[ul][li]Yea (“yay”) - Archaic, but seems the correct English word for the truncation of “hooray.” (“Yea! He got a home run!”)[/li]
[li]Yay (“yay”) - The newer, phonetic version of “yea,” but not really proper English. (“My l33t skills rool! Yay me!”)[/li]
[li]Yeah (“yeh”) - Short for “yes,” but I’ve seen people use it to mean “yea,” turning into a heteronym.[/ul][/li]
Which is which, and which is proper? I hate typing “yay,” but I get funny looks when I type “yea.”
Tupug, from what I can tell, “yea,” “hooray” and “yes” all sort of derive from the same etymological base, as they are all affirmations of one sort or another.
Old Hat is the way to go my friends. Nothing impresses the ladies (or men) more than a good throwback to the days of embellished literature. Yea, & I hark unto thee, thou shalt make no plea to the sea over whence flew the tree bee. See?
To me, your way is the standard, “correct” (i.e., the way I do it, and the way I see it in books) way, but as Esprix pointed out, different people use different spellings and it can be confusing. One of my sisters* uses “yea” for “yeah”, and I mis-read it every time. (Or does she use “yeah” to mean “yay”?) Either way, it’s confusing.
Anyway, thanks to phonics, I suspect people will continue to misspell these, because it depends on how you say them and what you hear.
*(I can’t remember which one, off the top of my head. It could be #4, she’s the only one who e-mails me, but #2 spells so atrociously I suspect it’s her)
I go with Tupug Anachi. “Yeah” is slang for “yes”. “Yea” = archaic form of “yes”(e.g. “Yea, verily, I say unto you…”). “Yay”= sound of jubilation (e.g. “Yay, way to go”).
I suppose I should start a new thread on Funny Misreadings/Mishearings You Experienced as a child, but for those who think “yay” looks stupid written out: I was about 6 y.o. when the Beatles released *She Loves You, and I thought in the chorus they were singing,
“She loves you yay, yay, yay”, as if they meant, “She loves you, that’s awesome”.
Another thing in the “yeah”,“yea”, “yay” area: I remember one time, when I was very young, and reading just beyond the Dr. Seuss level, how a character in the book I was reading was saying “Yeah” to someone. It was in the confrontational sense, as in “Oh, yeah”? And in my childlike way, I couldn’t understand why this character was saying what looked like “Yee!” I had never seen the word yeah in print before.
