A language without "no"

[rdearman]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 ... obal-en-GB

[galaxyrocker]

Quite annoying that the BBC doesn't mention the exact same thing exists in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, right under their noses! As for negation, I'm sure there's some way to express negation in the language.

[Mista]

Quite annoying that the BBC doesn't mention the exact same thing exists in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, right under their noses! As for negation, I'm sure there's some way to express negation in the language.

So how is negation expressed in Irish and Scottish Gaelic?

[Henkkles]

Meanwhile, linguists say Kusunda does not have the set, rigid grammatical rules or structures found in most languages. It is more flexible, and phrases must be interpreted relative to the speaker. For example, actions are not divided into past and present. When saying "I saw a bird" compared to "I will see a bird", a Kusunda speaker might indicate the past action not by tense, but by describing it as an experience directly related to the speaker. Meanwhile, the future action would remain general and not associated to any subject.

What is any of this supposed to even mean? That the language has a different TAM-typology to European languages? How does it make it any more "loose", other than in the writer's mind? This reeks of exoticisation.

[galaxyrocker]

So how is negation expressed in Irish and Scottish Gaelic?

You repeat the positive or negative forms of the verb as appropriate; often translated as 'yes' or 'no'. For negation, you add a negative particle on before the verb.

[księżycowy]

How did you know I was pawing at my Nepali books last night, rdearman?

That was an interesting read though. I'm always fascinated by the languages and peoples of the Himalayas.

You repeat the positive or negative forms of the verb as appropriate; often translated as 'yes' or 'no'. For negation, you add a negative particle on before the verb.

If I'm not mistaken that how it works in Mandarin (and probably other Chinese languages too). And although Japanese does have specific words for yes and no, it often expresses them the same way as Chinese (and Irish). Just thought I'd put that out there in case the BBC needed bigger language examples. Not all that exotic, I'd say.

[Deinonysus]

The title was bad but I think the article explains it better:

Alongside its mysterious beginnings, linguists have noted Kusunda's many rare elements. Bhojraj Gautam, a linguist with in-depth knowledge of Kusunda, describes one of the most peculiar: there is no standard way of negating a sentence. Indeed, the language has few words implying anything negative. Instead, context is used to convey the exact meaning. If you want to say "I don't want tea", for example, you might use the verb to drink, but in an adjusted form which indicates a very low probability – synonymous with the speaker's desire – of the drinking of tea.

So while there are several well-known languages that don't have the word no, such as Irish, Mandarin, Hungarian, or Latin, my understanding is that these languages have a standard way of negating a sentence, which is to say "not x." So for example:
"Will you give me money?"
"Not give."
"Do you want to join my cult?"
"Not join."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure."

My understanding based on the article is that there are many different ways to negate sentences and it is not predictable what to use when. I would imagine that this article is like having your title be "Arabic has no plurals", but then describing in the article that in fact although there is no standard way of pluralizing that can be applied to most words (such as -im or -ot in Hebrew, or -s in Spanish), there are many different ways of pluralizing words and you just have to learn them individually.

Kusunda sounds like a very interesting language!

[Herodotean]

On whether ancient Greek has a word for "no," see Rijksbaron 2012:

Among the uses of οὐκοῦν (oukoun) Denniston (1954: 235)mentions ‘οὐκοῦν οὐ, οὐκοῦν…οὐ, expecting a negative answer.’ This paper argues that Denniston’s view, which is shared by most (all?) other grammars and dictionaries of Ancient Greek (e.g. Kühner-Gerth 2, 164: ‘Wenn nach οὐκοῦν eine verneinende Antwort erwartet wird, so wird demselben die Negation οὐ nachgesetzt’, Smyth §2651 a: ‘οὐκοῦν οὐ expects the answer no’, Liddell-Scott-Jones s.v. οὐκοῦν) should be rejected. Actually, the answer is never no. As always, οὐκοῦν expects an affirmative answer, in this case to a negated question: ‘Is it not true, then, that not X?’ = ‘Surely, then, not X?’ To be sure, οὐ does occur as an answer, but this can be shown to be a proposition (or sentence) negative (= not), rather than an answering particle like no. The situation in Greek is compared with negatives in several other languages, notably Latin and Old French. Finally, Modern Greek is briefly discussed, which, unlike Ancient Greek, does have a negative answering particle, viz. όχι, alongside a proposition negative, viz. δε(ν).

Rather surprisingly, the full article is available in open access.

[Cainntear]

Hima Kusunda attends a boarding school where she is also learning her native language

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
You cannot "learn your native language", by definition!!!

So how is negation expressed in Irish and Scottish Gaelic?

Here's how I explain it, because people keep presenting it as something weird, when it's really not...

[Edit -- and yes, I understand that this is a different thing from the thread topic, but Mista asked, so I'm answering.]