# Persian: yes



## seitt

Greetings,

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but apart from the usual ‘بله’ you seem to have these four:
‘آره’
‘آری’
‘اره’
‘اری’

But which are Colloquial Persian and which are Literary Persian?

All the best, and many thanks,

Simon


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## searcher123

آره is Yea
بله is Yes
آري is yes, very formal and old 
ارّه is saw
اري is not exist
Please have a re-look at *this link* too.


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## Qureshpor

seitt said:


> Greetings,
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but apart from the usual ‘بله’ you seem to have these four:
> ‘آره’
> ‘آری’
> ‘اره’
> ‘اری’
> 
> But which are Colloquial Persian and which are Literary Persian?
> 
> All the best, and many thanks,
> 
> Simon



This is something that I also am interested in. Could someone please let me know pure Persian words for "yes" and "no". I believe "bale" is Arabic, is n't it?


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## seitt

Many thanks - I think that بله and نه are pure Persian, but I am not sure about the first of them.

آره is yeah (modern, slangy, rhymes with 'bear' the animal)
آري is yea (antiquated, rhymes with 'play')


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## Qureshpor

seitt said:


> Many thanks - I think that بله and نه are pure Persian, but I am not sure about the first of them.
> 
> آره is yeah (modern, slangy, rhymes with 'bear' the animal)
> آري is yea (antiquated, rhymes with 'play')



I think "bale" (originally balaa) is of Arabic extraction.


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## searcher123

seitt said:


> Many thanks - I think that بله and نه are pure Persian, but I am not sure about the first of them.


 
I think as you, but I'm not sure too. I send a email about it to a linguist. I'm waiting to receive his answer (I hope he have enough time to answer me).



seitt said:


> آره is yeah (modern, slangy, rhymes with 'bear' the animal)
> آري is yea (antiquated, rhymes with 'play')



Thank you very much indeed, especially for آري in English.


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## searcher123

QURESHPOR said:


> I think "bale" (originally balaa) is of Arabic extraction.



I received the answer some day ago:

بله and خير are Arabic, but آري and نه are Persian.


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## Qureshpor

searcher123 said:


> I received the answer some day ago:
> 
> بله and خير are Arabic, but آري and نه are Persian.



I am curious as to how "Khair" (if Arabic) means "no". My Arabic dictionary  does n't give this meaning of the word.


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## searcher123

Unfortunately I don't know, but agree with you. That is interesting for me too. If I found the answer, I will backed again.


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## BP.

QURESHPOR said:


> I am curious as to how "Khair" (if Arabic) means "no". ...



As in _let it go_ or _laisses tomber_, and a following generalization to all cases of _no_.


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> As in _let it go_ or _laisses tomber_, and a following generalization to all cases of _no_.



But Khair essentially means "good" in Arabic. In Urdu, we use it with this meaning...

Khair, aap kii marzii...

achchhaa, aap kii marzii

In Persian, one can say "no" by saing "Khair"/"na-Khair". I am just interested in this word's etymology. Could it be Persian and the Arabic "Khair" is purely co-incidental?


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## seitt

My understanding is that خير is indeed the Arabic word in its usual meaning.
 
It is the نه which means 'no', but as the word نه was felt to be too blunt and cold in polite society, a way was found of softening it by using a 'nice' word after it.


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## seitt

Then they went one step further (also in Turkish) by dropping the bit literally meaning 'no' altogether!


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## Qureshpor

seitt said:


> Then they went one step further (also in Turkish) by dropping the bit literally meaning 'no' altogether!



Thank you Morteza. This makes perfect sense! I am indebted for your troubles.


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## searcher123

Your are welcome.


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## Qureshpor

Can someone please confirm if  آري for yes is definitely of Persian origins. If yes, how does it end up as آرہ? If not, what is the pure Persian word for "yes"?


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## Derakhshan

آری was pronounced _ārē_ (still is in Eastern Persian). When Western Persian lost یای مجهول , it became آره in the spoken language. Similar process with بلی ~ بله. I don't know how آره ended up as the informal word. I hope someone else can shed light on the etymology.

By the way, in southern Iran, ها is prevalent as the informal "yes". A word probably familiar to subcontinentals!


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## seitt

Many thanks, sorry, i don't understand what you mean by یای مجهول .


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## Qureshpor

seitt said:


> Many thanks, sorry, i don't understand what you mean by یای مجهول .


Hi, sett, nice to speak to you after a long time.

Here, I believe, we do not have a "majhuul" vowel phenomenon as such. I will offer my explanation once I have answered your question.

Classical Persian had 2 "majhuul" vowels which are practically lost in the modern Iranian Persian but they still exist in Indian and Pakistani Persian, Afghan Persian and Tajik Persian.

The vowel e. (represented by ے in the subcontinent and ی elsewhere) This is exactly equivalent to the vowel in the English word "bake" or when one pronounces "A" as in "A, B, C..."

The vowel o.  As in "go" (represented by و)

Now to the second issue. Arabic بلٰی, لٰکن and perhaps other such words with a long "a" went through a transformation process in the Persian language known as "imaalah" which means "inclining towards". لٰکن became لیکن in Persian, the ی is majhuul, i.e lekin.  بلٰی became "bale" and came to be written as بله.

This is the reason why I asked if آری was Persian or not. Whatever its origins may be, it has "suffered" the same "imaalah" fate and ended up as آرہ.


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## Derakhshan

Qureshpor said:


> Arabic بلٰی, لٰکن and perhaps other such words with a long "a" went through a transformation process in the Persian language known as "imaalah" which means "inclining towards".


It is likely that the Arabs which were in contact with Persians during Abbasid times are the reason for this. The medieval Mesopotamian Arabic dialects (the ones Iranians were in contact with) had strong imaalah. They pronounced the ا the same way you pronounce ے in Urdu, so كتاب would be _kitēb_. When Persians wrote لٰکن as لیکن , they were just phonetically rendering this word the way they heard it from Arabs, since in Persian the ی could represent this vowel. This only happened in Arabic words with the long "a", that's why you don't find this happening in random Persian words with a long "a" sound. Those all kept a long "a". But in medieval Persian writings you will sometimes rarely encounter Arabic words like اسلام written as اسليم. It is because the Arabs who lived near Persians pronounced it that way, with a long "e".

آری is not due to imaalah, since it is not an Arabic word. It was _ārē_, and in modern Iran became _ārī_, and through a colloquial transformation, _āre._


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## Qureshpor

^ Thank you Derakhshan. Your first paragraph. It does appear to be logical. I wonder if there are "majhuul" sounds in any of today's Arabic speech communities. It does seem rather illogical that Arabs spoke with majhuul vowels, yet they felt these vowels were "majhuul" in their own language and only existed in Persian.

Second paragraph. Yes, it makes perfect sense.


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## mannoushka

About the vowel ‘o’, which sounds like the ‘o’ in the English ‘go’, it is actually still pronounced that way in certain instances around the central parts of Iran.

Perhaps we could add cheraa (چِرا) to the list of words for ‘yes’. The word actually means ‘why’, but is also used as a word (or sentence) of affirmation


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## PersoLatin

Qureshpor said:


> ^ Thank you Derakhshan. Your first paragraph. It does appear to be logical. I wonder if there are "majhuul" sounds in any of today's Arabic speech communities. It does seem rather illogical that Arabs spoke with majhuul vowels, yet they felt these vowels were "majhuul" in their own language and only existed in Persian.


I thought in a related thread there was a consensus that Arabs called some Persian sounds "majhuul" or "unknown", (more likely the Persian scribes) because those sounds were unknown in Arabic.


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## PersoLatin

mannoushka said:


> Perhaps we could add cheraa (چِرا) to the list of words for ‘yes’. The word actually means ‘why’, but is also used as a word (or sentence) of affirmation


Isn't چِرا used to mean 'yes' only when the question is asked in the negative form or a statement is made in a negative tone?


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## Qureshpor

PersoLatin said:


> I thought in a related thread there was a consensus that Arabs called some Persian sounds "majhuul" or "unknown", (more likely the Persian scribes) because those sounds were unknown in Arabic.


That is what I am alluding to in my response to Derakhshan Jaan.


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## mannoushka

PersoLatin said:


> Isn't چِرا used to mean 'yes' only when the question is asked in the negative form or a statement is made in a negative tone?


Not exclusively. But it is true that in saying _cheraa_ to mean ‘yes’, the speaker strongly rules out any statements contrary to what has been affirmed.


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## PersoLatin

mannoushka said:


> But it is true that in saying _cheraa_ to mean ‘yes’, the speaker strongly rules out any statements contrary to what has been affirmed.


Isn't that what I said in different words, if not an example will clarify it.


PersoLatin said:


> when the question is asked in the negative form or a statement is made in a negative tone


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## PersoLatin

Qureshpor said:


> That is what I am alluding to in my response to Derakhshan Jaan.


I see.


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## Dib

Qureshpor said:


> Now to the second issue. Arabic بلٰی, لٰکن and perhaps other such words with a long "a" went through a transformation process in the Persian language known as "imaalah" which means "inclining towards". لٰکن became لیکن in Persian, the ی is majhuul, i.e lekin.  بلٰی became "bale" and came to be written as بله.



It seems "imaalah" was present in Arabic dialects themselves, like Derakhshan explained, just not in the standard formal Arabic of the grammarians. There is another interesting tidbid - alif maqsuurah evolved from etymological -ay, and apparently some Quranic qiraa'aat still pronounce it more or less consistently as a long -_ē_.


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