[Arnavion]

The answers to negative questions are the other way around in Japanese compared to English.

"Are you not a student?"

In English, the non-student speaker would respond with "No", short for "No, I am not."

In Japanese, the non-student speaker would respond with "Yes", short for "Yes that's correct."

A literal translation would make this mistake.

[aidenn0]

In English it's ambiguous.

Source: I once said "So I guess you don't want to do the long-distance thing" to a native English speaker and she said "no" meaning she did, while I interpreted it the way you suggest and we (briefly) were not on the same page as to whether or not we were in a relationship.

[Tor3]

My native Germanic language has a specific variant of 'yes' which is perfect for when both 'no' and 'yes' alone would be ambiguous. Not sure why not more languages have that. Japanese 'hai' isn't really 'yes' though.. so it's used way differently than you would use just 'yes'. In colloquial speech it's more common uttering various sounds instead.

[thaumasiotes]

> My native Germanic language has a specific variant of 'yes' which is perfect for when both 'no' and 'yes' alone would be ambiguous. Not sure why not more languages have that.

French draws this distinction; ordinary 'yes' is oui; 'yes' contradicting a negative is si instead.

Mandarin gives you a variety of options for how to respond. You can use equivalents of 'yes' and 'no', but it's more common to echo the verb in the question.

你喜欢吃辣的吗？("Do you like eating spicy food?")

不喜欢 ("[I] don't like [it].")

Here we have no need to worry about whether the question was positive or negative; if I like the food I'll say 喜欢 and if I don't I'll say 不喜欢.

It's also possible to say 对 "correct", in which case it does matter how the question was phrased.

The specific question here, 你不是学生吗 "Are you not a student?", might be a little odder than usual because the verb 是 is also what's used for a simple "yes". But for "No, I'm not" 不是 is unambiguous, and I have a vague gut feeling that 是啊 would probably be taken as "Yes, I am". And of course you have the option of continuing your response ("yes, I'm a student, I've been enrolled here for two years") if you feel the short answer was too cryptic.

[userbinator]

Not really familiar with Japanese; but I would interpret the English in exactly the opposite way, like the Japanese version.

(Native American English speaker.)

[rkomorn]

I'd consider it ambiguous and probably clarify it like "yes you are a student, or no you are not?"