Cool article
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Words for “yes” in Romance languages
11–20 of 172 posts
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#12Interesting. In (Brazilian) Portuguese, "isso" and "isso aí" ("this", "this there") is used to confirm or agree with something, so it seems the expression survived the times.
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#13Sanskrit also lacked a single affirmative particle, instead using various words/phrases meaning "true" or "it is so" (sat, satya, astu)
Also similar to Latin, most of it's daughter languages standardized on a single affirmative particle "haan".
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#14Sanskrit also lacked a single affirmative particle, instead using various words/phrases meaning "true" or "it is so" (sat, satya, astu) Also similar to Latin, most of it's daughter languages standardized on a single affirmative particle "haan".
Astu (अस्तु) is imperative, asti, (अस्ति) is what would be used.
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#15Interesting. In (Brazilian) Portuguese, "isso" and "isso aí" ("this", "this there") is used to confirm or agree with something, so it seems the expression survived the times.
Curious coincidence how that sounds like 'it's so' and 'itsso, eh'!
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#16Loved that pun from Baudolino by Umberto Eco:
"I know, Master Niketas, that the center of the universe is your city here, but the world is vaster than your empire, and there's even Ultima Thule and the land of Hibernians. True, compared to Constantinople, Rome is a pile of ruins and Paris is a muddy village, but even there something happens every now and then. In many vast, vast regions of the world people don't speak Greek, and there are those who, when they want to agree with something, say, oc."
"Oc?"
"Oc."
"Strange. But do go on."
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#17Interesting subject tainted by crappy narration.
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#18Sanskrit also lacked a single affirmative particle, instead using various words/phrases meaning "true" or "it is so" (sat, satya, astu) Also similar to Latin, most of it's daughter languages standardized on a single affirmative particle "haan".
Astu (अस्तु) is imperative, asti, (अस्ति) is what would be used.
Either works depending on the context. "astu" is more like "let it be so". Still, there is no single generic affirmative particle.
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#19Interesting. In (Brazilian) Portuguese, "isso" and "isso aí" ("this", "this there") is used to confirm or agree with something, so it seems the expression survived the times.
Technically, “isso” translates to “that”, whereas “isto” translates to “this”. Good point, anyway.
Re: Words for “yes” in Romance languages
#20This! (Sorry... Fantastic article in any case. I send anything similar to a friend who studied linguistics. This one is going to her immediately.)
While it's a superb article, it strikes me as being distinctly aimed at laypeople, and I suspect someone who studied linguistics might already know large parts of it. (I haven't, but I know parts from having had Latin in school.) (Also, it contains the words "This is not exactly what happened but it is basically what happened, please just fucking roll with it, this shit is long enough already." so I suspect there mig…
This should be pretty common knowledge to any linguist who studied historical linguistics, although if you never did any historical linguistics you could easy miss that.
This should also be common knowledge to anyone who studied late-medieval Latin texts, as many of them use this feature to distinguish the 3 major Romance vernaculars of Europe, e.g. Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia. There is even an entire region called Languedoc in France, which refers to the language its inhabitants speak (or used to speak).
Having say that, although I perfectly know about the distinction between languages of si, oil and oc, I was still intrigued enough to click on the article and it was a nice read (except for the tiny font) and I even learned something new: I didn't know that 'oc' was a calque from Gaulish 'to'.
The common case of people sending me articles about linguistics is worse: I often get heavily distorted pop-sci articles full of mistakes and misconceptions.