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The four-word system (yea, nay, yes, no) is interesting. Might the modern "yeah" be a relic of "yea"? The following sounds strange to me: Shoot, there aren’
by ggchappell 12y ago
The four-word system (yea, nay, yes, no) is interesting. Might the modern "yeah" be a relic of "yea"?
The following sounds strange to me:
Shoot, there aren’t any open pubs in Canterbury at this hour.
Yeah.
But the following sounds just fine:
Is Chaucer drunk?
Yeah.
- evincarofautumn 12y agoYeah is indeed from yea, from Old English gea. All three were originally pronounced identically, but yea underwent a sound change so that it now rhymes with yay. Yeah is one of the few words to have retained its Old English pronunciation. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yeah https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yeah