Why is our word “yes” so different from the equivalent word in nearly other Germanic language, where it is almost always
“Ja” (pronounced Ya)? German, Dutch, and I think most
Scandinavian languages all have “Ja”. Casual spoken english has “Yeah”, and archaic english had “Yea” and “Aye”, but
the formal correct affirmative answer in English is “yes”.
Where did that “s” come from?
My wild guess is that the “s” comes from Latin. Not directly from any word, just from general influences. So I guess that’s a vague wild guess. I mean, my not-wild-but-still-a-guess guess is that the “s” entered the language about the same time as a dose of French influence… The French “oui” doesn’t have an s, but how about Norman French? Church Latin?
If I were to try and prove my WAG, I would collect some other words that acquired the letter s around the same time, and try to show more direct Latin influences.
Responding to the O.P.:
IIRC, from my two linguistic classes, when linguists try to trace word origins, it is the initial sylables or sounds of words that are important. Ends of words tend to change quite randomly, but initial syllables or sounds are surprisingly reslient and tend to change only as a group. (thus, every initial /k/ sound in one language may appear as a /h/ sound in a related language).
Thus we see that “Yes” could be a direct discendant of the same word that produced “Ja”, with the “s” arising quite spontaeously. (or perhaps being dropped spontaneously. It is hard to say which form is closer related to the older ancestor since no one speaks Old Germanic anymore, and it was never written down).
I thought the latin word for “yes” was “etiam”.
Merriam-Webster®’s Collegiate® Dictionary says
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gEse
Date: before 12th century
%#$ why is submit reply so close to preview reply? :mad:
Medieval french words for yes were “oc” (from Latin “hoc”) and “oïl” (from Latin “hoc ille”). Hence the two traditional language names, “langue d’oc”, aka “occitan” or “provençal” for the language in the south of france, and “langue d’oïl” for the language in the north of france that was the origin of modern-day french.
Latin has a lot of words that mean “yes,” but the ones you’d usually hear in conversation are “ita” and “sane.” (Literally, “thus” and “reasonably.”) “Sic” is another word for “thus” that can mean “yes,” but it doesn’t seem to have been used as much. “Etiam” can mean “yes” in certain contexts, but it usually means “also” or “and.” “Immo” can be a sort of contradictory yes (the equivalent of saying “It is, too!”), but it can also mean “no” – you use it whenever you disagree with the last person who spoke.
Confused yet?
From the American Heritage Dictionary
Note: It is believed Old English “gea” was pronounced very much like modern “yeah”
I think what the lengthy bibliophiliastic quote is saying is that in Latin, the third person singular of ‘to be’ is ‘est.’ It can also mean ‘it is!’ which is like saying ‘yes!’
est ==> yes
In the Germanic languages, the t.p.s. of ‘to be’ is ‘ist.’ Throwing an ‘it’ or ‘there’ in front of it, which would be a ‘ja’, you get ‘ja ist’.
ja ist ==> ja’s’ ==> yes
Pax & Ruhe.
‘Yes’ is one of the first words they teach non speaking deaf people in order to teach them to talk. They teach them to say it by saying each letter ‘y’ ‘e’ ‘s’ real fast…
So broadly speaking, you could say that “yes” evolved
from “yea, it is”, or “yea, so it is”. Is that what you mean when you say that “yes” was used as a negative response (i.e., do you mean a contradictory “yes” as in, “No it isn’t”,“Yes it is”)?
Another interesting word is “any”. The basic etymology is
obvious, having come from something like “an-”, and probably
from the same root as “one” and “a”. But “any” is only used
in expressions of negation or uncertainty. In the following
the asterisk (*) is the lingust’s traditional symbol for an ungrammatical expression:
Were there any?
There weren’t any.
I don’t know if there were any.
There were any*
I didn’t see any.
Yes, I saw any.*
Maybe the British had thicker tongues??
“An enemy of my enemy is my friend, Grasshopper”
Just out of curiosity, from a lay(non-linguist), point of view…
Does this mean that since the evolution of “yes” comes from words like the german “Ja” Etc. that even though we were all told not to say “Ya” as kids by our parents, it might be more true to pronunciation?
Just a WAG from a lay…
“Yes” should still be pronounced yes, but the use of “yeah” should not be stamped out by any means. “Yeah” is not a mispronunciation of yes, it’s a separate but related word. In fact it’s more closely related to the common Germanic affirmative than is yes. I say “yeah” much more often than “yes”, mainly because my teachers told me not to.
Biblio,
I guess I can accept that explanation. I guess I was attempting to shrug off the fact that my english leans WAY toward slang more than straight english… 