Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A-to-Z Challenge: Yes

The end is nigh!


Our second to last word: yes.

Yes comes from the Old English gise/gese, which meant “so be it”. The first syllable, whether ge or gi, comes from the Old English word ge, which means so or yes and comes from the Proto Germanic ja/jai (another way of saying yes) and the Proto Indo European yam. The -se part of the word is from si, the third person form of to be that’s used in commands. So we just shortened a way of saying “so be it” and now it’s the most common way for agreeing to something.

And for the record, a lot of words beginning with Y began with G in Old English. It must have something to do with the pronunciation of G back then.

Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

11 comments:

  1. Interesting.. I had no idea that g was pronounced as y in old English. I shall have to revisit some of those books I studied for A-Levels and see if they make more sense if I apply that.

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  3. So be it sounds like it's said begrudgingly.

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  4. Maybe I should toss my hands in the air when I say yes now. :)

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  5. I agree with Alex- so be it sounds quite begrudging.

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  6. I didn't know that g was used in place of y. That's interesting.

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  7. I thought you meant "YES! The end is nigh," as in, "Time to celebrate!"

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  8. Maybe that's why I'll say "sure" instead of yes. Although it sounds sarcastic when I use it.

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  9. The end is nigh - all i can really say is YES! ;)

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  10. The end is nigh - all i can really say is YES! ;)

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  11. The informal yeah reminds me of the older yes.

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Please validate me.