MamaPata wrote:Some amusing Russian sayings for you all this morning:
https://www.linguajunkie.com/russian/fu ... an-phrases
I've seen the "Да нет" curiosity cause some raised eyebrows before, so I thought I'd throw in my dilettante opinion.
I suspect that "Да" in the above doesn't come from "Yes": "Да" can also mean roughly "And" and "But".
- In Russian, "Да" in the sense of "And" is old-fashined, and is easiest to spot in fairytales and some other highly stylised contexts. I believe it survives as a neutral "and" in Ukranian ("та") and Belarussian.
- "Да" as "But" is still very common in informal speech (though not a drop-in replacement for "но" by any means).
Hopefully "But no" makes a bit more sense than "Yes no".