# Yeah-no [+ yeah-nah]



## ewie

The plague currently raging across England is the very weird sentence-starter _Yeah-no_.  I hear it umpteen times a week, from _all_ sections of the E-English-speaking community.  It doesn't need to be in answer to a Yes/No question: as often as not it's just a 'noise' made to start _any_ sentence, where we might previously have said _Well_ or _Erm_ or nothing at all.
I suppose it's another of those excruciating self-effacing things we do in speech all the time _("Would you mind terribly stopping stabbing me? ~ it does rather hurt, you know")_.  I'm sure the people who say it can have no conception of just how daft it sounds.
Anyway, I was just wondering if: (1) anyone else in England has noticed it ~ if you've not heard it yet, listen out for it: I can guarantee you'll hear it within 48 hours; and (2) it's been spotted anywhere _outside _England.


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## suzi br

I've heard it.  

Sure it is a filler like erm, not got any meaning apart from "give me time to formulate my real response"!


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## ewie

suzi br said:


> Sure it is a filler like erm, not got any meaning apart from "give me time to formulate my real response"!


 Not _always_ though, Suze: sometimes it genuinely is supposed to convey the idea of 'yes' ... but without the horrible 'arrogance' that that word bears


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## Loob

I haven't noticed it myself yet, ewie, though I'm bound to now you've pointed it out....

That said, it seems to have attracted the attention of academics already: see this Mark Liberman Language Log entry. 

It looks as though it might have arrived here from Australia - the link quotes this from 2002:_Yeah-no_ in Australian English is a relatively new marker which  serves a number of functions, including discourse cohesion, the  pragmatic functions of hedging and face-saving, and assent and dissent.  Drawing on a corpus of approximately 30 hours of both informal  conversation and interviews, we analyse the interaction between  intonation and turntaking, and the use of _yeah-no_ by topic, conversational genre, and age and gender of speaker. The results indicate that the peak of _yeah-no_ production occurs among speakers aged 35-49 years, and gender differences are not apparent in this preliminary analysis.​


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## Inglip

Are you sure they are not saying _you know?_

I know my friends would say to me when I was in England - You know, we should go play football in the park.

<< ... >>


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## ewie

Loob said:


> That said, it seems to have attracted the attention of academics already: see this Mark Liberman Language Log entry.


Ooh! great find, Mrs ~ ta


Inglip said:


> Are you sure they are not saying _you know?_


No, definitely not, Inglip: the 'eh' sound is very distinct


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## Inglip

It still could be - The way people from my town speak, they sometimes say 'you' to sound like 'yeah'.

Yeh (you) guys! Don't kick it to me
Yeh no (You know), I like football

Sometimes, it even comes out as Use.

Use lot need to stop playing football.


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## ewie

Inglip said:


> It still could be


Did you see the article(s) linked to by Loob? ~ it's well-established that it's _Yeah-no_, not _Yeah-(I)-know_ ...

... in fact it's _so_ well-established (in the US and Australia) that I find myself totally behind the times with this


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## Inglip

I've never heard it.

I can't imagine how someone would say it, or a sentence they would use it in.


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## ewie

Inglip said:


> I've never heard it.
> 
> I can't imagine how someone would say it, or a sentence they would use it in.


Mark Liberman Language Log entry.


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## Inglip

Still, I can't say I've ever heard it.


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## ewie

I guess it just hasn't travelled as far as Dubai yet.

Or you just haven't _heard_ it yet.


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## natkretep

I haven't heard it myself, but am aware of it being described in Australia.

There's an article by Kate Burridge & Margaret Florey, 'Yeah-no he's a good kid': A discourse analysis of _yeah-no_ in Australian English'                               in the _Australian Journal of Linguistics_.

Also interesting: it's not from teenagers.



> The results indicate that the peak of yeah-no production occurs among  speakers aged 35-49 years, and gender differences are not apparent in  this preliminary analysis.



Also described in an article in _The Age_.



> According to Burridge and Florey "yeah-no" has become entrenched in  Australia over the past six years - and its use is on the increase.  Moreover, they maintain that it's a very effective communication tool -  not just a glorified "um, ah", but a form of "verbal cuddling".


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## wildan1

ewie said:
			
		

> ... in fact it's _so_ well-established (in the US and Australia)


_Yeah-no_ hasn't hit my part of the US yet as far as I can tell. Many new trends in the US start on the West Coast and move eastward, so it may well be prevelant out that way...

(Anything that could supplant 7,000 repetitions per hour of _like_ at every half-sentence would be a definite improvement in my opinion!)


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## GreenWhiteBlue

It hasn't reached New York yet, but thanks for the heads-up; I will notify the federal ICE agents to screen for it at the airport when checking passports, and the NYPD Harbor Unit will be on alert in case the habit tries to swim ashore from a cruise ship....


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## lucas-sp

I completely use this construction all the time! And so do practically all of my friends who grew up with me in Northern California.

I'll describe the way I would use it, which does sort of fit in with Mark Lieberman's claim that "yeah, no" answers questions that need to be both affirmed and negated. (We also put _huge_ weight on the "no" part, which he claims is said more softly.) Basically, the key element of "yeah, no" is that the "no" means "yeah" (as it can so easily do given the right context). The point is that the idea being expressed is so strong that it would be common to use the expressive "No!" that means "go on with the story, that's amazing" ("And then he took me to his car, which was, like, a convertible..." "No!" "Yeah!"). So the expression "yeah, no" works out as a particularly intense affirmation based on a doubled word: "yeah... [head nodding, increase in pitch, rising inflection] no!" The speaker says it to him/herself, almost playing out the double roles of the conversation - hence the pause between the "yeah" and the "no." Here where I live, we even go all the way to "yeah, no, yeah!" I think the phrase is mainly used to patch up gaps in conversation, to pick up the thread of a discussion that has been interrupted at a key point, or to emphasize that the climax of the discourse has been reached.

Here's an example: "And then we went to the south side of the island and rented a motorboat. So we drove the boat out and along these cliffs." "Wow." "Yeah, no, it was _amazing_."

I'll try to pay attention as I go about my business today and keep track of any instances of "yeah, no" in my plague-ridden speech.


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## ribran

It has already reached Austin. Although we Austinites take every opportunity to carp about all the Californians coming here in droves, we have shown ourselves to be very eager to adopt their slang and speech patterns. 

Yesterday a friend of mine told me about a "hella untended" path he had ridden his bike on.


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## lucas-sp

"Dude, bro, this path is hella untended. Yeah, no, let's bounce."


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## ribran

Yeah, that's pretty much what he said!


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## ewie

Well, folks, the inevitable has happened: I've finally come across my first ever usage of _yeah no_ in spontaneous writing.  I'll refrain from naming names or making comments as it's by a member of this forum.  So here it is:


			
				anonymous AmE perpetrator said:
			
		

> Yeah, no, this is specific usage of "dinner" to  mean a noon-time meal. I know it exists, from using my own ears, but I  was just wondering how widespread it is. WR possibly, due to the  elevated education level of the users, is not the right forum to get the  pulse on where this ("dinner" for a noon-time meal) is currently  used.


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## ksar

I just heard someone say "yeah, no" to start a sentence and I know that I also use that phrase sometimes but have never thought how stupid it sounds. I decided to google it to see why we say it and where it came from and I came across this thread so I decided to weigh in. I live in Canada and I hear and say that awful phrase to start sentences that have nothing to do with a yes or a no answer. Though I know we're no longer saying "you know" or "y'know" I believe it is possible that that's where this originated from.


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## JustKate

I kind of like _yeah no_. I don't think I use it often, but I definitely use it. In my experience, it's used to affirm part of a statement (often a very small part) but deny the main point of the statement. For example: 
A: Would you like to do ____(whatever)___?
B: Yeah (I appreciate the invitation but) no (I definitely don't want to do that).


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## dadane

This is everyday speech in NZ, so much so that I have picked up the habit myself. It serves the same function as 'yes and no' does in BE but doesn't require the elaboration.


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## suzi br

Marvellous!  I predict you spot it in The Telegraph by the end of 2015.


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## ewie

JustKate said:


> In my experience, it's used to affirm part of a statement (often a very small part) but deny the main point of the statement.





dadane said:


> It serves the same function as 'yes and no'


It performs neither of those sophisticated functions in the UK.  Here it's no more meaningful than (say) farting or burping before every utterance.


suzi br said:


> Marvellous!  I predict you spot it in The Telegraph by the end of 2015.


I'll have to start _reading_ The Telegraph first, Suze


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## Phil-Olly

Yeah, I hear it all the time, and suspect I've even used it myself (although I shudder at the thought).

I've suspected for a while that it's a variant of starting a sentence with "No...", used as a picking up a thread.  I remember remarking to some friends (I suspect more than 40 years ago!) that this was a kind of weird trait in speech and none of them had any idea what I was talking about.

A: "Have you seen Star Wars?"
B: "Yes, of course."
C: "Yes, so have I"
D: "Me too."
pause
A: "No, the reason I asked was ......"

What function does the "No" serve?  Perhaps these days, more likely:  "Yeah, no, the reason I asked was ....."

Maybe we're just getting increasingly indecisive ....?


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## JustKate

What _no_ does in Phil-Olly's example is say "I didn't really just want to talk about whether you've seen the movie. What I'm actually interested in is..." Of course, you'd don't need _no_ to do that - you could just start with "The reason I asked," but _no_ functions as a sort of shorthand for "I'd like to change the subject slightly."

At least that's what it means when I use it. 




			
				Ewie said:
			
		

> It performs neither of those sophisticated functions in the UK. Here it's no more meaningful than (say) farting or burping before every utterance.



 Oh, that's a shame. In the US, as far as I can tell, it always means "A tiny bit yes, but mostly no."


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## waltern

An episode of Slate's "Lexicon Valley" podcast about "Yeah, No" for anyone who might be interested:

http://www.slate.com/articles/podca.../06/yeah_no_lexicon_valley_slate_podcast.html


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## Smauler

I'm afraid to say as thirty-something south eastern Englishman, I say  this _all_ the time.  I think I've said it since my teens, but I may be  mistaken.  I am pretty sure I noticed it and brought it up talking with  friends about 10 years ago.

The way I use it usually is in  response to a question.  It does not mean "no", at all; if anything it  is more of an affirmation than just "yeah".

The "no" is a preemption of my endorsement of the question, usually :

"Do you want to go in to town?"
"Yeah, no, that sounds good."

"Fancy another beer?"
"Yeah, no, cheers, mate." (with emphasis on end of the sentence)

(My conversations are usually a little more erudite than this, honest...)



ewie said:


> It performs neither of those sophisticated  functions in the UK.  Here it's no more meaningful than (say) farting or  burping before every utterance.




I think "Yeah, no" is more important than that - it shows (or superficially does) you've actually listened to a question or idea, and thought about it.

I say it very quickly...  "Yeah, no, I've been thinking about this for a while" - The first three words just form into one.

Also, to repeat : "Yeah, no, that sounds good" carries more positivity than "yeah, that sounds good".


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## mandelson

Put in a search for this strange phrase combination and landed here. Couldn't resist posting as this is a hobby horse of mine!
It seems the "yeah-no" expression hasn't died out yet in London at least. Keep hearing it from well educated colleagues and it drives me nuts. I haven't pointed it out to anyone as it will possibly piss them off not least as I have the impression they are unaware of it and don't have any idea why they say it. Based on my attempts to analyse the context if when its used by my colleagues I have the impression it is some kind of new politeness. What the person seems to me to be doing is this. They hear something and respond with an affirmation of "yeah" but at point of utterance they feel anxious that their affirmation was oppressive and dogmatic so they seek to row back and aim to produce calm in the other person by uttering "no" in quick succession. The unconscious aim appears to be to dilute any and soften the exclamation and avoid the risk of appearing dogmatic and opinionated. Ultimately the aim is a kind of diversion and attempt to be seen as nice and is a continuation of anglo saxon self deprecation which so confuses Europeans. I cannot imagine a German saying Ja-nein but could be wrong. A strange reflection of contemporary manners. Hope that adds to the debate!


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## Kirusha

I haven't been here that long myself, but let me welcome you to the forum, Mandelson, as seems to be the custom.

In Smauler's examples "no" sounds to me like a shorthand for "why not" (a kind of hesitancy passing itself for politeness: it's too straightforward to eagerly agree to something).

PS I may be misremembering but I have a vague feeling that this kind of politely evasive agreement is the way not-so-educated people speak in books set in the old days: "Why, no, yes he did go there, Ma'am".


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## GoKyu

I've heard lucas-sp's version of this ("Yeah, no, it was amazing...") before, but it's not very common here in New Orleans from what I've heard.

But, on the other hand, I hear (and use myself) a slightly different meaning of "Yeah, no" that JustKate described.

It's got a very sarcastic meaning the way I use it:

"Hey, do you want to go pick wildflowers (or some other activity that you have zero interest in doing) with me?"

"Yeeeaaahhh.....uh, no, that's not happening." (similar to the "yeeeaaaaahhhh..." from the movie "Office Space".)


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## pob14

Smauler said:


> It does not mean "no", at all; if anything it  is more of an affirmation than just "yeah".


Yeah, no, I use it just the way GoKyu does.


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## truepurple

Echoing Gokyus sentiment. (though never seen that movie)

Like if some naked guy wearing a rooster costume head approached me and asked if I wanted him to lay me a egg, I might go... Yeaahhhh, ... no thanks, i think I will decline. And I might go yeaahh or riiiight even without reason to say no if something really strange was happening or said. I guess sarcasm is a way to say it, and/or just a means to express how shocked you are/how strange/absurd/stupid you find something.

Otherwise if I appreciate a offer but can't/don't want to take someone up on it, I would say "Thanks, but no thanks" which I guess is alot like yeah no but better said IMO. I suppose I could drop off the second thanks, "Thanks but no." Just sounds better with the second thanks, even though when I use logic it seems like it's cancelling out the thanks.


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## Kirusha

I've been reading on the topic, here and elsewhere, and come up with some questions for both BE and AE speakers. It seems that there are two distinct "yeah-no", although a certain tentativeness is what they have in common.

1) - Do you like pizza? - Yeah, no, I love it.

Pronounced something like ['je'no], this is apparently more common in BE, and maybe AuE, and should be interpreted as "oh, yes, certainly, thank you for asking, why should you have ever thought I would say no in response to your question?". But a similar "mitigated assent" is also found in "well, yes" and "why, yes". I would venture a hypothesis that "yeah no" might have come to replace them.

Hence my questions: Do AE speakers here never use or hear this discourse marker? Do the same BE speakers say both "yeah no" and "well yes" or do they fall nicely into two broad categories? Do BE speakers ever say "why, yes" these days (to me it sounds old-fashioned, like in: "'Why yes, Mrs. Kincaid—how clever!' 'And as to the haddock, madam, I could make it into a mousseline and wrap it in slices of smoked salmon.'", from Brenda Jagger's The Sleeping Sword)? 

2) - Do you like pizza? - Yeah, no, I don't eat that kind of crap.

Pronounced as "yeaaaaaaaah... no", it's quite common among AE speakers and seems to be more like an interjection (abbreviating "how can I possibly put it without causing too much offence?") followed by a standard marker of denial/ refusal. 

Question: Do BE speakers use this construction (personally I don't associate "yeah" with BE speakers, but AE speakers might use it in other contexts too:"yeah... I see")?

I would be most interested to read your answers and comments.


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## Linkway

So is this "yeah, no" separate and different from the "yeah but no" made famous on UK TV by Vicky Pollard?


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## sound shift

ewie said:


> if you've not heard it yet, listen out for it: I can guarantee you'll hear it within 48 hours


Well, yes, I have heard it, but not from anyone I know. For some strange reason, former England cricket captain Andrew Strauss's post-match interviews spring to mind.


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## ewie

To Kirusha [#35]:
(1) _Why yes_ feels very old-fashioned to me too.  (2) As far as I'm aware the _yeaaaaaaah ... no_ mentioned above doesn't exist in the UK.
To Linkway [#36]:
Yes it's entirely separate.  Vicky Pollard just doesn't know whether she means _yes_ or _no._

General: 'My'_ yeah-no_ isn't going away: I still hear it constantly, and from all stations of life.  And I persist in thinking that it has no more 'meaning' than farting, burping, clearing one's throat, or attaching the equally meaningless _I mean_ or _So _to the front of every statement


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## sound shift

When I've heard _Yeah-no_, it's come from English people and been used as a reply to a question. I'm of the opinion that the "Yeahs" were tantamount to "I can understand why you might think that" and that the "Nos" signified "... but you're wrong": another manifestation of the old English sport of _not being frontal_ (see "That's twenty-one pounds, sixty-three. Have you got a club card _at all_?", etc). Pretty similar findings to Mandelson's at post 30, in fact.


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## Kirusha

ewie said:


> To Kirusha [#35]:
> (1) _Why yes_ feels very old-fashioned to me too.  (2) As far as I'm aware the _yeaaaaaaah ... no_ mentioned above doesn't exist in the UK.
> To Linkway [#36]:
> Yes it's entirely separate.  Vicky Pollard just doesn't know whether she means _yes_ or _no._
> 
> General: 'My'_ yeah-no_ isn't going away: I still hear it constantly, and from all stations of life.  And I persist in thinking that it has no more 'meaning' than farting, burping, clearing one's throat, or attaching the equally meaningless _I mean_ or _So _to the front of every statement



Thanks, Ewie. Do you also object to people saying "Well"?


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## ewie

No I don't object to _well_ ... but then I don't exactly 'object to' _yeah-no_.  I find it more comical than anything else ... comical and idiotic
I really only object to these verbal tics when people get to the stage where they can't open their mouths without using them  I once knew a young lady who ended virtually every sentence she ever uttered with _d'y'know what I mean?_ ~ it was infuriating


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