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Comment by jean- | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that an article on the use of negation in French forgot to mention anything about "si", an interjection used to negate a negative question. [1]

Example from Wiktionary: [2]

  Tu ne m’aimes pas, n’est-ce pas ? — Si !
  You don’t like me, do you? — Yes, I do!

[1]: https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/848/differences-b...

[2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/si#Interjection

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It goes a bit further, and allows to contradict any negative sentence (some example stretch a bit, more context would typically be given):

    C'est impossible. - Si!
    Je ne peux pas - Si! (I can't - yes, you can!)

English used to have a system with four words for that purpose [1].

An interesting fact is that some early Gallo-Romance languages were named after the "yes" word in that language: langue d'{oc, oïl}. One can recognise oïl as a precursor for oui [2,3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#The_Early_English_f... (cases with three forms such as French are detailled bellow).

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo-Romance_languages

The following Louis de Funes movie scene demonstrates the use of si quite well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GioEH34fhxE

English dub: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=me9ft6HeaMQ

Latin had no word for yes, so the various Romance languages adapted ‘hoc ille’ or ‘hoc’ (‘this is it’, or just ‘this’) or ‘sic’ — ‘like that’

I thought it was volo (I want) or nolo (I do not want) that was used for yes or no.

I thought it was repetition of the verb, i.e. I agree with you, but only if the question was 'do you want ...'.

I think it's the same in Mandarin, but the question structure also includes both forms, e.g. 'this cake you want not want?'--'want'.

I obviously didn't mean that the Romans had no way to assert agreement with something. I said they didn't have a word that means 'yes'.

Understood, and agreed.

Perhaps I misread though, I thought you were saying the verb 'want' is used in all cases, I was just saying my understanding is that it would be used when that was the verb in the question, but for 'do you go' similarly 'go' is used in the answer.

Like “doch” in German

and "oh ja" in Austrian german ;)

And "jo!" in Swedish :)

"Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Hungarian, German, Dutch, and French all have three-form systems. Swedish and Danish have ja, jo, and nej. Norwegian has ja, jo/jau, and nei. Icelandic has já, jú and nei. Faroese has ja, jú and nei. Hungarian has igen, de, and nem. German has ja, doch, and nein. Dutch has ja, jawel, and nee. French has oui, si, and non."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#Three-form_system...

"mo mo" in Iraqi Arabic!

Or "ba da" in Romanian.

Wow, English could really benefit from this.

In english, as mentioned re. australia below (and also america), the negation of a negative is: 'no, yea'

https://pics.me.me/california-english-no-yeah-yes-yeah-no-ye...

‘Yeah na’ in New Zealand.

'Yeah nah' - has variations across the English speaking world: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/253960/15280

Hmm, not sure about that. Sydney here. I can't think offhand of a context where 'No, yeah' would have much meaning, if any. I never hear it. Does sound like bush talk, maybe, but not sure. e.g. "You don’t like me, do you?" "No, yeah" (or "yeah, no") would just be a meaningless, confusing response. You'd say "Yes! of course I do" or something.

There's that old joke where a lecturer is telling the audience about how two affirmatives never make a negative in English, and a voice is heard "Yeah yeah". I guess you could try "You don't like me, do you?" "No no, I do!". But whatever's said, the meaning would be determined mostly by the tone of voice, facial expression, body language etc

Perth here. "nah yeah" is common.

the "nah" indicates disagreement with the statement, and the "yeah" affirms the positive. Often with a restatement of the statement attached.

e.g: "nah, yeah I like you mate"

"Nah", no?

"Actually" gets you most of the way there

Using 'so', as in, 'I do so!' seems to carry almost the identical meaning to me, but it's hardly as universal and idiomatic as the French 'si'.

We had yea/nay/yes/no. The former pair are not just 'olde' ways of saying latter; the equivalent of 'si' is actually 'yes', we just started using it for 'oui' too.

Australian English has this... "yeah, nah" and "nah, yeah" are commonly used as replies to negative sentences. Well, all sentences really, but in this context negative ones.

"You've got no chance of beating that thing in a fight, mate" "yeah, nah" (I agree)

"Reckon it's never going to rain again?" "nah, yeah" (it will, eventually)

and the classic negatory chain of Yeah! (yes)-> Yeah, nah! (no)-> Yeah, nah, for sure! (yes)

Pretty sure you can mix and match and it depends on the emphasis and tone of the speaker:

“Do you serve Pepsi here?”

-(no) “yeah no, we are all out”

-(no) “no, yeah we are all out”

-(yes) “no yeah, we got it”

-(yes) “yeah, no we got it”

it's always the last value that counts.

Your example of "no, yeah we're all out" doesn't actually work, because the "yeah" is dangling. The "yeah, no" works (the yeah agrees with the question, we do serve Pepsi, but the no modifies it because we're all out).

and the same for the "yeah, no" in the second example - the "no" is dangling.

but yeah, it can be confusing if the tone of the original question implies a negative (like "you don't serve Pepsi here do you?").

took me ages to work out that the first value doesn't matter ;)

Most people just rephrase the question in response to avoid ambiguity but that does seem inefficient.

Au contraire

I'm not sure this is a great example.

"n’est-ce pas" is literally "is it not so" - to which a reply of "yes" would mean the same in English.

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