On 13/06/2011 02:31, Paul D. Anderson wrote:
Alix Pexton Wrote:
On 12/06/2011 16:11, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:36:55 -0400, Alix Pexton
<alix.dot.pex...@gmail.dot.com> wrote:
On 12/06/2011 02:40, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:04:47 -0400, Andrej Mitrovic
<andrej.mitrov...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/11/11, Alix Pexton<alix.dot.pex...@gmail.dot.com> wrote:
On 11/06/2011 06:18, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
We should rename Yes and No to Yay and Nay to make them alignable,
and
even more importantly to make us appear as old Englishmen!
"Yay" and "Nay" are too similar looking, but luckily, "Yay" is not
actually a old English word :) A more correct alternative would be
"Aye" (pronounced the same as "eye"), which (along with "Nay") is
still
used for some voting actions (such as councillors deciding where to go
for lunch). I myself say it al least 20 times a day :)
A...
Oh damn, yay is what teenage girls would say, not old Englishmen. My
bad, it really is "Aye". :p
You were phonetically right :) It's yea or nay.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/yea-or-nay
My son's most recent birthday (3 years old) was a farm-themed birthday,
and we asked people to RSVP yay or neigh :P
So I guess there's all kinds of kooky fun you can have with flags...
-Steve
Nope, its definitely Aye when used for voting, (at least it is round
here) as in "all those in favour, say aye", "ayes to the right" and
"the ayes have it". Maybe southerners say this "yea" word of which you
speak, we don't hold with their strange customs in these parts ^^
I don't deny that aye is used frequently for voting. All I was saying
is, the correct expression is yea or nay, not yay or nay. Andrej thought
it was actually aye or nay, which I've never heard as an expression.
I'm not sure it's used anymore, but it's definitely an expression that
was used for voting (see my dictionary reference).
-Steve
True, "yea-or-nay" is quite a common, if old fashioned phrase, but "yea"
on its own is exceptionally rare (to the point where I doubt ever
hearing anyone make such a noise and mean it to indicate the affirmative).
A...
Then you must not have heard the King James Version of the Bible read aloud, or
been to a Shakespeare play.
Admittedly the KJV and Shakespeare's works don't count as modern English, but I doubt
you've never "heard such a noise"! :-)
p.s. The word appears 209 times in Shakespeare's plays. There's a website for
everything!
Aye, I did mean people using their own words and not someone else's. for
such a prolific writer, 209 doesn't seem like a lot, and I can't help
wondering how many times the bard used "aye".
Mind you, he was a southerner!
A...
