Well said!
I was just talking to someone on the phone a few minutes ago and I realized I said “Yeah, no” to some questions and I thought of this thread! I wasn’t even consciously thinking when saying it. It was basically “Yes I hear what you are saying, but no actually we should do something else…”
This is the first time I remember hearing it.
Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean, and I’m surprised by how many people in the comments don’t know what you’re referring to. If I had to guess, it’s because the phrase is exactly as meaningless as you say it is, and often when we’re listening to people, we mentally filter out meaningless sounds like um/uh/you know (unless the person says uses a meaningless word excessively, in which case it becomes all you can focus on because they’re doing it so incessantly that your brain can’t successfully filter the words out).
I have no idea what the actual answer to your questions are. If I had to guess: People sometimes say “Yeah?” as a response to their name; e.g., some says “Slicedalone!” to get your attention and you respond with “Yeah?” In this manner, “yeah” came to mean something along the lines of “I heard you.” Once it acquired this definition, people might have started using the word “yeah” as the beginning of a statement, with it still just meaning “I heard you.” For example, “What do you think of the war in Ukraine?” “Yeah, I’ve been watching the news and I don’t think this is leading anywhere good.”
And then, as the final step in the evolution, people tacked the word “no” on to reduce confusion. In other words, if someone said “Would you like some more grapes?” and you said “Yeah, I’m not hungry, thanks,” it’s not immediately clear whether the person means yeah in the sense of “I heard you, but I’m not hungry,” or in the sense of “Yes, I would like some, even though I’m not hungry.” If you say “Yeah, no, I’m not hungry,” it becomes more clear that their “yeah” indicated that they had heard you, rather than that they were saying yes to your question.
Again, this response is not based in fact. It’s just my hypothesis.
Also, for those of you who haven’t heard “Yeah, no …” used in this sense, think of Ben Stiller. I think he uses this phrase a lot in his comedy.
Thank you. I was beginning to doubt my sanity, or at least my powers of articulation.
A lot of languages seem to have a ‘yes/no’ idiom, but it usually comes at the end of a sentence.
French: N’est ce pas
German: Nicht wahr
Welsh: Ynte