Mastodawn

If you believe that “all languages have words for yes and no” or some poppycock like that, then this will shatter your naïveté. https://www.lexiconista.com/falsehoods-about-languages/

Falsehoods programmers believe about languages

This is what we have to put up with in the software localization industry.

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XocoLinguo 1d ago

@lexiconista Yes and no in Indo-European languages are actually a bit counter intuitive:

Aren't you going to the store? No.

This means "I'm not going," but most languages would give an answer of correct or incorrect to the statement, not a "no" to a negative question.

This is incredibly confusing to non-native speakers

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The Penguin of Evil 1d ago

@xocolatli @lexiconista Celtic ones generally use verb based responses
"Are you going out" "I am", "Will you be angry" "I will not". There is an emphatic yes (ie) and an emphatic no (actually a not-yes) (nage). Modern Welsh speakers use Ie/Nage a lot more than older ones.

Cornish is similar but even historically it seems to have been common to use ea/na rather than matching verb forms.

na also works more like !(expression) in C than a no.

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XocoLinguo

@etchedpixels @lexiconista Chinese also repeats the verb for confirmation or negates the verb:
Aren't you going? (disagree), go/ (agree), not go
你不去嗎？（對）,（我）不去。（不對）, （我去）去。