3 ms·

How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.

by davidw 3y ago

bafe 3y ago
As you might imagine the similarities are limited to Indo-European languages. Take Arabic for example: na'am means yes, but it resembles the words you listed for no
jgtrosh 3y ago
In Japanese: いいえ(īe)
- PuleMeOriz 3y ago
  That is similar to the Albanian word: Jo
- pezezin 3y ago
  And 'no' itself (の) is the genitive particle, kind of English "of" or -'s.
whitten 3y ago
In Indonesian I think no is “tidak”
geraneum 3y ago
In Persian it’s “na”. Also the words for Mother, Father, Daughter, Brother and some other primitive concepts are very similar. But it’s not really surprising.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  That's because Persian is an Indo-European family language, probably. Those words are similar in many languages in that family, such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc.
raz32dust 3y ago
illai in Dravidian languages
mostlylurks 3y ago
>no [...] Non, niet, nein These are all from the same language family (the indo-european language family), so it's no wonder that there are still noticeable similarities in a word this fundamental even after thousands of years of divergence. >non-European languages "European" languages isn't a particularly good category, since europe has a wide range of languages that don't belong to the indo-european language family, such as basque and the uralic languages, of which there are too many to list in europe, but some notable ones include hungarian, finnish, and estonian. For reference, the word for "no" in finnish is completely different: "ei", but it conjugates similarly to a verb, so it's "en/et/ei/emme/ette/eivät" depending on the person and number. In the very closely related estonian language this system has already eroded away and left only "ei", and in colloquial finnish a similar process is already underway and the "emme/eivät" forms have already disappeared.
thsksbd 3y ago
Albanian has Jo - no Po - yes Or thats what Ive gathered after ten years of marriage.
fuzztester 3y ago
Nahi in Hindi Naahi or Nako in Marathi Naa in Gujarati Illai in Tamil Illaa in Kannada Allaa in Malayalam (both are palindromes :) Naa in Bengali etc. https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=gu&text=no&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=gu&text=no&op=transla...
- I_am_uncreative 3y ago
  Well, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and Gujarati are all Indo European, interestingly enough. Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam are all Dravidian.
  - fuzztester 3y ago
    All of those have some Sanskrit words in them, though. And probably vice versa.
tmtvl 3y ago
Among European languages we have Greek, where "yes" is "ne" and "no" is "ohi".

How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.

by davidw 3y ago

How much does 'no' vary? Non, niet, nein... but I don't know much about non-European languages.

bafe 3y ago

As you might imagine the similarities are limited to Indo-European languages. Take Arabic for example: na'am means yes, but it resembles the words you listed for no

jgtrosh 3y ago

In Japanese: いいえ(īe)

PuleMeOriz 3y ago
That is similar to the Albanian word: Jo
pezezin 3y ago
And 'no' itself (の) is the genitive particle, kind of English "of" or -'s.

whitten 3y ago

In Indonesian I think no is “tidak”

geraneum 3y ago

In Persian it’s “na”. Also the words for Mother, Father, Daughter, Brother and some other primitive concepts are very similar. But it’s not really surprising.

fuzztester 3y ago
That's because Persian is an Indo-European family language, probably. Those words are similar in many languages in that family, such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc.

raz32dust 3y ago

illai in Dravidian languages

mostlylurks 3y ago

>no [...] Non, niet, nein These are all from the same language family (the indo-european language family), so it's no wonder that there are still noticeable similarities in a word this fundamental even after thousands of years of divergence. >non-European languages "European" languages isn't a particularly good category, since europe has a wide range of languages that don't belong to the indo-european language family, such as basque and the uralic languages, of which there are too many to list in europe, but some notable ones include hungarian, finnish, and estonian. For reference, the word for "no" in finnish is completely different: "ei", but it conjugates similarly to a verb, so it's "en/et/ei/emme/ette/eivät" depending on the person and number. In the very closely related estonian language this system has already eroded away and left only "ei", and in colloquial finnish a similar process is already underway and the "emme/eivät" forms have already disappeared.

thsksbd 3y ago

Albanian has Jo - no Po - yes Or thats what Ive gathered after ten years of marriage.

fuzztester 3y ago

Nahi in Hindi Naahi or Nako in Marathi Naa in Gujarati Illai in Tamil Illaa in Kannada Allaa in Malayalam (both are palindromes :) Naa in Bengali etc. https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=gu&text=no&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=gu&text=no&op=transla...

I_am_uncreative 3y ago
Well, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and Gujarati are all Indo European, interestingly enough. Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam are all Dravidian.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  All of those have some Sanskrit words in them, though. And probably vice versa.

tmtvl 3y ago

Among European languages we have Greek, where "yes" is "ne" and "no" is "ohi".