Q:

What exactly might non-native speakers mean by "doubt"?

Every once in a while, we get questions on math.SE that seem to be trying to use the word "doubt" in a non-standard way. If you search for "doubt" (on math.SE, not here on meta), you'll find dozens of these questions. I'm wondering what exactly is meant. Often the intended meaning seems to be something like "question", but I'm not sure whether that's all there is to it. It seems that in some other languages (or perhaps in one language with many speakers) the semantic field of questions, doubts and uncertain knowledge is carved up slightly differently. Perhaps someone whose native language works that way could throw some light on this? (In my native language, German, the words are closely synonymous to their English counterparts: question/Frage, doubt/Zweifel.)

A:

It means "question" in Indian English, though I'm not sure about all the nuances.
From a question on English.SE:

This is Indian English. See Vishy's Indian English Dictionary. 

July 12, 2006Vishy's Indian English
    Dictionary: doubt
doubt. /DOWT/. A question asking for
    clarification. In standard English and
    American, the noun doubt is
    uncountable and refers to a lack of
    complete trust in something. Doubt may
    be expressed as simply as doubting
    someone's abilities or as profoundly
    as someone doubting their own
    religious faith. Not so in India. In
    India, doubt can be used as a
    countable noun. When a school teacher
    goes over an intricate concept in
    class, she invariably leaves some
    students with doubts in their mind
    about their understanding of the
    material just covered. Students ask
    her questions to get a better
    understanding of the concept and each
    such question is called a doubt. It is
    entirely normal to hear a statement
    like "I have just one doubt, miss" or
    "If you have any doubts before the
    exam tomorrow, come see me in the
    staff room". The doubts in the
    aforementioned sentences are not as
    much rooted in a lack of faith as in a
    lack of understanding. Attentive
    readers would have encountered the
    Indian English sense of doubt a fair
    bit on online message boards in
    threads started by Indians. Titles
    such as "Visual Basic .NET/Oracle
    doubt" are not uncommon for threads on
    programming-related message boards. It
    is my understanding that this sense is
    mostly prevalent in southern India,
    but I could be wrong on this count.

A:

In Spanish (at least in Mexico), it is perfectly common and fine to preface a question with "Tengo una duda" (literally, "I have a doubt" or "I have one doubt"). It would be entirely common to hear it just as in the example quoted in Fabian's answer. Though it would be just as likely to hear "Tengo una pregunta" ("I have one question" or "I have a question").

A:

One of my customers is Spanish.  If a native English speaker doubts what I say, it has a negative connotation, not quite that I have lied but maybe so.  But for the Spanish it seems to just be not understanding what was said, not in the sense of parsing the sentence, but in the sense of not getting the meaning.  It helped a lot in our relations when I realized that and stopped taking offense.

