"[In Latin,] there was no single word [for 'yes']"

[Wilson Gray]

Of those available, my favorite has always been _nonhaudquaquam_, per
Henle's "Latin Grammar." ("Who's Henle?" you ask. He was a teacher of
Latin at the high school that I went to.)

Apparently, this problem of how to say "yes" influenced the
proto-Rumanians, though they retained _nu_ < Latin _non_ for "no," to
adopt Slavic _da_ for "yes." The reflex of _sic_ means "and" in
Rumanian, though it means "yes" in other Romance languages. By a weird
coincidence, Slavic _da_ can also mean "and" in Russian and has been
borrowed with that meaning by speakers of some of the Finno-Ugric
languages of lands conquered by Russia. Cf. the borrowing of the
Swedish word for "and" by Finnish.

-Wilson
----
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Samuel Clemens

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