This Saturday at Mass they had seven (Count them! Seven!) babies baptized. As part of this process, the usual baptismal questions got asked (e.g., “Do you want this child baptized in the faith of the Church?”) and the seventh dad said something unusual in response . . .
SEVENTH DAD: Yes.
What was unusual about this is that the dad didn’t say what all the other parents said . . .
OTHER PARENTS: I[/We] Do.
Faced with the jarring “yes,” something occurred to me that hadn’t occurred before. I suddenly realized why we never hear this response in liturgical ceremonies. The reason is actually very simple.
Latin doesn’t have a word for “yes.”
Yes, I know. Amazing as it might seem, many languages don’t have a word for “yes.” Latin is one of them. So is Chinese. So is Irish. Other languages, like Spanish (“si”), German (“ja”), Hebrew (“ken”), Arabic (“na’am”), Aramaic (“aeh”), or Japanese (“hai”) do have a word for “yes.” Even the language of the reprobate French has such a word (“oui”).
“Yes” is a word that has a function but not a meaning. Its function (or at least its principal function) is to affirm whatever we just have been asked. The meaning of “yes” depends on what question has just been put to us. For example, if we want to give an affirmative answer to “Do you want to go to the party tonight?” we could say “yes” or “I do.” If we want to give an affirmative answer to “Are you taking calculus this semester?” we could say “yes” or “I am.” The word “yes,” not having its own meaning, thus picks up its meaning from the context in which it is used.
As a result, it’s entirely possible to live without the word. What happens in the languages that don’t have a “yes” is when speakers want to give an affirmative answer, they grab the main verb of the question and use it in a first person form. Thus “Do you?” questions get the answer “I do,” “Are you?” questions get the answer “I am,” and so forth.
That’s the way it is in Latin, so when people are asked in the liturgy whether they want to do certain things or have certain things done (“Do you take this woman?”, “Do you want which child baptized?”) the Latin original of the liturgy has the answer “I do,” and when this gets translated into English, that’s what comes across. Not even ICEL has has the khutspah to translate these with a colloquial “yes.”
This isn’t the only time when this kind of thing happens. A while ago I was reading a quotation from a British author (either Chesterton or Waugh, I forget which) in which he noted that Irishmen tend to say “I do,” “I am,” etc., where Englishmen would say “yes.” The reason, he noted, was that Irish lacks a word for “yes,” and the verb-grabbing affirmative method native to Irish has passed over into the English-language speech of Irishmen. Thinking about Irishmen I’ve known or heard, I realized he was right. They do have a greater tendency to do this in preference to using “yes.”
What I want to know is: What happens at the end of the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine in these languages? In the English version the Blue Meanies are converted from saying “No” to “Yes,” with “Yes” spelled REALLY BIG on the screen.
What do they do with that in Chinese, Irish . . . or Latin?
Even the language of the reprobate French has such a word (“oui”).
LOL LOL LOL
The French can say ‘oui’?!?!? Then how come they always vote ‘non’ in the UN Security Council?
‘Yes’ is the equivalent of an ‘uh-huh’. Don’t wonder too much how other people manage to live without ‘uh-huh’ in their language?
While, strictly speaking, it is true that Latin lacks a “yes”, the situation isn’t really that far removed from English. As you noted, we can answer questions in English my restating the verb in the first person, but we can also answer questions with an adverbial phrase.
Q. Did you go to school? A. At nine O’clock.
Q. Do you believe in God? A. Truly.
Q. Do you love Him? A. With all my might.
Of course, Latin can do this also—some questions can be answered in the affirmative with “sic”, “vere”, and so on.
If we consider “yes” just to be an adverb (a stretch?), we’re in the same position as Latin—although of course we don’t tend to think of it this way.
pax,
j. scott olsson
Coincidently, in “Magnificat” today, but not at USCCB.org, the First Reading (NAB version)happens to be from 2 Cor 1:18-20
18 As God is faithful, our word to you is not “yes” and “no.”
19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us, Silvanus and Timothy and me, was not “yes” and “no,” but “yes” has been in him.
20 For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him; therefore, the Amen from us also goes through him to God for glory.
——-
How is that phrased in Latin?
Thanks, love your blog, especially the fact that it is not solely theological in nature.
Ray, thanks for the kind words.
Here’s those three verses from the Vulgate:
As you can see, it’s using the word “is” (“est”) to get at the concept of “yes,” so the phrase “yes and no” is represented by “est et non” (or “is and is not”).
The Neo-Vulgate makes it a little clearer as it uses modern typography and has cleaned up some extraneous words that are in the old Vulgate but aren’t in the Greek.
Here ’tis:
Interesting! Thanks, Jimmy
its “sic est”, bumpkins.
Dear LatinMaster,
Bumpkin, you have written the following.
==== its “sic est”, bumpkins. ====
You, fellow bumpkin, need to capitalize the first word and to give it an apostrophe. It should be as follows.
==== It’s “sic est”, bumpkins. ====
Vere! Sic est.
The Latin “sic” is the root of the Spanish and Italian affirmative, “si”.
French has “oui”; however French uses “si” when contradicting.
If I were to tell a Parisian, “You’re not French”, he would retort, “Si!” rather than “Oui!”
Portuguese, althou it technically still has the affirmative, “sim”, like other romance languages, commonly replaces the use of the interjection with the repetition of the verb as well. For example:
If someone were to ask you if you speak Portuguese,
“Fala Português?”
you would usually say in response:
“Falo”
{I speak, (it)}
This “archaic” preservation is thought to have been reenforced due to influence from Hebrew.
Jimmy, where can I find Vulgate scripture verses online? In light of your post, I’m curious about Mt 5:37. Are the words “est” and “non” in that verse as well?
Dear Sleeping Beastly,
The entire Vulgate may be can be searched or downloaded from here .
The Chicken