Why does "no" start with 'N' in almost all languages?

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Arcadio

Arcadio

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Jun 5, 2007
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I'm guessing it's one of those words that originated as soon as the first languages were developed and it just branched out with little modification.
 
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Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
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Indo-European languages and cultures are some of the oldest. You can trace back most languages to the Black Sea region and the Middle East. There are some isolated languages that are very peculiar, though, and are harder to investigate the origins of.

The diminutive for mother or father in a lot of languages is similar, as well. Early, simple words that we learn in childhood tend to be the best preserved, it's usually more complex words that we borrow from other languages as loanwords and change, or develop newer compound words which evolve over time.
 
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Ruptga

Ruptga

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IndoEuropeanTree.svg
 
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iGas

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Feb 7, 2009
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PenguinPower said:
No..."nai" is a romaji version of the negative for a lot of Japanese verbs. It can be used on its own from time to time, but that is not the norm.

Btw..."ない" translates to "na" "i". So it's not bastardized at all.
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It was just a guess because it seems as if we do phonetically bastardized many language to the Roman character.

PS. According to The Linguistic Society there are 6909 distinct languages in the word. And, the link the OP provided only shown a small sample of 62 languages, hence it is not an example of "almost all languages".

Languages are not at all uniformly distributed around the world. Just as some places are more diverse than others in terms of plant and animal species, the same goes for the distribution of languages. Out of Ethnologue’s 6,909, for instance, only 230 are spoken in Europe, while 2,197 are spoken in Asia. One area of particularly high linguistic diversity is Papua-New Guinea, where there are an estimated 832 languages spoken by a population of around 3.9 million. That makes the average number of speakers around 4,500, possibly the lowest of any area of the world. These languages belong to between 40 and 50 distinct families. Of course, the number of families may change as scholarship improves, but there is little reason to believe that these figures are radically off the mark.
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imagoon

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Feb 19, 2003
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PenguinPower said:
Except...no. "Dame" or "iie" is more closely our "no." "-nai" is simply the negative form.
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ない　is no but is more "be nothing" than "no." It is pretty rare any way as いいえ and うん are way more common stand alone. －ない of course is negative but that isn't really "no." たべる vs たべない。
 
Perknose

Perknose

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Except for Greek, where "yes" is pronounced like "ne" and said with a downward and to the right move of your head, while "no" is pronounced like "oshi" and accompanied by throwing your head back.

Both seemed bass ackwards to me, and took some getting used to.
 
Tweak155

Tweak155

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Sep 23, 2003
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imagoon said:
ない　is no but is more "be nothing" than "no." It is pretty rare any way as いいえ and うん are way more common stand alone. －ない of course is negative but that isn't really "no." たべる vs たべない。
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Makes me love english.
 
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PowerYoga

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Nov 6, 2001
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imagoon said:
ない　is no but is more "be nothing" than "no." It is pretty rare any way as いいえ and うん are way more common stand alone. －ない of course is negative but that isn't really "no." たべる vs たべない。
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Right. You don't say "I no eat" in english, you say "I didn't eat", "I don't eat" or something similar. Same with with your example of "taberu".

Like you mentioned "iie" is the conversational "no" in this case.
 
Squisher

Squisher

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Aug 17, 2000
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There was an administrator at my college that substituted for Profs once in a while. He came to one of my 3 hour classes and as a PhD in some sort of linguist science and a former CIA spook gave one the most interesting lectures about the origins of words and how you could trace the source of cultures all over the world. This also included some things that are mysteries still today, like words shared between some Asian cultures and native South American cultures.
 
PenguinPower

PenguinPower

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Apr 15, 2002
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imagoon said:
ない　is no but is more "be nothing" than "no." It is pretty rare any way as いいえ and うん are way more common stand alone. －ない of course is negative but that isn't really "no." たべる vs たべない。
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ない is not "no." It is "not" both alone and when placed after a verb or adjective.

Also, うん is "yeah" and はい is more commonly used for yes. If you say うん in the wrong setting, you're going to piss someone off.

Edit: Of course, both はいand いいえ can mean both "yes" and "no" dependent on the question asked.
 
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imagoon

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Feb 19, 2003
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PenguinPower said:
ない is not "no." It is "not" both alone and when placed after a verb or adjective.

Also, うん is "yeah" and はい is more commonly used for yes. If you say うん in the wrong setting, you're going to piss someone off.

Edit: Of course, both はいand いいえ can mean both "yes" and "no" dependent on the question asked.
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You are correct. It should have been ううん。　　うん　and ううん is informal so yes, using it with your boss will cause issues. However I have heard ない used in the same way people used to say "I have rabies uh NOOOT!" IE slang. はい　and いいえ as you mentioned are simply the formal yes and no.
 
Jaskalas

Jaskalas

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Jun 23, 2004
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I imagine we started with a few basic words, or general grunts at first. Given the similarity, it is apparent that specific vocalization existed before we branched out all over the world.
 
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