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The "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
by euroderf 2y ago
The "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...