yea/ yeah

[Jonathan Lighter]

The OED evidence shows that / jE / has been a form of assent since the 8th C.; in fact, with a little latitude for variation, it may well predate English itself.
/ jEs / comes later, to judge from both apparent etymology and the date of surviving manuscripts.

At some point, / jEI / , a phonological variant of / jE /, became restricted to voice votes and the like.  One guesses that the ruling classes in the London
area grew up as / jEI / sayers - hence its high prestige.

Meanwhile, most everyone else was saying / jE /.

Once / jEI / was felt to be "formal," / jE / pedagogues began to believe that / jE / was just a "slurring" of / jEs /. Hence the stigma.

Thus, "yay" should have been in use as a cheer of assent exactly as long as has "yea."  At some relatively recent point, a new spelling was introduced by people who couldn't connect the very formal contexts of "yea" with the markedly informal contexts of "yay!"  Go figure.

As I mentioned once before, though, printed exx. of "yea" for "yes" antedating 1900 are rare indeed in American sources, even in dialogue.  Far, far rarer than "ain't."  Could "slovenly" "yea(h)" have been under a stricter pedagogical ban than "ain't"?  Hard to imagine, but....

The present OED treatment of "yea" and "yeah" gives nonspecialists the idea that / jE / was invented in America around 1900.

BTW, OED does not seem to recognize  "naa" / n@ / for "no."  My grandmother said "no"; my grandfather ordinarily said / n@ /.

JL



Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote: ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society
Poster:       Wilson Gray
Subject:      Re: yea/ yeah
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FWIW, the cheer, "yay," as in "Yay, team!' was still spelled "yea"
even in comic books and in the handouts for the one-day seminar on
cheering for first-year students at my high school, in the early
'50's.

-Wilson

On 5/2/07, Jonathan Lighter  wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter
> Subject:      yea/ yeah
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As I wrote some time ago, OED ought to reconsider its treatment of "yea" and "yeah," as the two could not be any closer semantically or phonetically.
>
>   One objection to a merger into a single article - with any appropriate cavets, of course - is that "yea" (as in "yeas and nays") seems to appear in ModE writing exclusively in formal contexts, while "yeah" (often spelled "yea" in the early 20th C.) is restricted to very informal contexts.  Yet the current entry for "yea" subsumes such uncommon phonetic forms as "yee" and "yoy."
>
>   Under "yea," OED affords two Shakespearean exx. (1593 and 1599), but both are formal, followed inj each case by "my Lord."  Nevertheless, here is one rather familiar example that seems to me to be indistinguishable from current colloquial usage:
>
>   1596-97 W. Shakespeare _Henry IV Pt.1_ V, i: _Falstaff_. What is that honour ?...Who hath it ? He that died on Wednesday. Doth he feel it ?  No. Doth he hear it ? No. 'Tis insensible then ? Yea, to the dead.
>
>   Note the contrast with "no" rather than "nay." A dearth of similar "yeas" in print or manuscript between 1600 and 1900 would present something of mystery.
>
>   JL
>
>
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------
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