“Do you mind if I something?” is a polite way in English to ask for something but it’s the weirdest thing I’ve been trying to learn to understand for over 30 years as an English-as-second-language speaker.
On a surface, it’s a simple yes/no question where “yes” means “I do mind” so it’s essentially a negative “no” answer to someone’s request and “no” is the positive/permissive “yes” answer.
But that’s not how people answer.
I don’t know if it’s about people associating answering “no” to a negative or harsh response so a lot of people would say something like “yeah, go ahead”.
I’m not saying I don’t understand people’s intent when they answer: that’s usually easy enough to interpret from their face, body language and how they reply — although, when I moved to US for the first time back in the day, it did take me a while to get used to interpreting them.
I’m just confused on a linguistic and anthropological level. It seems to be a question that for politeness turns yes and no upside down but for other cultural reasons it actually makes it harder to give a “positive no” so the answers become a dance of interpretation.
I tend to answer “please do” to avoid the confusion myself.