Jimmy Akin

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?

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?