He's back!

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 11:46:01AM -0400, Baker, John wrote:
>
>         The faculty page also links to an article about the teaching of
> the Irish language.  In the midst of some more plausible claims about
> the Irish language (that verbs come first, adjectives follow nouns, and
> so forth), we see the claim that there are no words for "yes" or "no" in
> Irish.  Is this really true?

It's really true. The usual response to a yes/no question in Irish
involves repeating the verb with or without a negative particle.
There are alternatives if you need to express the concept of
yes-ness in the abstract. This is the same as Latin, really;
there was no single word to answer questions in the affirmative,
though for _Sic et Non_ Abelard could use those words to express
what we'd represent as "yes and no" in English.

Jesse "Not otherwise in agreement with Cassidy" Sheidlower
OED

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org