
Words for “yes” in Romance languages - fanf2
http://benito-cereno.tumblr.com/post/171103878358/okay-so-latin-has-this-word-sic-or-if-we-want
======
omazurov
Loved that pun from Baudolino by Umberto Eco: "I know, Master Niketas, that
the center of the universe is your city here, but the world is vaster than
your empire, and there's even Ultima Thule and the land of Hibernians. True,
compared to Constantinople, Rome is a pile of ruins and Paris is a muddy
village, but even there something happens every now and then. In many vast,
vast regions of the world people don't speak Greek, and there are those who,
when they want to agree with something, say, oc." "Oc?" "Oc." "Strange. But do
go on."

~~~
schoen
> Paris is a muddy village

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetia#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetia#Etymology)

~~~
gpvos
Would the old Celtic root _luto- /luteuo-_ (marsh, swamp) mentioned there be
related to Latin _lutum_ (mud, loam, sand, dust)?

~~~
jxub
In Spanish _lodo_ is mud, it looks more similar to the Celtic word to me.
Interesting.

~~~
henriquemaia
Well, in tandem with Spanish, we also say it like that in Portuguese. But I
always take it to mean _sludge_ , not just any mud. For plain _mud_ , we use
the more common word _lama_.

------
kleiba
I personally find the use of single word "This." in reply to a comment on
forums (such as e.g. HN) really annoying. (But then again, I've reached an age
where you tend to find everything new awful.) I guess the reason why it pisses
me off is that it doesn't do anything that "Yes.", "Exactly.", "I agree"
couldn't already do, but at the same time it has this overly sweet smell of
kool-aid that just makes you sick.

~~~
js2
For me (I’m 46 so I think I’ve reached “get off my lawn” age), it’s short for
“this [is the correct answer.]” So I’ve never had a problem with it and
probably used it once or twice myself.

A couple summers ago at the pool I heard a teenage girl exclaim “poned!” after
besting her friend at something they were playing. It took me a moment to
realize she’d just said “pwned” since I’d never heard it said out loud before
and in my mind I’ve always read it “owned.” Now that was a “get off my lawn
moment!”

~~~
osrec
It's more like "this... is the correct answer, and it so obviously resonates
extensively with everyone else that I feel no need to substantiate any
further, other than with an abrupt and final full stop".

To me it sometimes comes across as "you made your comment, I agree, and I'll
take the liberty to suggest that it's so obvious and insightful that probably
everyone must agree".

~~~
YouKnowBetter
This.

------
midhir
"So we can look at, for example, Old Irish, where they said tó to mean yes"

Really? In modern Irish we substitute Tá for yes but it's not really yes. We
don't have yes or no, we repeat the verb of the question positively or
negatively. Tá is kind of 'am', níl 'am not' like

"Are you going to watch Mrs Browns Boys tonight?" "I am not."

Are they really comparable? Maybe somewhere along the line Tá (pronounced
'taw') was taken for 'yes'.

~~~
DFHippie
In Welsh you use "do" to assent to things asserted about the past. "Wyt ti
wedi bwyta?" [Have you eaten?] "Do." [Yes.] The negative is "naddo". If you
ask a question with something other than the verb initial, the affirmative is
"ie" and the negative "nage". Otherwise, it works like you say in Irish or as
in an English wedding ceremony. "Do you take so-and-so to be your lawfully
wedded spouse?" "I do."

~~~
talideon
The 'tó' and 'náthó' mentioned in the article are actually borrowings from
Middle Welsh into Middle Irish, but they fell out of fashion again. Old Irish
didn't have yes/no equivalents.

'Tá' (present tense independent form of the verb 'bí') and 'tó' aren't thought
to be related.

------
davidgay
My favourite on the yes/no front though is the border between Greece and
Bulgaria where "Ne" (Не) means no in Bulgarian and, IIUC, yes in Greek.

And then the Bulgarians also have approximately reversed vs Western Europe
head movements for yes and no, to maximise confusion :)

~~~
EB-Barrington
Albanians (like Bulgaria, Albania shares a border with Greece) also nod up and
down for no, and turn their heads left-to-right for yes. As in Bulgaria, this
is not universal throughout the populace - making it all the more confusing
when you come across it during conversation.

Related: in Albanian, yes is "po", no is "jo".

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
French people also nod upwards to say "no". This is just one swift nod, not an
up-and-down nod, and it's usually accompanied by a quick drawn-in breath. I've
never seen that anywhere else. My friends who did that were Occitan btw. so
maybe it's not all of France.

~~~
gkya
In Turkey we have raised eyebrows for a no, often denoting also some sort of
pity/empathy if the lips are squeezed into a half-smile form (sometimes this
is accompanied by a slow bobbing of the head).

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I think I know the expression, yes :)

------
make3
I really like profanity laced erudite articles, for some reason. Maybe it
scratches a similar hitch that Rick does in Rick and Morty. Which makes me
think, man I'd love to read a scientific paper written by Rick! :)

~~~
acobster
This. ;) I think what tickles me about it is that they clearly know what
they're talking about, but they're also actively setting themselves apart from
the Ivory Tower and signaling that their interest is one that brings them some
earnest fucking joy.

~~~
taneliv
It is probably only appreciable because it contrasts starkly with the
expectations. But if people were to regularly write academic treatises
peppered with obscenities, I think it would get rather old rather fast.

Which is not to say that one could not use more, ummm... vernacular language.
But in quite moderation, I would say.

~~~
__s
Here's a bit of a metatake on this:
[https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...](https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0167274)
where it's reflecting on indigenous culture while preferring to write in a
prose styled after that culture

------
danans
Sanskrit also lacked a single affirmative particle, instead using various
words/phrases meaning "true" or "it is so" (sat, satya, astu)

Also similar to Latin, most of it's daughter languages standardized on a
single affirmative particle "haan".

~~~
gigogkggi
Astu (अस्तु) is imperative, asti, (अस्ति) is what would be used.

~~~
danans
Either works depending on the context. "astu" is more like "let it be so".
Still, there is no single generic affirmative particle.

~~~
DFHippie
I believe the direct cognate of this in Latin is "esto".

------
lbebber
Interesting. In (Brazilian) Portuguese, "isso" and "isso aí" ("this", "this
there") is used to confirm or agree with something, so it seems the expression
survived the times.

~~~
jacquesm
Curious coincidence how that sounds like 'it's so' and 'itsso, eh'!

~~~
kaoD
> "isso aí"

> 'itsso, eh'

Trivia: notice 'isso aí' has an acute accent on í which indicates the syllable
is stressed. Doesn't sound much like 'eh'
[https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/a%C3%AD](https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/a%C3%AD)
similar to 'itsso ah-E'.

------
kiliancs
It's interesting that in Catalan you may say oi [0] in addition to sí. It is
more commonly used in questions and to answer such questions. For example:

Plou molt, oi? Oi.

There's a construct that is very common and redundant: oi que sí? == right
that yes?, which would be translated as an emphatic "right?"

[0]
[http://mdlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=Oi&operEntrada=0](http://mdlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=Oi&operEntrada=0)

~~~
mbroncano
It sounds like a calque of regular Spanish 'a que si' rather than anything
else.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Not oui in French?

~~~
kiliancs
If you read the article, this is a pattern in a number of languages, so
there's no reason for it to come from French. It's also unlikely because the
pronunciation is very different:
[https://forvo.com/word/oi/#ca](https://forvo.com/word/oi/#ca)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Catalonia borders France and has some similarities though.

~~~
kiliancs
Bordering with French is a newer phenomenon, though. Catalonia has
traditionally bordered Occitan-speaking territories to the North so it has way
more influence from Occitan than from French.

------
DopamineHigh
Now this is a cool article. It's funny and ironic that an article uses slang
while talking about how old languages acquired other phrases from other
languages, calques.

I do wish future articles take note how adding humor to an article shows a
level of care and understanding about the subject/ideas.

~~~
jdonaldson
Agreed. So many technical blogs try to strike the same to to sound edgy or
cute. Here the author uses it masterfully to reinforce his points on language.

------
interfixus
So, ' _si_ ' does survive in French after all. I never would have guessed.

Perhaps somewhat interestingly, the Scandinavian languages (Danish/Norwegian,
Swedish, Icelandic, etc.) make a similar distinction between plain 'yes' ('
_ja_ ') and the affirmation of a negation (' _jo_ ).

English seems to have largely discarded that subtlety, despite the presumed
influence of vikings from the north as well as those from across the channel.

Sligthly reduced use of _shit_ and _fucking_ would not have been seriously
detrimental to my enjoyment of the article.

~~~
frooxie
English used to have a four-form system, where yes and no were the responses
to a question posed in the negative, whereas yea and nay were the responses to
positively framed questions.

I know German has "ja" and "doch" as ways of saying "yes" to positively vs
negatively framed questions.

One thing I've found interesting is that in English you answer positively and
negatively framed question in the same way, whereas in many East-Asian
languages, you take the internal logic of the sentence into account, leading
to confusing dialogues for English teachers working abroad in Asia: "Didn't
you do your homework?" "Yes. Yes, I didn't do my homework".

------
woodruffw
Interesting notes about Latin. I always learned that Latin didn't have a
direct analogue to "yes," with the closest thing being "ita vero"[1] (not just
"ita"). But "sic" makes sense in many contexts.

[1]: "thus it is so," or "it is true," or "and how!".

~~~
blowski
In Portuguese, although ‘sim’ means yes, when answering a question in the
affirmative you often use the same verb as the question.

For example: “Gosta frango? Gosto.” “Do you like chicken? I like it.”

Also, it’s common to say ‘isso’ to agree with something. It means ‘this’ and
Anglophones are now doing the same thing, at least online.

~~~
icebraining
Pedantically, "isso" means "that". "This" is "isto".

~~~
ralmeida
To be fair, it’s almost uncommon to say an articulated ‘isto’ in colloquial
spoken language.

------
voltooid
Does anyone else have problems reading that blog because of the font?

~~~
uph
Yes. Use Firefox Reader View by clicking the icon in the address bar or press
CTRL + ALT + R.

------
MayeulC
> So they combined hoc with ille, which means “that” (but also comes to just
> mean “he”: compare Spanish el, Italian il, French le, and so on)

Well, I have to disagree on this bit. French for "he" is actually "il"; while
"le" is "the".

If you are more interested, "that" would be "ce", or if you want to stress
it/be more accurate, "cela" (can be contracted to "ça"), or "celui-là" \--
literally "that him there" \-- while "this" would be "ceci". Yeah, lots of
words to mean the same, you would usually be fine just picking one.

Interesting read nonetheless.

~~~
esra
To be more specific, "le" is masculine "the", but can also mean him, "Je le
vois" => "I see him".

~~~
MayeulC
Good point, I hadn't thought of this.

------
posterboy
But do other languages also have "jein" (blend of German ja and nein)? "meh",
perhaps.

~~~
illo
Italian has "ni", a merge of "no" and "sì".

------
gugagore
In American Sign Language, the signs glossed as THAT and as YES also resemble
each other.

The sign YES is [http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-
signs/y/yes.htm](http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/y/yes.htm) which
looks like a head nod, but also it is the general motion your hand takes when
you spell Y-E-S in the manual alphabet. (Lots of ASL signs are lexicalized
fingerspellings. They started off as just being fingerspelled, but over time
they became words themselves)

The sign THAT can be used to agree with someone emphatically (and also as
backchanneling, as in THAT THAT THAT, is like "yeah, uh huh, oh, ok, mm") For
an example see the second image on [http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-
signs/t/that.htm](http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/that.htm)

Notice that THAT is made with the Y handshape, same as the initial letter in
Y-E-S, and moves like YES. Hmm!

------
cobbzilla
I always wondered why the French "oui" was so different from most other
romance languages. Great explanation, and a fun read.

------
posterboy
I wonder, is occitan not related to occident and orient? and oil, well, that's
norse for beer, remember where normandy has it's name from? That doesn't
explain yes, no; but eu, as in euphemism might[1]. Heureka! In other news,
what does si in greek letters look like? "σι"! Pretty close to oi nowadays and
Celtic druids are speculated to have visited Greece. That doesn't invalidate
the "this there" story, but maybe precedes it.

The disdain for Slavik in the article is confirming a slight bias.

[1]: also europe, eukaryote, oi-punk, Euler. Well, almost. "arobe" means
harbor (ger. Heimathaven?) in some European language but I CBA to look up
which it was or how it's written, right now.

~~~
schoen
> I wonder, is occitan not related to occident and orient?

Nope!

The orient is where the sun rises and the occident is where the sun sets.

All of these have been traced back to Proto-Indo-European and have different
origins:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orior#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orior#Latin)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/occido#Etymology_1](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/occido#Etymology_1)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ob#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ob#Latin)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hic#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hic#Latin)

Edit: the eu- also has a different PIE etymology.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%E1%BD%96#Ancient_Greek](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%E1%BD%96#Ancient_Greek)

~~~
posterboy
Yeah, I can google myself thank you very much.

Your inability to speak or to read properly makes me really doubt your general
premises, because neither had anyone talked about ob and you didn't explain
the relation to the thread either, nor did you notice my precaution to note
that I the theory for oil from the article might still be valid. Instead you
seem to have come panting and frothing from the mouth as soon as you had read
the first few lines hardly being able to read the rest of my post. I know how
it is, I do that too sometimes. No harm done.

> the eu- also has a different PIE etymology.

I know, why do you think I would have mentioned it otherwise?! If you had to
guess in percent how certain a single PIE root is, and then take the combined
probability for ll f the roots of the rather young PIE studies, which are very
well known to have produced a metric shittonne of false results not even a
hundred years ago that we are still wading through, how likely is it that the
patient has cancer?

To repeat, what's "ob" have to do with this?

~~~
schoen
> To repeat, what's "ob" have to do with this?

Ob is the prefix that combined with cado to produce occido, which is the
origin of occident. The assimilation of the b to the initial consonant of the
other verb is something that's been seen in a large number of other cases.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Latin_words_prefixed...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Latin_words_prefixed_with_ob-)

~~~
posterboy
See, when you said

> All of these have been traced back to Proto-Indo-European and have different
> origins:

that could be taken to mean that the PIE terms have different roots or no
roots at all.

"ob" and "eu" go back to * h₁epi- and * h₁es- ... and evidently obs-, obc- is
frequent so there's the assumption that * h₁epis > * h₁epi- must (might) have
been a thing; while you already noted that loss of b before a consonant is a
thing, so that * h₁ebs- > * h₁es- were not too unlikely either. Even closer
now, I'll stop there.

But to think that terms as basic and simple as "yes" would be innovations
instead of variations of varieties that existed for millennia, warrants a lot
of doubt. Just pointing at a few made up roots doesn't impress anyone, really.

Historical linguistics is clinging to the "single mother" hypothesis. It's a
useful abstraction, but as programmers we should know better. Simply speaking,
it appears to me that the sheer amount of material to work with is too
intimidating to researchers (manually) to even attempt to favor the assumption
of chaos. So if it can't be supported by historic artifacts it's labeled mere
coincidence. And reliable artifacts are sparse. So everything is uncertain.
OK, I don't actually know much about the archeology, but as far as I know,
Celtic and Germanic is generally not well preserved as text. I agree, I guess,
the threshold to validate a claim is rather high. And I do err at times, quite
trivially. Perhaps that's why I present my argument as a joke. But the
threshold counts all the same against falsification. You can't just arm chair
a "nope" like that. That was really inconsiderate.

Instead of roots, take a step back and consider basic semantics. What's closer
to yes: "true, good, to be, " or "that, there"?

And for a region, that happens to lie in the west of roma, what's more likely
to be it's name "west" or "the country in which they say oc"?

------
jay-anderson
Sardinian for yes is 'eja' which I've read is derived differently from the two
methods suggested here though I haven't seen any suggestions on what that
derivation might be.

~~~
asveikau
Sounds a lot like "etiam" in Latin which if you break it apart looks like _et
+ iam_ or "and now", but this site has some translations including "yes"
[http://archives.nd.edu/cgi-
bin/lookit.pl?latin=Etiam](http://archives.nd.edu/cgi-
bin/lookit.pl?latin=Etiam)

------
nkkollaw
One thing that is driving me crazy while learning Polish is that "no" means
"yes" (informal).

------
M_Bakhtiari
The tone of the article has a certain “How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?” tinge to
it.

~~~
cryptonector
Clearly intended because the whole point is that the relatively new use of
"this" for affirmation online is... not new.

------
acobster
Great article. On a side note, I took five years of French and never learned
that _si_ is specifically for contradicting a negative. Sup with that.

~~~
benzor
As a native French speaker from Quebec, I can tell you it's much more common
in France, so if you went to school in North America that might explain it.

~~~
umanwizard
In the US, french from France is taught. The Quebec dialect is barely
mentioned.

Btw, in France, “si” in that context is not just common, but absolutely
required. People would be confused if someone used “oui”.

------
posterboy
> so it was pronounced like “seek”

How do you know? I doubt it, but maybe my stress on seeek is just too long.
Good to know it's not as sick, anyhow.

~~~
tetrazine
I believe ancient linguistic nuances like this are sometimes divined from
formally structured poetry, among other sources. Also analysis of languages
thought to share a common ancestor could imply near-identical pronunciation in
the past

~~~
dragonwriter
> I believe ancient linguistic nuances like this are sometimes divined from
> formally structured poetry

Given that formally structured poetry in English (not sure if the same is true
of other current languages) often uses somewhat different from usual
pronunciation (in ways that are both immediately obvious to a reader familiar
with the poetic style, and understandable if unusual to a listener hearing the
spoken poem), I would worry that leaning too heavily on this as evidence might
potentially be misleading .

------
lokopodium
Interesting subject tainted by crappy narration.

~~~
cryptonector
Worked for me, and clearly for others.

------
andybak
This!

(Sorry... Fantastic article in any case. I send anything similar to a friend
who studied linguistics. This one is going to her immediately.)

~~~
twiss
While it's a superb article, it strikes me as being distinctly aimed at
laypeople, and I suspect someone who studied linguistics might already know
large parts of it. (I haven't, but I know parts from having had Latin in
school.)

(Also, it contains the words "This is not exactly what happened but it is
basically what happened, please just fucking roll with it, this shit is long
enough already." so I suspect there might be more in-depth material
somewhere.)

Anyway, all of this is not aimed at you directly, but more of a general
pondering of whether sending people articles on their subject matter is
useful. Family members occasionally send me news articles on technology, which
I usually find only moderately interesting.

~~~
unscaled
This should be pretty common knowledge to any linguist who studied historical
linguistics, although if you never did any historical linguistics you could
easy miss that.

This should also be common knowledge to anyone who studied late-medieval Latin
texts, as many of them use this feature to distinguish the 3 major Romance
vernaculars of Europe, e.g. Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia. There is even an
entire region called Languedoc in France, which refers to the language its
inhabitants speak (or used to speak).

Having say that, although I perfectly know about the distinction between
languages of si, oil and oc, I was still intrigued enough to click on the
article and it was a nice read (except for the tiny font) and I even learned
something new: I didn't know that 'oc' was a calque from Gaulish 'to'.

The common case of people sending me articles about linguistics is worse: I
often get heavily distorted pop-sci articles full of mistakes and
misconceptions.

~~~
Leherenn
Actually, funnily enough Languedoc does not exist anymore, it has been merged
with Midi-Pyrénées to form a new region called Occitanie.

There were quite a few debates about the name as former Occitan-speaking
territories were much larger, and Perpignan and it's area are in the Occitanie
region despite being Catalan.

------
dewiz
Oc => Ok

------
Slavic
Stopped reading at "some slavic shit"

~~~
mjfisher
I've become increasingly interested in how people become offended recently.
Offence tends to be bound up in notions of identity, and I think the way
people offend and become offended is increasingly a factor in a world becoming
more polarised. Would you be able to expand a little on your feelings? Would
you expect people from other cultures mentioned in the article to be similarly
offended? I'm not asking you to justify or defend your position - I'm
genuinely curious about the feelings you have.

~~~
Slavic
Thank you for your kind asking. When I had started with this article I
literally stopped reading at said phrase. I guess my intetion by posting this
comment on HN and not continuing reading was to show my disapproval with said
phrase. I assume the author mixed his interesting article with humour in order
to appeal to a broader audience. And as it goes with humour there is always
someone or something being criticized (being made fun of). It seems to me,
there is no way nobody will ever be offended by an article that uses humour.
It's normal to me joking with people, being made fun of or make fun of people
(minorities, majorities) or things. But this phrase was just too much in that
particular moment. I guess there is a golden line between making fun of
something but keeping a proper (or interesting) language while applying
humour. John Oliver (HBO) as example makes fun of a lot of things but his tone
is never like "people = shit". By having a second look at the article in order
to see how other cultures might be offended I noticed that Slavic seems to be
the only one being reduced that much.

~~~
cryptonector
I took your top-post as meant to be funny, because of your username; I laughed
anyways.

Similarly, I took the author's "disdain" for slavic as not-real, but rather a
meant-to-be-funny turn to avoid a detour into Romanian as the point of TFA was
ultimately that the yeses in Romance languages generally derive from something
like "this".

I am rather surprised you truly felt offended.

------
chepaslaaa
Cool article

------
labster
Those are sum (sic) rhymes!

------
ggm
I love that the end of the bog on 'this' is a huge chain of people whose click
of affection adds them to the list of '...x liked this' immediately after he
says: _I guess what I’m getting at is that when you reblog a post you like and
tag it with “this,” or affirm a thing a friend said by nodding and saying
“Yeah, that”: you’re not new_

------
masters3d
Yaaassss
[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/yas](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/yas)

~~~
posterboy
yus?

