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Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is that their words for yes and no are reversed: Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no Japanese
by RachelF 2y ago
Something amusing about Japanese vs Xhosa (a Bantu language) is that their words for yes and no are reversed:
Japanese Hai = yes, Xhosa - Hai is a no
Japanese eeye = no, Xhosa - ewe is yes
- lukan 2y agoAmusing as long as you don't agree to something stupid I guess .. Are they pronounced very similar?
- ncpa-cpl 2y agoI have seen something similar with Korean and Dutch Korean: Ne = yes Dutch: Nee = no
- euroderf 2y agoThe "n" sound denoting negative seems deeply ingrained in English (and also in this native English speaker). So Finnish "niin" for affirmative took a very long time to get used to, and to actually begin using. It just felt wrong.
- scotteric 2y agoIt goes even deeper than just English. No descends from the Indo-European negation phoneme *ne. You see similar 'n' sound negative words in pretty much every IE language group. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ne https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...