X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Yes and No


Yes and No

Yes and No is a spoken word game similar to Twenty Questions played in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Yes and no

English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of just 'yes' and 'no'.

While Modern English has a two-form system of yes and no for affirmatives and negatives, earlier forms of English had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no.

Georg von der Gabelentz, Henry Sweet, and Wegener have all written on the subject of sentence words, Wegener calling them "Wortsätze".


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