used to mean "Yes, I have done the action asked and your statement is false," while "no" means "No, I have not done the action asked and your statement is true." If we adopt these practices today, we can end ambiguity tomorrow! Or maybe the day after tomorrow! Or some time after that!