Doubt

In college, something I noticed was that many of the Indian teaching assistants and grad students used the word "doubt" to mean "question". As in, "I have a doubt about the homework. Are we required to do problem number 5?" or "Does anyone have any doubts about the assignment".

It may or may not be technically correct usage, but it is certainly not something a native speaker would say. I have only heard Indians use this pattern of speech, never Chinese or any other nationality. I was wondering if anyone here knows of a linguistic explanation, for example the same word in their native language being used for "doubt" and "question".

One guess would be that they use "There's no doubt about that" a lot more frequently in their language than we do, thus it becomes natural for them to just flip it other way around. From what I know, though, we don't really say it that way in Vietnamese. It would be "Allow me to ask, are we required to do problem number 5?"

Indians *are* native speakers, of their own English dialect.

Indians *are* native speakers, of their own English dialect.

What? To be clear, I am talking about Indians from India, not Native Americans. And I am talking about Indians for whom English is a second language.

In Spanish, it's common to say it like: "Tengo una duda acerca de la tarea."

'Duda' is doubt. It might be similar for the Indians.

In portuguese we use "Pergunta" for "Question" and "Dúvida" for "Doubt"

I did have one brazilian classmate that would "ask a doubt" to the teacher, but we made fun of him because of that so it's not really a common occurance.

Doubt means uncertainty, not question; In the context you've given the speaker is stating they are uncertain pf the parameters they've been given and wish for clarification/elaboration.

I've always thought it was more a European English thing than an English as a Second Language one.

I think it's more of "I doubt this" being similar to "I question this", after talking to my mom about it. We both speak Bengali, which is fairly close to Hindi, if that matters.

If you "doubt something" or "have a doubt about something", you question yourself or someone about it; It doesn't matter what idiom you speak (unless you use the exact same word for both "doubt" and "question").

Both in English and Portuguese, I've heard "does anyone have any doubts about the assignment/homework/lesson" and "does anyone have any questions about the assignment/homework/lesson" being used, a lot.

If you "doubt something" or "have a doubt about something", you question yourself or someone about it; It doesn't matter what idiom you speak (unless you use the exact same word for both "doubt" and "question").

Both in English and Portuguese, I've heard "does anyone have any doubts about the assignment/homework/lesson" and "does anyone have any questions about the assignment/homework/lesson" being used, a lot.

I don't think it's quite "doubting = questioning", but rather the other way around, question can mean both inquiry and uncertainty.

Doubt means uncertainty, not question; In the context you've given the speaker is stating they are uncertain pf the parameters they've been given and wish for clarification/elaboration.

I've always thought it was more a European English thing than an English as a Second Language one.

This

Indians *are* native speakers, of their own English dialect.

And this.

The Indians as a country rapidly expanding it's english speaking populace will develop in some sense a bit of their own english colloquialism, as well as adopiting many of those native to the source of the language. Heads up, it's not america.

In a technical sense, the usage is not incorrect.