Yes, no, maybe so
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''Yes'' and ''no'', or word pairs with similar words, are expressions of the affirmative and the negative, respectively, in several languages, including
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
. Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including
Early Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
and Modern English has reduced to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse Code, and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems. Answering yes/no question with single words meaning 'yes' or 'no' is by no means universal. Probably about half the world's languages typically employ an
echo response In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value. For examp ...
: repeating the verb in the question in an affirmative or a negative form. Some of these also have optional words for 'yes' and 'no', like Hungarian,
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, and
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
. Others simply don't have designated yes/no words, like Welsh,
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, Thai , and Chinese. Echo responses avoid the issue of what an unadorned ''yes'' means in response to a negative question. Yes and no can be used as a response to a variety of situationsbut are better suited when asked simple questions. While a ''yes'' response to the question, "You don't like strawberries?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ' (I am) has no ambiguity. The words '' yes'' and '' no'' are not easily classified into any of the eight conventional
parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
. Sometimes classified as
interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
s, they do not qualify as such, and they are not
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right,
sentence word A sentence word (also called a one-word sentence) is a single word that forms a full sentence. Henry Sweet described sentence words as 'an area under one's control' and gave words such as "Come!", "John!", "Alas!", "Yes." and "No." as examples of ...
s, or
pro-sentence A pro-sentence is a sentence where the subject pronoun has been dropped and therefore the sentence has a null subject. Overview Languages differ within this parameter, some languages such as Italian and Spanish have constant pro-drop, Finnish and ...
s, although that category contains more than ''yes'' and ''no'', and not all linguists include them in their lists of sentence words. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences.


Classification of English grammar

Although sometimes classified as
interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
s, these words do not express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right: sentence words or word sentences. This is the position of
Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth ce ...
, who states that Yes' and 'No'... are to all intents and purposes sentences just as much as the most delicately balanced sentences ever uttered by
Demosthenes Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual pr ...
or penned by Samuel Johnson."
Georg von der Gabelentz Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz (16 March 1840 – 11 December 1893) was a German general linguist and sinologist. His (1881), according to a critic, "remains until today recognized as probably the finest overall grammatical survey of the Clas ...
,
Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...
, and Philipp Wegener have all written on the subject of sentence words. Both Sweet and Wegener include ''yes'' and ''no'' in this category, with Sweet treating them separately from both imperatives and interjections, although Gabelentz does not. Watts classifies ''yes'' and ''no'' as grammatical particles, in particular ''response particles''. He also notes their relationship to the interjections '' oh'' and '' ah'', which is that the interjections can precede ''yes'' and ''no'' but not follow them. ''Oh'' as an interjection expresses surprise, but in the combined forms ''oh yes'' and ''oh no'' merely acts as an intensifier; but ''ah'' in the combined forms ''ah yes'' and ''ah no'' retains its stand-alone meaning, of focusing upon the previous speaker's or writer's last statement. The forms ''*yes oh'', ''*yes ah'', ''*no oh'', and ''*no ah'' are grammatically ill-formed. Aijmer similarly categorizes the ''yes'' and ''no'' as ''response signals'' or ''reaction signals''. Ameka classifies these two words in different ways according to the context. When used as back-channel items, he classifies them as interjections; but when they are used as the responses to a
yes–no question In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question is a question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus one that provid ...
, he classifies them as formulaic words. The distinction between an interjection and a formula is, in Ameka's view, that the former does not have an addressee (although it may be directed at a person), whereas the latter does. The ''yes'' or ''no'' in response to the question is addressed at the interrogator, whereas ''yes'' or ''no'' used as a back-channel item is a ''feedback usage'', an utterance that is said to oneself. However, Sorjonen criticizes this analysis as lacking empirical work on the other usages of these words, in addition to interjections and feedback uses. Bloomfield and Hockett classify the words, when used to answer yes-no questions, as ''special completive interjections''. They classify sentences comprising solely one of these two words as minor sentences. Sweet classifies the words in several ways. They are sentence-modifying adverbs, adverbs that act as modifiers to an entire sentence. They are also sentence words, when standing alone. They may, as question responses, also be absolute forms that correspond to what would otherwise be the ''not'' in a negated echo response. For example, a "No." in response to the question "Is he here?" is equivalent to the echo response "He is not here." Sweet observes that there is no correspondence with a simple ''yes'' in the latter situation, although the sentence-word "Certainly." provides an absolute form of an emphatic echo response "He is certainly here." Many other adverbs can also be used as sentence words in this way. Unlike ''yes'', ''no'' can also be an adverb of degree, applying to adjectives solely in the comparative (e.g., ''no greater'', ''no sooner'', but not ''no soon'' or ''no soonest''), and an adjective when applied to nouns (e.g., "He is no fool." and Dyer's "No clouds, no vapours intervene."). Grammarians of other languages have created further, similar, special classifications for these types of words. Tesnière classifies the French ''oui'' and ''non'' as ''phrasillons logiques'' (along with ''
voici ''Voici'' is a French language weekly celebrity and gossip magazine published in Paris, France. History and profile ''Voici'' was founded in 1987. The magazine is published on a weekly basis and is based in Paris. The weekly is owned by the Germ ...
''). Fonagy observes that such a classification may be partly justified for the former two, but suggests that ''
pragmatic Pragmatism is a philosophical movement. Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to: *Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy *Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics *''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...
holophrases'' is more appropriate.


The Early English four-form system

While Modern English has a ''two-form system'' of ''yes'' and ''no'' for affirmatives and negatives, earlier forms of English had a ''four-form system'', comprising the words ''yea'', '' nay'', ''yes'', and ''no''. ''Yes'' contradicts a negatively formulated question, ''No'' affirms it; ''Yea'' affirms a positively formulated question, ''Nay'' contradicts it. *Will they not go? — Yes, they will. *Will they not go? — No, they will not. *Will they go? — Yea, they will. *Will they go? — Nay, they will not. This is illustrated by the following passage from
Much Ado about Nothing ''Much Ado About Nothing'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599.See textual notes to ''Much Ado About Nothing'' in ''The Norton Shakespeare'' ( W. W. Norton & Company, 1997 ) p. 1387 The play ...
: (editorial footnotes) Benedick's answer of ''yea'' is a correct application of the rule, but as observed by W. A. Wright "Shakespeare does not always observe this rule, and even in the earliest times the usage appears not to have been consistent." Furness gives as an example the following, where Hermia's answer should, in following the rule, have been ''yes'': This subtle grammatical feature of Early Modern English is recorded by Sir
Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
in his critique of
William Tyndale William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execu ...
's translation of the New Testament into Early Modern English, which was then quoted as an authority by later scholars: In fact, More's exemplification of the rule actually contradicts his statement of what the rule is. This went unnoticed by scholars such as Horne Tooke,
Robert Gordon Latham Robert Gordon Latham FRS (24 March 1812 – 9 March 1888) was an English ethnologist and philologist. Early life The eldest son of Thomas Latham, vicar of Billingborough, Lincolnshire, he was born there on 24 March 1812. He entered Eton College ...
, and Trench, and was first pointed out by
George Perkins Marsh George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the ...
in his ''Century Dictionary'', where he corrects More's incorrect statement of the first rule, "''No'' aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative.", to read ''nay''. That even More got the rule wrong, even while himself dressing down Tyndale for getting it wrong, is seen by Furness as evidence that the four word system was "too subtle a distinction for practice". Marsh found no evidence of a four-form system in Mœso-Gothic, although he reported finding "traces" in
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
. He observed that in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, *positively phrased questions are answered positively with '' gea'' (John 21:15,16,
King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
: "Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee" etc.) *and negatively with '' ne'' (Luke 12:51, KJ: "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division"; 13:4,5, KJ: "Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."), ''
nese Nese may refer to: * Nese, Italy, a village in northern Italy * Nese, Norway, a village in south-western Norway * Nese language, an Oceanic language or dialect spoken in Vanuatu * Tony Nese, American professional wrestler See also * Neşe, ...
'' (John 21:5 "Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No."; Matthew 13:28,29, KJ: "The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them."), and '' nic'' meaning "not I" (John 18:17, KJ: "Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not."); *while negatively phrased questions are answered positively with '' gyse'' (Matthew 17:25, KJ: "they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes.") *and negatively for example with '' '', meaning "no one" (John 8:10,11, "he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord."). Marsh calls this four-form system of Early Modern English a "needless subtlety". Tooke called it a "ridiculous distinction", with Marsh concluding that Tooke believed Thomas More to have simply made this rule up and observing that Tooke is not alone in his disbelief of More. Marsh, however, points out (having himself analyzed the works of
John Wycliffe John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of ...
, Geoffrey Chaucer,
John Gower John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the '' Mirour de l'Omme'', '' Vo ...
, John Skelton, and Robert of Gloucester, and '' Piers Plowman'' and '' Le Morte d'Arthur'') that the distinction both existed and was generally and fairly uniformly observed in Early Modern English from the time of Chaucer to the time of Tyndale. But after the time of Tyndale, the four-form system was rapidly replaced by the modern two-form system.


Three-form systems

Several languages have a ''three-form system'', with two affirmative words and one negative. In a three-form system, the affirmative response to a positively phrased question is the
unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
affirmative, the affirmative response to a negatively phrased question is the marked affirmative, and the negative response to both forms of question is the (single) negative. For example, in Norwegian the affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?") is "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Do you not speak Norwegian?") is "Jo", while the negative answer to ''both'' questions is "Nei".
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
,
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...
, Icelandic, Faroese, Hungarian, German,
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
, French and
Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
all have three-form systems. Swedish and Danish have , , and . Norwegian has , , and . Icelandic has , , and . Faroese has , , and . Hungarian has , , and . German has , , and . Dutch has , , and . French has , , and . Malayalam has , and . Though, technically Malayalam is a multi-form system of Yes and No as can be seen from below, the former are the formal words for Yes and No. Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also have additional forms '' javisst'' and '' jovisst'', analogous to ''ja'' and ''jo'', to indicate a strong affirmative response. Swedish (and Danish slang) also have the forms ''joho'' and ''nehej'', which both indicate stronger response than ''jo'' or ''nej''. ''Jo'' can also be used as an emphatic contradiction of a negative statement. And Malayalam has the additional forms , and which act like question words, question tags or to strengthen the affirmative or negative response, indicating stronger meaning than , and . The words , , , , , and work in the same ways. These words also sound more polite as they don't sound like curt when saying "No!" or "Yes!". means "it is there" and the word behaves as an affirmative response like . The usage of to simply mean "No" or "No way!", is informal and may be casual or sarcastic, while is the more formal way of saying "false", "incorrect" or that "it is not" and is a negative response for questions. The word has a stronger meaning than . is used to mean "OK" or "correct", with the opposite meaning "not OK" or "not correct". It is used to answer affirmatively to questions to confirm any action by the asker, but to answer negatively one says . and both mean to "want" and to "not want".


Other languages with four-form systems

Like Early Modern English, the
Romanian language Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in ...
has a four-form system. The affirmative and negative responses to positively phrased questions are '' da'' and '' nu'', respectively. But in responses to negatively phrased questions they are prefixed with '' ba'' (i.e. ''ba da'' and ''ba nu''). ''nu'' is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and verb. Thus, for example, the affirmative response to the negatively phrased question "N-ai plătit?" ("Didn't you pay?") is "Ba da." ("Yes."—i.e. "I did pay."), and the negative response to a positively phrased question beginning "Se poate să ...?" ("Is it possible to ...?") is "Nu, nu se poate." ("No, it is not possible."—note the use of ''nu'' for both ''no'' and negation of the verb.)


Related words in other languages and translation problems

Bloomfield and Hockett observe that not all languages have ''special completive interjections''.


Finnish

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
does not generally answer yes-no questions with either adverbs or interjections but answers them with a repetition of the verb in the question, negating it if the answer is the negative. (This is an
echo response In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value. For examp ...
.) The answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?") is the verb form itself, "Tulemme." ("We are coming.") However, in spoken Finnish, a simple "Yes" answer is somewhat more common, "Joo." Negative questions are answered similarly. Negative answers are just the negated verb form. The answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?") is "En tunne" ("I don't know.") or simply "En." ("I don't."). However, Finnish also has particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo" (colloquial). A yes-no question can be answered "yes" with either "kyllä" or "joo", which are not conjugated according to the person and plurality of the verb. "Ei", however, is always conjugated and means "no".


Estonian

Estonian has a structure similar to Finnish, with both repetitions and interjections. means "yes". Unlike Finnish, the negation particle is always , regardless of person and plurality. ("am/are/is not") can be replaced by (a contraction of the ancient expression , meaning the same). The word , cognate to Finnish , can be used to reply positively to a negative question: ("You don't speak Finnish?" "Yes, I do!") It can also be used to approve a positive statement: ("You (unexpectedly) came along!" "Yes I did.")


Latvian

Up until the 16th century Latvian did not have a word for "yes" and the common way of responding affirmatively to a question was by repeating the question's verb, just as in Finnish. The modern day was borrowed from
Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
and first appeared in 16th-century religious texts, especially catechisms, in answers to questions about faith. At that time such works were usually translated from German by non-Latvians that had learned Latvian as a foreign language. By the 17th century, was being used by some Latvian speakers that lived near the cities, and more frequently when speaking to non-Latvians, but they would revert to agreeing by repeating the question verb when talking among themselves. By the 18th century the use of was still of low frequency, and in Northern Vidzeme the word was almost non-existent until the 18th and early 19th century. Only in the mid-19th century did really become usual everywhere.


Welsh

It is often assumed that Welsh has no words at all for ''yes'' and ''no''. It has and , and '' do'' and '' naddo''. However, these are used only in specialized circumstances and are some of the ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. ''Ie'' and ''nage'' are used to respond to sentences of simple identification, while ''do'' and ''naddo'' are used to respond to questions specifically in the past tense. As in Finnish, the main way to state yes or no, in answer to yes-no questions, is to echo the verb of the question. The answers to "'" ("Is Ffred coming?") are either "'" ("He is (coming).") or "'" ("He is not (coming)"). In general, the negative answer is the positive answer combined with . For more information on ''yes'' and ''no'' answers to yes-no questions in Welsh, see Jones, listed in further reading.


Goidelic languages

The Goidelic languages (
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...
and Manx) do not have words for ''yes'' or ''no'' at all. Instead, an
echo response In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value. For examp ...
of the main verb used to ask the question is used. Sometimes, one of the words meaning "to be" (Irish ' or ', see Irish syntax § The forms meaning "to be"; Scottish Gaelic ' or ' see Scottish Gaelic grammar § verbs; Manx ' or ') is used. For example, the Irish question "'" ("Is he coming?") may be answered ''""'' ("Is") or ''""'' ("Is not"). More frequently, another verb will be used. For example, to respond to "'" ("Did he hear?"), "'" ("Heard") or "'" ("Did not hear") are used. Irish people frequently give echo answers in English as well, e.g. "Did you hear?" Answer "I heard/I did".


Latin

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
has no single words for ''yes'' and ''no''. Their functions as word sentence responses to yes-no questions are taken up by ''sentence adverbs'', single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and also used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs classed as
truth-value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (''true'' or '' false''). Computing In some progra ...
adverbs—including , , , , , , , , and (negative). They express the speaker's/writer's feelings about the truth value of a proposition. They, in conjunction with the negator , are used as responses to yes-no questions. For example: Latin also employs echo responses.


Galician and Portuguese

These languages have words for ''yes'' and ''no'', namely and in Galician and and in
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
. However, answering a question with them is less idiomatic than answering with the verb in the proper conjugation.


Spanish

In
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, the words 'yes' and 'no' are unambiguously classified as adverbs: serving as answers to questions and also modifying verbs. The affirmative can replace the verb after a negation ( = ''I don't own a car, but he does'') or intensify it (''I don't believe he owns a car. / He does own one!'' = ). The word is the standard adverb placed next to a verb to negate it ( = ''I don't own a car''). Double negation is normal and valid in Spanish, and it is interpreted as reinforcing the negation ( = ''I own no car'').


Chinese

Speakers of Chinese use echo responses. In all Sinitic/Chinese languages, yes-no questions are often posed in
A-not-A In linguistics, an A-not-A question, also known as an A-neg-A question, is a polar question that offers two opposite possibilities for the answer. Predominantly researched in Sinitic languages, the A-not-A question offers a choice between an aff ...
form, and the replies to such questions are echo answers that echo either ''A'' or ''not A''. In
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
, the closest equivalents to ''yes'' and ''no'' are to state "" (; ) and "" (; ). The phrase () may also be used for the interjection "no". Similarly, in
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...
, the preceding are 係 ''hai6'' (lit: "is") and 唔係 (lit: "not is") ''m4 hai6'', respectively. One can also answer 冇錯 ''mou5 co3'' () for the affirmative, although there is no corresponding negative to this.


Japanese

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
lacks words for ''yes'' and ''no''. The words "" (''hai'') and "" (''iie'') are mistaken by English speakers for equivalents to ''yes'' and ''no'', but they actually signify agreement or disagreement with the proposition put by the question: "That's right." or "That's not right." For example: if asked, , answering with the affirmative "はい" would mean "Right, I am ''not'' going"; whereas in English, answering "yes" would be to contradict the negative question. Echo responses are not uncommon in Japanese.


Complications

These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic at the most elementary level of words for ''yes'' and ''no''. Translation from two-form to three-form systems are equivalent to what English-speaking school children learning French or German encounter. The mapping becomes complex when converting two-form to three-form systems. There are many idioms, such as reduplication (in French, German, and Italian) of affirmatives for emphasis (the German ). The mappings are one-to-many in both directions. The German has no fewer than 13 English equivalents that vary according to context and usage (''yes'', ''yeah'', and ''no'' when used as an answer; ''well'', ''all right'', ''so'', and ''now'', when used for segmentation; ''oh'', ''ah'', ''uh'', and ''eh'' when used an interjection; and ''do you'', ''will you'', and their various inflections when used as a marker for tag questions) for example. Moreover, both and are frequently used as additional particles for conveying nuanced meaning where, in English, no such particle exists. Straightforward, non-idiomatic, translations from German to English and then back to German can often result in the loss of all of the modal particles such as and from a text. Translation from languages that have word systems to those that do not, such as Latin, is similarly problematic. As Calvert says, "Saying yes or no takes a little thought in Latin".


Colloquial forms


Non-verbal

Linguist James R. Hurford notes that in many
English dialects Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects can be defi ...
"there are colloquial equivalents of ''Yes'' and ''No'' made with nasal sounds interrupted by a voiceless, breathy ''h''-like interval (for Yes) or by a glottal stop (for No)" and that these
interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
s are transcribed into writing as ' or '. These forms are particularly useful for speakers who are at a given time unable to articulate the actual words ''yes'' and ''no''. The use of short vocalizations like ''uh-huh'', ''mm-hmm'', and ''yeah'' are examples of
non-verbal communication Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance ( prox ...
, and in particular the practice of backchanneling. Art historian
Robert Farris Thompson Robert Farris Thompson (December 30, 1932 – November 29, 2021) was an American art historian and writer who specialized in Africa and the Afro-Atlantic world. He was a member of the faculty at Yale University from 1965 to his retirement more ...
has posited that ''mm-hmm'' may be a
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
from a West African language that entered the English vernacular from the speech of
enslaved Africans The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
; linguist Lev Michael, however, says that this proposed origin is implausible, and linguist Roslyn Burns states that the origin of the term is difficult to confirm.


''Aye'' and variants

The word ''aye'' () as a synonym for ''yes'' in response to a question dates to the 1570s. According to the '' Online Etymology Dictionary'', it is of unknown origin. It may derive from the word ''I'' (in the context of "I assent"); as an alteration of the
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
("yes"); or the
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
''aye'' (meaning always "always, ever"), which comes from the
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
. Using ''aye'' to mean ''yes'' is archaic, having disappeared from most of the English-speaking world, but is notably still used by people from
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
,
Ulster Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kin ...
, and the north of England."Yes (adverb)" in ''Oxford Thesaurus of English'' (3d ed.: Oxford University Press, 2009 (ed. Maurice Waite), p. 986. In December 1993, a witness in a Scottish court who had answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned was told by a sheriff judge that he must answer either ''yes'' or ''no''. When his name was read again and he was asked to confirm it, he answered "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court. On his release he said, "I genuinely thought I was answering him." ''Aye'' is also a common word in
parliamentary procedure Parliamentary procedure is the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Its object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense ...
, where the phrase ''the ayes have it'' means that a motion has passed. In the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
of the
British Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...
, MPs vote orally by saying "aye" or "no" to indicate they approve or disapprove of the measure or piece of legislation. (In the
House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...
, by contrast, members say "content" or "not content" when voting). The term has also historically been used in nautical usage, often phrased as "aye, aye, sir" duplicating the word "aye". Fowler's '' Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (1926) explained that the nautical phrase was at that time usually written ''ay, ay, sir''. The informal, affirmative phrase ''why-aye'' (also rendered ''whey-aye'' or ''way-eye'') is used in the dialect of northeast England,''Perspectives on Northern Englishes'' (eds. Sylvie Hancil & Joan C. Beal:
Walter de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...
: 2017), table 4.2: "North-east features represented in the LL Corpus."
Emilia Di Martino, ''Celebrity Accents and Public Identity Construction: Analyzing Geordie Stylizations'' (Routledge, 2019). most notably by Geordies.


Other

Other variants of "yes" include ''acha'' in informal Indian English and historically ''righto'' or ''righty-ho'' in upper-class
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, although these fell out of use during the early 20th century.


See also

* Affirmation and negation * Thumb signal *
Translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
* Untranslatability


References


Further reading

* —Jones' analysis of how to answer questions with "yes" or "no" in the Welsh language, broken down into a typology of echo and non-echo responsives, polarity and truth-value responses, and numbers of forms * * *
Pdf.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yes And No English grammar English words History of the English language Parts of speech br:Sí de:Ja es:Sí es:No eo:Jes it:Sì ja:はい no:Ja sk:Áno yi:יא