# The word for "yes" is usually an open syllable



## terredepomme

I just noticed that in many languages, the word for affirmation is usually an open syllable(i.e. ends with a vowel)
For example:
Ja (German, Dutch)
Si (Spanish, Italian)
Oui (French)
Ye (Korean)
Hai (Japanese) (<-But then again 90% of Japanese syllables are open...)
Shi (Mandarin)
and so on.
One obvious exception is the English "yes," but in colloquial life one seldom says "yes" but instead says "yeah."
Another may be the Portuguese "sim," but that's a nasal vowel so I don't know where to place that.
A coincidence?


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## Abu Rashid

Arabic is "na3m" which is not open.

Hebrew "ken" is also not open.


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## Orlin

I can add some other examples for Slavic languages: Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian _да/da_, so it seems at least statistically to be a rule, but it may be just a coincidence as well.


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## Maroseika

Slavic да is quite a recent word, having appeared in the sense of yes only several centuries ago. Previous word for yes was так (tak) - with closed syllable, and it is так nowadays in Ukrainain and Belorussian.
On the other hand, it is closed only now, but in Ancient Russian it was такъ (tako). But on the third hand, all the syllables in Slavic were open then. 

I can add:
Ossetyan: 
yes - o (o)

Kartvelian: 
დიახ (diakh)


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## terredepomme

> Arabic is "na3m" which is not open.
> 
> Hebrew "ken" is also not open.



So perhaps just an Indo-European thing. The East Asian languages I've mentioned are mostly comprised of open syllables anyway, so...


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## francisgranada

Hungarian: *igen* 
Slovak: *hej*, also* áno*
Polish: *tak* (litterally _so_)
Czech: *ano*
Occitan:* oc*
Old French:* oïl*


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## OBrasilo

Slavic:
Slovenian: *da* (written), *ja* (spoken colloquial);
Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian: *da*.
Germanic:
Luxembourgish: *jo*.
Romance:
Portuguese: *sim*;
Old Oïl: *oïl*;
Romanian: *da*;
Vulgar Latin: *sic* (so, cf. Polish tak), *hoc*, *hoc ille*.


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## 0m1

Abu Rashid said:


> Arabic is "na3m" which is not open.
> 
> Hebrew "ken" is also not open.



Colloquially though we have Levantine 2eh/2ah, Egyptian 2ah etc


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## Outsider

terredepomme said:


> Another may be the Portuguese "sim," but that's a nasal vowel so I don't know where to place that.


Phonetically, it wouldn't be an exception.


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## apmoy70

terredepomme said:


> I just noticed that in many languages, the word for affirmation is usually an open syllable(i.e. ends with a vowel)
> For example:
> Ja (German, Dutch)
> Si (Spanish, Italian)
> Oui (French)
> Ye (Korean)
> Hai (Japanese) (<-But then again 90% of Japanese syllables are open...)
> Shi (Mandarin)
> ...


Add Greek in your list:
«Ναι» (ne _adv._) or pre-Classical one «Νὴ» (nē _adv._), PIE base *(e)no-/*ne-, _(pronoun) that_ (cognate to Sanskr. _n__ā-n__ā_, OS _na_, Lat. _nam/enim__, _Toch. _nai_)


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## Ghabi

I don't want to spoil the party, but let's not forget that in some languages no "yes" is used, as in Chinese or Irish where the verb of the question is repeated for an affirmative answer. In any case, we also have "yup" in English despite "yeah" and _un_ in Japanese despite _hai_. So, I don't really see a trend.


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## francisgranada

Ghabi said:


> I don't want to spoil the party, but let's not forget that in some languages no "yes" is used, as in Chinese or Irish where the verb of the question is repeated for an affirmative answer. In any case, we also have "yup" in English despite "yeah" and _un_ in Japanese despite _hai_. So, I don't really see a trend.


 
I think, the original idea was to suppose that the words for "yes" (whatever beeing their origin) have a function of some kind of interjection, thus they could demonstrate some common phonetical tendencies (or so ...). The examples above show clearly that it is not so .


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## Istriano

In Hindi it's [hã], or [d͡ʒhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-alveolar_affricatei] or [d͡ʒihã] 
In Malayalam it's [a'ðe].


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## ocanada3933

Here's the deal:

When you have a word for "yes" in a language, it tends to be used quite often.  And just like any word in any language that is used often, it is very susceptible to eroding away (and in this case loosing a consonant). When languages change, this is the commonality (i.e. that parts of word erode away).


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## terredepomme

I just also noticed that non of the words listed here have multiple continuous consonants.


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## miguel89

Ghabi said:


> I don't want to spoil the party, but let's not forget that in some languages no "yes" is used, as in Chinese or Irish where the verb of the question is repeated for an affirmative answer.


As far as I know, this was the case in Latin as well, where other forms of affirmation, like _ita_, were less common.


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## Copperknickers

Latin used a lot. 'Sic est' for example was very common, which developed into 'sic' and then 'si'. I think there is no single rule which can be applied to the word yes. Here is its in Nahuatl: 

*Quemacatzin
*


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## elianecanspeak

The term of agreement "so" in English *(it is so)* is also open.

(Online Etymology Dictionary:  "O.E. swa, swæ "in this way," from P.Gmc. *swa (cf. O.S., M.Du., O.H.G. so, O.N. sva, Dan. saa, Swed. så, O.Fris. sa, Du. zo, Ger. so "so," Goth. swa "as"), from PIE reflexive pronomial stem *s(w)o- (cf. Gk. hos "as," O.Latin suad "so," L. se "himself")"   http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=so


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## Istriano

In colloquial English, there's *yeah *(sometimes pronounced *yah *as in German), but also *yup*.


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## elianecanspeak

Here is an extensive list for the word "yes" -- over 500 languages.  When I glanced over it, a surprising number ended with an open syllable.  On the other hand, I have no idea how many of these languages terminate all words with an open syllable.

http://users.elite.net/runner/jennifers/yes.htm


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## terredepomme

> Here is its in Nahuatl:
> 
> Quemacatzin



That's quite a long word or a "yes." Is that use in the same sense as we would use the word in European languages?


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## terredepomme

> un in Japanese despite hai.


That is more like a short nasal sound than a closed syllable, just transcripted that way. It's not pronounced "oon."


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## Joannes

This is another thread about supposedly universal features in the phonetics of 'yes'. I personally think there's a connection with the use of 'yes' as a backchannel mechanism.


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## jmx

ocanada3933 said:


> When you have a word for "yes" in a language, it tends to be used quite often. And just like any word in any language that is used often, it is very susceptible to eroding away (and in this case loosing a consonant). When languages change, this is the commonality (i.e. that parts of word erode away).


In colloquial Spanish, at least in some areas, it's not uncommon to hear the affirmative "sí" become a sort of hissing "sss", especially when used in a phatic way.


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## Ben Jamin

terredepomme said:


> Hai (Japanese) (<-But then again 90% of Japanese syllables are open...)



Do you mean that Japanese pronounce the word ha-ee (two syllables)?
I always heard 'hay'.


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## artion

I don't mean to derail this thread but is it not strange that the Greek yes (ne) means "no" in other languages?


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## elianecanspeak

Wikipedia offeres an interesting survey of yes/no systems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no

Some are constructed with polar yes/no opposites while others have more dimensions (eg differing replies if the question is asked in the negative or affirmative).  

And, as Ghabi reminds us in post #11, the repetition of the verb used in the question.

Another option (citing Japanese hai/eei) is "agree" or "disagree".

They also discuss the uh-uh/uh-huh dichotomy as a way to answer when the mouth is unable to form clear words (eating, carrying something in one's teeth, etc).

"Uh-uh/uh-huh", glottal stops to signal the negative, and risin/falling intonation is also covered in another Wordreference  thread :

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1321600


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## tFighterPilot

In Hebrew slang the word Ken sometimes turn into Keh.


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## Favara

There's also _oc_ in Occitan (hey, even its name derives from the way they say "yes").


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

I think the answer to this "amazing" phenomenon may be to simply look at UG in terms of phonology, where a high ranking constraint in languages is:
.
.
.
n) No codas (like open syllables)
.
.
.
.

I cannot imagine there being a bisyllabic structure for an affirmative word like "yes," but of course there can be exceptions, the case seems to be a monosyllabic open syllable (and in English, atleast where I speak, <yes> often has the /s/ dropped or replaced with the sequence [jV] where V is a vowel).

Often it is the case that such words also fulfill more rules (being very function like) and since their usage would be more often, it would make sense to make keep them small (possibly for production costs, etc.).

@Artion: I am no expert in historical linguistics or in any language, but the fact is the Greek word for "yes" while looking like a cognate for "no" in other languages is still probably related, as it is a sequence of CrV where Cr indicates the set of Coronal sounds and V is a vowel.  The sounds {n, j, s, etc.} all share a common place feature (of course /j/ being palatal...) and Coronals are also the least marked sound in UG.


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## OBrasilo

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean that Japanese pronounce the word ha-ee (two syllables)?
> I always heard 'hay'.


It is two syllables, even written as such. Let me quote from JWPce/JEdict:


> はい        (int) (1) (pol) yes, (2) OK (used to get attention prior to an utterance), okay, (3) giddy-up, giddap, (P)


There's no way to denote "hay", except for maybe はぃ, but that's not a combination of sounds that naturally occurs in Japanese.


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## Ben Jamin

OBrasilo said:


> It is two syllables, even written as such. Let me quote from JWPce/JEdict:
> 
> There's no way to denote "hay", except for maybe はぃ, but that's not a combination of sounds that naturally occurs in Japanese.


 
OK, it is written ha-i (two syllables) both in Japanese script and in romanized form, but is it actually pronounced so?


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## berndf

terredepomme said:


> One obvious exception is the English "yes," but in colloquial life one seldom says "yes" but instead says "yeah."


Incidentally, _yea_ is the original word. _Yes_ was originally an emphatic form meaning _yea, so be it!_ Shakespeare seems still to have distinguished the two words. He used _yes _mainly in obviously emphatic contexts: _yes, yes; yes indeed; o yes; yes, so is it, so is it; by my troth, yes..._.


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## Joannes

True, 16th century English had a yes/no system with four forms:
*yea* for positive agreement;
*yes* for positive disagreement (like Fr *si*)
*no* for negative agreement
*nay* for negative disagreement


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