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So, 'si' does survive in French after all. I never would have guessed. Perhaps somewhat interestingly, the Scandinavian languages (Danish/Norwegian, Swedish, I

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 9y ago
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".
namenotrequired 9y ago
Dutch makes this distinction as well: "ja" and "jawel". "jawel" is a contraction of "ja" and "wel", which both mean "yes", but are used differently. "Ja" would be the opposite of "no" and "wel" the opposite of "not".