# Slavic languages: etymology and origin of "da" and "ne"



## grvulture

Anybody knows the origins of this two words? 

Old English for example etymology for "nay" says it originates from "ne"-not, and -ei (Greek "ever").

What about Slavic "ne"? and "da"?

Thank you!


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## sokol

See here for Slavic da/ne and Greek nai, and some more yes related discussion (in Romance and Romansch).

For nay I suggest etymonline.

So, what exactly is it you wanted to know - a comparison between those?


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## berndf

grvulture said:


> Old English for example etymology for "nay" says it originates from "ne"-not, and -ei (Greek "ever").


To my knowledge "Nay" is indeed derived from ne (not) + a (ever). But both parts are Germanic. I see no Greek influence.


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## grvulture

berndf said:


> To my knowledge "Nay" is indeed derived from ne (not) + a (ever). But both parts are Germanic. I see no Greek influence.


 
Well, "aei" (αεί) spoken "a-i" means "ever" in Greek, however the word is of a simple form and could just be originating from the same Proto-IE root, which may be the same in other languages, as are other words of same origin, e.g. numbers one-uno-ena-jenas, two-due-duo-dvo, three-tre-tria-tri, tessera-cetiri, pente-pes, etc.

Mostly I am interested in the Slavic "ne" which means "no", but must have a different etymology of English "nay", as the two languages didn't come in contact at that time.

Thank you.


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## Orion7

Slavic _da_ and _ne_ are cognates to Latvian _tā_ 'so, that, thatwise' and _nē_ 'no, not', Lithuanian _taip/ne_.
English _nay_, imho, derives from _nē(i)_, cf. Latvian _nē, ne'e_ and German convers. _Ne_ [ne:].


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## Maroseika

Russian да is rather strange word because in the sense of "yes" it used only since the end of the 17th century. Anyway, it derives from the PIE *do - to here (Lith. do, Rus. до, Germ. zu, Eng. to).


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## Joannes

Maroseika said:


> Russian да is rather strange word because in the sense of "yes" it used only since the end of the 17th century.


Do we know how people used to answer polar questions before *da* came into use? Exclusively by repeating the verb or did they use another particle?


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## Maroseika

As far as I know Russians use the same word as some other Slavic people: так (tak).


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## Kanes

This must mean that the same development happened separately in different places. In Bulgarian да was used in texts much earlier then the 17th century. There also isn't a earlier attested form such as так. There is така, but it means 'this way' and it has never been attested to substitute yes. I think да is much older then the 17th century.


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## Maroseika

I meant only Russian. In Russian "да" existed from the very beginning, i.e. since separating from Old-Slavonic languages, and in quite a few senses - but of "yes" however. The latter was first attested only in the end of the 17th century. Maybe this sense of да was loaned from Bulgarian.


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## benjyster

"DA" in the sense of "affirmative", "yes" has its origins in the Thraco-Dacian language from where it was borrowed by Bulgarian Slavic settlers in the Balkans and made standard by Cyril and Methodius when they invented the Cyrillic alphabet and translated the Bible into Slavonic. There was no precise, separate word for "Yes" in any of the Slavic languages so they used "tak", "taka" - the word that meant "so", "like that", "like this", "this way", in the sense of agreeing, of giving an affirmative answer to the person asking a question and expecting a simple answer of yes or no. So the original Slavic affirmative answer would literally mean "it is so". 
Nowadays, looking for a proof of that, there is no "DA" for yes in the Slavic languages that never had anything to do with Cyrillic alphabet or with Old Church Slavonic. The Polish language still uses "Tak" while Slovenian uses a Germanic "Ja", the Czech and Slovak use "Ano" - an old Indo-European word for "Yes". 
The direct descendants of Thraco-Dacians, the Romanians have always used "Da".


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## danielstan

benjyster said:


> "DA" in the sense of "affirmative", "yes" has its origins in the Thraco-Dacian language ...
> The direct descendants of Thraco-Dacians, the Romanians have always used "Da".


Do we have any written source for this Thraco-Dacian word "da"?
In fact there are no many surviving texts from Thraco-Dacian at all (Ezerevo ring inscription - is the longest text which has not been yet acceptably translated).
As for the Romanians who have 'always' used "DA": the oldest surviving Romanian document is from 1521 AD.

The online Romanian dictionary gives the etymology:
rom. _da_ < Old Slavic  _да_ (also bg. and srb. _да_ )
DEX online - DA


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## benjyster

Some Romanian countryside old people never use "Da". Instead they use "dară" (in Maramureș) or "dare" (in Oltenia and Banat). At least that is what a massive lot of Romanian nationals reported in their comments to a YouTube video on this matter. There is this American philologist married to a Romanian woman and he tries to demonstrate the latin origin of "da". He fails remarkably, imho. What he managed to do instead is to draw attention to Romanian alternatives to "da" which seem to be much stronger and definitive in expressing affirmative answer. 
The fact that those Slavs who never converted to Orthodoxy nor adopted Cyrillic alphabet don't have "da" should ring a bell.


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## Awwal12

benjyster said:


> The fact that those Slavs who never converted to Orthodoxy nor adopted Cyrillic alphabet don't have "da"


Slovenians do have "da". EDSL indicates "da" in the meaning "so" in Lower Sorbian as well.
Technically all Slavic language have the word, it's just not all of them having it in the meaning "yes".


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## benjyster

Exactly! German language has a "da" but it has nothing to do with "yes". Italian has "da" but it doesn't mean "yes". The "da" which means "yes" was promoted by the Cyrillic alphabet founders. They didn't invent it. They either borrowed it from the local population (Thracian, Daco-Romanian or Wallachian) or they borrowed it and shortened it  to "da" from the strongest word for yes in the world "dare" in Oltenia or "dară" in Transilvania.


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## berndf

That is not the point Awwal made. The meaning (not the word, the meaning!) "yes" is not native in many IE language families. It developed in 1st millenium AD and different languages within the group used different words for this new meaning "yes". Eastern and southern Slavic languages used da. In some Western Slavic languages the root survived in a meaning closer to the original proto-Slavic one.


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## ajitam

benjyster said:


> They either borrowed it from the local population (Thracian, Daco-Romanian or Wallachian) or they borrowed it and shortened it  to "da" from the strongest word for yes in the world "dare" in Oltenia or "dară" in Transilvania.


And where did Slovene borrow it from?


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## benjyster

ajitam said:


> And where did Slovene borrow it from?


You may know that the main word for "yes" in Slovenian is "Ja", of German origin. Of course they also use "da" in more official occasions, because of historical circumstances and other neighboring slavic peoples that used it before them.


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## OBrasilo

Slovenian is strange, "ja" is not used in writing other than in informal language, meanwhile "da" is never used in speaking.


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## benjyster

OBrasilo said:


> Slovenian is strange, "ja" is not used in writing other than in informal language, meanwhile "da" is never used in speaking.


And that's because none of the two were always present in the language. "JA" is a Germanic loanword while "DA" was borrowed from their Orthodox, Cyrillic alphabet using neighbours purely for official purposes.


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## Ben Jamin

grvulture said:


> Anybody knows the origins of this two words?
> 
> Old English for example etymology for "nay" says it originates from "ne"-not, and -ei (Greek "ever").
> 
> What about Slavic "ne"? and "da"?
> 
> Thank you!


All words meaning "no" and resembling no, ne etc can be tracked back to PIE. 
Here a list  of "no" in several IE languages: 
Afrikaans: nee 

Albanian: nuk 
Belarusian: ня ‎(nja‎)
Bengali: না ‎(na‎)
Breton: nann
Bulgarian: не
Catalan: no
Czech: ne (cs)
Danish: nej 
Dutch: nee 
Esperanto: ne 
Faroese: nei 
French: non 
Galician: non 
German: Nein 
Gujarati: નથી ‎(nathī‎)
Hindi: नहीं ‎(nahī̃‎)
Icelandic:, nei 
Italian: no (it)
Latvian: nav, ne 
Lithuanian: ne 
Lombard: nò
Macedonian: не ‎(ne‎), 
Marathi: नाही ‎(nāhī‎)
Norwegian: nei 
Novial: no
Pashto: نه‎  ‎(na‎)
Persian: næ
Polish: nie 
Portuguese: não 
Punjabi: ਨਹੀਂ ‎(nahī̃‎)
Romanian: nu 
Romansch: na 
Russian: нет ‎(nyet‎)
Silesian: ńy
Slovak: nie 
Slovene: ne
Spanish: no 
Swedish: nej 
Ukrainian: не ( ‎(ne‎)
Welsh: na

The supposition that "nay" may have been influenced by Greek is very fancy, but rather fantastic.


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## jazyk

Awwal12 said:


> Technically all Slavic language have the word, it's just not all of them having it in the meaning "yes".


No trace of it in Czech with any meaning whatsoever.


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## Awwal12

jazyk said:


> No trace of it in Czech with any meaning whatsoever.


ESSJa claims it's present in some of the Czech dialects.


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## jazyk

I've found tons of errors in dictionaries. This could be one of them.

Edit:complementing what I wrote above. No definition for da in this somewhat modern Czech dictionary: Slovník spisovného jazyka českého

Da is mentioned in this respected Czech-German dictionary published around 1840 but as belonging to Russian (I'd have to know the work more deeply to understand what motivated this inclusion):
Slovník česko-německý, Díl… [323]


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## danielstan

Ben Jamin said:


> Here a list  of "no" in several IE languages:
> ...
> *Esperanto*: ne
> ...



What about Klingon language?


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## Ben Jamin

Do you want to start a row by nitpicking?


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## DarkChild

benjyster said:


> The direct descendants of Thraco-Dacians, the Romanians have always used "Da".


Bulgarians descend from Thracias.


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## Awwal12

Pretty much all the population of historical Thracia are descendants of Romanized or Grecized Thracians at least to some extent. What's the point?..


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## anahiseri

funny that *tak * is "yes" in Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia, official dialect since the Dutch rule). Could there be a connection?


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## Awwal12

anahiseri said:


> funny that *tak * is "yes" in Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia, official dialect since the Dutch rule). Could there be a connection?


Not really likely.


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## nimak

Besides *да* (da) in *Macedonian* is used *така* (taka) in the meaning which @benjyster explained:


benjyster said:


> There was no precise, separate word for "Yes" in any of the Slavic languages so they used "tak", "taka" - the word that meant "so", "like that", "like this", "this way", in the sense of agreeing, of giving an affirmative answer to the person asking a question and expecting a simple answer of yes or no.




But, in some *Macedonian dialects* was/is used *ја* (ja) too, instead *да* (da). In Macedonian it for sure is not a German influence, like @benjyster said for the *Slovene* language:


benjyster said:


> while Slovenian uses a Germanic "Ja"




Maybe we should also mention here the *Serbian*/*Croatian*: *јесте* /*jeste*.


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## Perseas

Ben Jamin said:


> All words meaning "no" and resembling no, ne etc can be tracked back to PIE.
> Here a list  of "no" in several IE languages:
> […]


νη- (nē-) exists also in Greek as a negative prefix: _From Proto-Indo-European *n̥- (“not, un-”) ..._
νη- - Wiktionary


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