Finding a Simple Place to Start
Let’s think about what it means for a word to “mean” something. Learning Slovak, I’ve had some surprises with the word “no.” Part of the problem is that we have the word in English, too, where it means the opposite of “yes,” signifying something I might summarize as ‘refusal’ or ‘denial’; in Slovak, however, I struggle with the fact that “no” can perversely mean “yes,” (agreement, acceptance, approbation) even though there is a very similar word—“nie”—which means, well, ‘no.’ So, after climbing for several hours up above Strbske Pleso in the High Tatras with one of my ‘uncles’ (husband of my grandmother’s sister’s great-grandaughter) I ask:
i) Mozeme ist dolu?
And, to my consternation, he answers:
ii) No . . . . paci sa.
Only after much subsequent conversation do I recognize that he is not insisting that we climb to the very top of Mount Krivan, but that he is actually agreeable to whatever maniac idea I may suggest.
I’m told that such a “no” derives from “ano”—a shortened form of ‘yes,’ most commonly used in informal settings.
So you see that word meaning can consist of what we generally call a ‘definition,’ (in this sense “no” and “ano” mean the same thing) but, in addition, there is an associated contextual requirement. That is, part of a word’s meaning appears to include a requirement on exactly what context in which it may be used. “Ano” (almost) always means ‘yes’; though “no” only means ‘yes’ in certain circumstances.
So far, we are in the normal everyday territory of ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation.’ But words commonly have many denotations. My Kratky Slovnik Slovenskeho Jazyka says that “no” can also mean ‘but’:
iii) skromne, no dobre jedlo.
iv) Vykloni sa, no pre hmlu nevidi.
v) Usiluje sa, no nestaci.
It also appears to have a signification similar to English ‘well’, indicating heightened intensity:
vi) Zda sa, ze maju radi zmrzlinu Slovaci. No, pravdaze!
Or lack of intensity, communicating resignation:
vii) Musim ist do Rusku. No, zbohom.
These examples show that we can fine-tune the notion of ‘context’: there are social contexts in which language is used, and in informal contexts “no” can mean ‘yes’, but there are also grammatical, or more specifically, syntactic contexts that serve to tease out further dimensions of meaning. So in (iii-v) above ‘no’ occurs in situations where it is clearly connecting neighboring words or phrases. Its ‘meaning’ clearly makes a functional contribution: here it indicates that neighboring syntactic elements are related by means of contrast. Under the circumstances, ‘no’ seems to have the same meaning as ‘ale’.
Perhaps ‘no’ owes the lion’s share of its popularity to its function as an indicator of speakers’ disposition towards the comments they are making. People always have some attitude regarding what they are hearing and saying. And ‘no’ can be used to communicate that what you have just said is very obvious (e.g. vi), or conversely completely surprising:
viii) No, tu ho mas!
It can communicate resignation verging on defeat (e.g. vii), or conversely hearty exuberance:
ix) No! suri ho otec!
And the affective dimension of ‘no’ can combine with the denotative dimension:
x) Si spokojny? No!
And in the case of (x) we get a convergence of denotative, affective, and contextual cues clustering on “no”, here indicating hearty agreement underscoring an informal context.
One of the maddening—or fascinating—features of language is that words can often indicate themselves . . . or their opposites, a point repeatedly illustrated in the examples above. An adequate ‘theory’ of lexical meaning needs to explain the frequency of this apparently surprising phenomenon, and might suggest that a word’s meaning is constructed by bringing together more primary units of meaning . After all, for something to be something else’s opposite, the pair must be alike in every respect except for one, with regard to which there is a binary opposition: ‘no’ can be the opposite of ‘yes’ because they are alike in every way . . . . except one (consider ‘boy’ and its opposite ‘girl’ both human, non-adult, living creatures—alike in every way, except one). So the meaning of a word taps into ‘denotation,’ ‘connotation,’ social context, grammatical function, and the nexus of other words which make up the dictionary of the language in which the word occurs. . . at which point you may ask:
xi) ‘Uz sme skoncili?’
To which the only appropriate answer right here and now could only be . . . ‘no!”
September 29th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
For starters, I would like to say that I have always found analyzing the depth of words and their more or less hidden multiple meanings most interesting. I would therefore, like to add some of my own thoughts concerning this topic.
Except for the explanations and examples for the meanings and usage of the word no that you have offered, I would like to mention the fact that Slovaks use no as a kind of introduction to what they are about to say. There are several cases of this: It may be used, for example, for speaker to show that he is interested in answering some question he’s been given, but he is not able to do it the way he would like to, or is expected to.
Q: “Ako sa mozem dostat do Billa? – How could I get to Billa?
A: “No(oo), nie som si isty. – Well / Ahm , I am not sure.
As if this no was put there for speaker to show that he had used the time while pronouncing this long no to think over the question before giving the unsatisfying answer; that he had made the minimal effort.
Also in a situation such as:
Q: “How could I get to Billa?”
A: ”No, mohli by ste to skusit touto ulicou, alebo by ste sa mali vratit nejakych 100m spat a bla, bla… – Well, you could go down this street, or you could go 100m back and…..”
, where it is used to show either the lack of certainty, or as a signal that one is about to produce an explanation (usually longish) to the Q, etc. In this example, no can be viewed as a preparation for the speaker himself to compose the sentence out of the incoming thoughts so that it is easiest for one to understand it.
No is used when we want to lower the harshness of the answer.
Q:” Pekne vyzeram v tejto sukni?” – Do I look nice in this dress?
A:” No, ani nie. – Well, not really.
As if the speaker wanted to show that there still is a chance that the girl may look nice in that dress eventually (but not tonight); that he is no fashion expert; that he apologizes for not being able to give a better answer, etc.
No is often used in phrases such are: “No, toto!”
“No, teda…”
“No, fakt…” – Really? / You don’t mean that… / Is that possible?
, depending on context, but it means some surprise or highly pleasant/unpleasant acknowledgement….
I hope that what I wrote will not need some extra decoding, and that it will be helpful to some point.
September 30th, 2006 at 11:40 am
I only want to add that I also had experience with “no” in Ireland. When I wanted to give a positive answer to a girl´s question I said automatically “no”.My boyfriend immediately warned me because he as a lisener recognised that my answer sounded as negative.And the other comment refers to “no” as a short form of “ano”.I am Hungarian and we also use “no” to express positive meaning while in Hungarian YES is IGEN. There we can´t speak about shorten form of IGEN. And as I read about every situation when “no” can be used in Slovak I recognized that in Hungarian in nearly every of these cases also can be used. And my brother had experience with Polish workers who also used “no” to express agreement.
October 1st, 2006 at 6:56 am
I have to say that I agree with Alena in that analyzing the meaning of words is really really interesting in any language. I don’t want to add any new meanings of the word “no” to this topic…first and foremost because I couldn’t think of any after reading the first comment
. But I have to add that sometimes it’s not only the context, the grammatical function or the syntactic function that makes us explore another hidden meaning of a word.
What do I mean by that? I mean phonetics! And this is where these 2 branches of linguistics (semantics and phonetics) get closely related to each other.
I would like to demonstrate this on a really simple example that I will take from Alena’s comment. She wrote that: “No is often used in phrases such are: ‘No,toto!’” – expressing surprise or the feeling of the impossibility of something. It’s true, but now let’s imagine a situation: You are sitting in the library surrounded by a dozen of books and you realize that you need a pen but you don’t have any. You ask your friend, who is just standing in front of the bookshelf, to get that pen on the other table for you. She goes to you and asks:”Toto si myslela?”. And your answer can be: “No,toto!”. The difference in meaning between “No,toto!” in this situation and “No,toto!” when you are surprised, lies in the difference between the intonation one uses in the two separate situations.
“No,toto!” – meaning: “Ano, toto som myslela.” has 2 separate tone units: ‘No’ – rising tone and ‘toto’ – falling tone. While “No,toto!” – expressing surprise consists of only 1 tone unit having a rise-fall tone.
Maybe my explanation is not very clear but by this example I just wanted to highlight the importance of phonetics in the meaning of some words. Of course this phenomenon appears also in English and in other languages but that would be another story…
October 1st, 2006 at 11:10 am
I don´t wonder that foreign people can be surprised when they hear or see the word ´no´ and then they find out that our ´no´ means ´yes´. Maybe they could ask which ´upside down´ country is Slovakia when we say ´no´ but mean ´yes´.
Of course, when this shortened form arised, nobody could think about the word in English – that ´no´=nie. God knows why the shortened form of ´ano´ is ´no´and no for example ´an´ or what else.
In English, there is also a spoken form of ´yes´. It is ´yeah´. But it is very similar to ´yes´, so no foreigner can be confused by hearing ´yeah´.
As we know our ´no´is used usually in informal contexts:
´no´ – shortened form of yes (as we have already mentioned)
´no´, (´noo´)- in case to indicate statement and give it different nuances
no dobre, noo, môže byť
When I took Krátky slovník slovenského jazyka I also found this usage of ´no´ and I think that it is also use quite frequently in our language:
´no nie?´ – urobíme to, no nie? we will do it, won´t we?
And this usage ´no nie?´ reminds me English tag questions.
What about ´no´ in case that it means ´but´(=ale), I think that nowadays it´s rather literary usage. Rather than skromné, no dobré jedlo; Usiluje sa, no nestačí., we say skromné, ale dobré jedlo; Usiluje sa, ale nestačí.
October 1st, 2006 at 11:35 am
I´d like to add my personal experience with that absolutely special slovak word. Me as a native, many times, I don´t realize in which contexts I use it. But I got used to use it when I´m leading a discussion with somebody, and I´m profondly interested in what my partner is talking about, so not to interrupt him, I just repeat „no, no, no“ as the sign of agreement, that I´m following his speech. So I somehow do it unconsciously. And it caused many misunderstandings when I was in France. Because they have the same word for expressing refusal – „non“. Of course, they pronounce it with a nasal sound at the end, but when you don´t pay so much attention to the pronounciation, it sounds like slovak „no“. So I absolutely confused anybody who I was talking to. When I was shaking my head as a sign of agreement or understanding, plus unconsiously, I was answering slovak „no“ and adding the phrase, „of course, I understand“…
So in this case, nobody was able to decode what I really meant by this „no“. So the meaning of my „no“ wasn´t hidden behind the context or the grammatical function, or how I pronounced it… It was just about negative language interferences…
October 1st, 2006 at 12:35 pm
My comment maybe won’t bring anything new to the topic. However, reading about all the meanings of our Slovak “no” made me think about it a little and I have realized one thing: Hmmm, I really use it quite often. And though I was trying to avoid using it for some time, I wasn’t very successful. So I have picked some of its meanings that have come to my mind.
One of the most common situations of the use is when it means “yes”. Maybe it’s just a lazy way how to say “ano”. Secondly, it’s a kind of hesitation. It forces the listener to think if it is supposed to be a yes or a no. S/he has to deduce from the context, intonation and his/her knowledge of a speaker.
For example, after watching a film, somebody can ask:
“Pacil sa ti film?”(Did you like the film?) The answer can be: “No(ooo)”with fall-rise intonation. If somebody answered me like this, I would think: Yes, s/he liked the film and s/he would like to continue and tell me what exactly s/he liked. If the answer was just a short “No”, I would say it means the same as English no.
Another use of “no” can be shown in this phrase: “No, pockaj!”
It is a phrase that we can use in several situations. Two students are working on some task. One of them has got a result of some exercise but is not sure if it’s correct or not. The other one says: “No, pockaj chvilu, skusim to ja.” (Hey/Hmm, wait a little, I will try it). So it can be a kind of addressing the other person, or a way to show that s/he is thinking about it as well.
Another “No, pockaj ” situation: Two people have been talking but the discussion is not satisfying for one of them who doesn’t want to continue in it and has decided to leave. Then the other one could say: “No(ooo), pocka(aaa)j.” Here, intonation plays a big role again. And the phrase itself is meant to be a kind of begging the other person to stay.
“No, pockaj” can be said as a kind of warning or threat. The situation can be the same as the previous one but the person saying this phrase doesn’t beg the other one but is angry enough to say:”No, pockaj, raz sa ti to vrati!”; something like “Hey, wait and one day you will pay for it!” . “No” is said shortly and it is influenced by emotions.
Probably it’s natural that Slovak language doesn’t seem to me to be difficult, but now I see that it’s not only English that can be tricky…
October 1st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that Eva’s comment is not correct. In fact, Hungarian speakers in Hungary don’t use NO to express agreement. Only the Hungarian minority in Slovakia uses NO for that purpose. It is caused by the influence of Slovak on Hungarian. I think that using No for indicating agreement is exclusively a Slavic feature and you are right when you claim that it is the shortened form of the Slovak ANO.
Finally, concerning the other meanings of NO in Slovak I think that they are independent from NO meaning approval (we agreed that it is derived from ANO). NO in a sentence like “Usiluje sa, no nestaci.” has nothing in common with ANO. We can’t replace it by ANO. What I mean by that is that NO meaning approval is only a form of ANO,while NO as a conjunction or interjection are words with the same form, but of different origin. Therefore their meaning is different.
October 1st, 2006 at 4:35 pm
“No počkaj zajac!” the Soviet version of Tom and Jerry came to my mind when I read so much ‘no’s. In czech “Jen počkej, zajíci!” in the original “Nu, pogodi!” or in English “Just you wait! ”
In this situation a warning or threat, but that situation was described before. The translators find it identical with the “nu” in Russian, so it must be a Slavic thing. Also it’s used in Hungarian, but probably it’s a borrowing from Slavic languages.
To give a universal definition I would say that “no” is an informal preposition used in various context.
More info about the cartoon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu,_pogodi!
October 2nd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
When I read your essay, I was smiling- It had to be really funny for you to find out, that Slovak people have such an expression as “no” but with not such a meaning as in English…and I can emagine, how salmagungi it could make in your mind:) It had to be a hard work for you to learn, what everything this little “no” can mean. I’m also using it, but I have never thought about its meaning in such a great analysing way as you did…Foreigners should be warn about this expression, because it can cause problems, as I can see.
Anyway, the meaning of words is really interesting. Each word has its form and also particular meaning. The problem is, that the meaning doesn’t come alone from the form of the word, but it’s based on some convention among people. That’s why, for people of certain culture the same word can have absolutely another meaning in comparison with the meaning of the same word in another culture. And when people of one coulture come to the other and use this word, there can happen several problems or missunderstandisngs. When we compare for example some words of Polish language with the same words, that exist in Slovak language,we come to the discovery, that their meanings are not identical. Interesting is, that, in Poland, they can have absolutelly innocent meaning, but in Slovakia, they are insults. Something like this happened also to me.During this summer, I was working for one Polish hostel. My work was to look for some foreign tourists and bring them to the hostel (to house them). During my first day, there happened real missunderstanding. I cannot speak Polish , but it’s quiet similar language to Slovak language, so I didn’t think, that there will be some problems. The boss explained me, what I should do for the hostel- “Posukaj” (to look for) foreign tourists and bring them to the hostel…I was absolutely shocked- because of the word “posukaj”- because in Slovak language, it means something like “to have a sex with somebody”and I told to my boss, that I will not do anything like this in any case. The first off all, he didn’t understand me, but a few seconds later, he started to snicker. He found out, that I missunderstood him and translated that word into my language. We were both snickerring and he almost every day made fun from me and played jokes… because of this funny missunderstanding:)
October 4th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Yesterday when I was coming from school with my friends, we talked about one subject matter. It was a really funny situation as one of my classmates was trying to explain to me one article and always as she paused, I said “no” to indicate that I understand what she was talking about. The meaning of “no” in this situation was ´Ok, I´ve got what you are trying to say, and so you can GO ON.´
It was MY INTONATION that indicated the message of using this word “no.”
October 4th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
It’s quite a difficult task to put a comment, after all the previous entries, that would bring any new viewpoint to the issue of the word “no”. Therefore, please, allow me to introduce a different issue.
As has been pointed out in previous texts, the word “no” has an ambivalent nature regarding the clear opposition of English “yes” and “no”, since, using proper intonation (and, perhaps, facial language), Slovak “no” can mean both, albeit the other not definitely, clearly.
E.g.:
- Pacil sa ti film? / Did you like the movie?
- No… (ani nie.) / Well… (not really.)
This might be an example of how Slovak language is accustomed to convey unclear meanings; to transmit information in a box without sharp edges of clearly expressed opinions. However, this is just my observation and musing, and I cannot prove it within the terms of linguistics; I see it more as a national trait that bends the language according to its needs.
Still, one trait of Slovak language could suit my point: the large number of expressions that contain no meaning whatsoever and their sole function is to fill a space or extend the time of delivering the actual message. For instance, it is perfectly normal in casual speech to answer the movie question this way:
- No, co ja viem, asi ani nie. / Well, I don’t know, sort of, like, no.
The funny thing is that in English it sounds like a teenager, awkward and uneasy (or Delirium from Gaiman’s Sandman). In Slovak, this is something that just anybody could say and it sounds all right.
Other words that serve just about the same purpose are “vlastne”, “takze”, “ako”, “akoze”, “v podstate”, “vsak”, more colorfully “co si budeme vypravat”, “ked mam pravdu povedat”, etc. These can be put together in lethal combos that go on for ages before the real part comes:
- Ked mam pravdu povedat, podla mna je to dost akoze blbe. / That stinks.
The wonderful Slovak nature somehow does not allow the speaker to say his or her opinion clearly and proudly. Slovak opinions are treasures that are publicly expressed seldom and shyly, but proudly and loudly within a community of people that share the same opinions. Where the grounds for this national trait lie, that is way out of my league, but I like to think it is mostly communist history and lousy education system.
I hope I did not venture too far in my comment but at least it’s for something completely different
October 7th, 2006 at 9:21 am
Your essay – Finding a Simple Place to Start – to Lexical Semantics, wau wau! Nice! Very nice! If I can say you something to “no”: In iii) skromné, no dobré jedlo; iv) vykloní sa, no pre hmlu nevidí; and in v) Usiluje sa, no nestačí. – There is NO, but in Slovak there can be a=and. And therefore there is a comma, because “a” can be replaced by “ale” or “no”. But the meaning is the same. And that is the rule of Slovak grammar.
You sentence in xi) Už sme skončili? – No! – it means that NIE! But if there is only NO. with dot – that can be NO as ÁNO and NÓÓÓ as NIE. In Slovak one word can have different meaning; it all depends as you was writing on denotation, connotation, social context, grammatical function, text etc.
I came from Medzilaborce, south – east part of Slovakia, and we have there one word – TA NE (“so no” – it is not the exact translation). And for example parents are asking a son/daughter – a rebel – “Bol si v škole? And the answer is: .TA NE?!” – it means yes or no? Nobody knows.
So I think that some words or their meaning we can recognize only for the accent of the speaker. Best wishes Michaela
October 11th, 2006 at 9:55 am
I have another meaning of no. Many people use it quite often. It is when you say NO VYBORNE, but you mean it ironically. It is like complaining about something e.g. when you do something wrong or you fail in doing something. Instead of saying any unpleasant or impolite word, you just say NO VYBORNE. It means that you are angry, but you express your anger in quite a polite way.
I want to add that the meaning of no in Slovak depends also on the intonation or the way how you say it. e.g. nooooo means something else than no etc.
October 15th, 2006 at 8:13 am
People may have great troubles to get on well with somebody when not speaking a foreign language properly and if answering with short words such as ‘no’.
My parents had to overcome a very embarrassing situation in Italy. In the ungrateful role of tourists they wanted to buy something from a sales booth. After choosing what they needed, the shop assistant asked in Italian something like: “Do you want me to wrap it into a carrier bag?” And he waved demonstratively with a piece of plastic in front of the customers. My mom understood and replied instinctively: “Ano!”
The shop assistant get furious, he swore hideously and threw the bag on the ground in the corner of the kiosk. My desperate parents were totally lost and had no idea how something like that could happen. So they tried to rescue the transaction and to find out the reason why the man went so annoyed. They repeated the whole dialog, looking for any insulting words… up to ‘ano’.
Suddenly my father laughed and was not able to stop it. After a while when he could talk again, we experienced an important lesson about similarities of Italian and Slovak vocabulary. He explained that Slovak ‘yes’ cannot be used in Italy anyway, because it can be easily misunderstood as Italian ‘ano’, meaning execretory opening or simply asshole.
There was no way to profit from the shorter form of Slovak agreement ‘no’ too – thanks to its absolutely negative meaning in Italian. We must learn from our mistakes… si?
October 17th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Hi Mark.
I would like to add my comments :
Finding a simple place to start
No, začala by som….(No, I would start…) see, it’s so easy to use this word even without realizing. We use it very often in everyday speech e.g. such as conjunction, when we want to express agreement, ,hesitation, resignation….in positive, negative or neutral connotation…it really depends only on a context and situation. I remember that when I was a child, my mum used to tell me: ‘Nehovorí sa no, ale áno.´( You don’t say no, but yes.) – for the simple reason, it’s more polite in our society. Now, I use this word when I want to start conversation between my friends e.g. No, čo si roblia celý víkend? ( No, what did you do last weekend?) and also when I hesitate or am not sure about something, e.g. when my friend Jana asked me: ‘Can I wear this shirt?’ and my answer: ´ No, neviem /asi.´ (No, I don’t know/maybe.) That combination with jeans wasn’t really good.
Of course, in this case I pronounced no with long vowel o. Interesting is, that pronunciation and intonation of no can change expresiveness and meaning completely.
No-rising intonation- agreement, even sometimes stronger than yes
No –falling intonation-not really-kind of dissaprovement
No-rise-fall intonation-hesitation
It’s like universal word for all uses.
P.S.: I am not sure if this is the same no, just double no. It just came to my mind that parents use to say to their children: ’No-no, to sa nesmie. ( No-no-like nie- nie, you can’t do that, it’s not right).
October 20th, 2006 at 9:55 am
No, toto! I am very surprised, in a positive way. I never ever had an opportunity to experience my classmate’s thoughts and to read their ideas in a form of comments on such a theme as your essay on Slovak word “no” is. They are very open, honest and in my opinion, professional too. To read those lines above was like to be in a class of very smart students, where everybody can freely speak and use the knowledge acquired earlier.
After reading your assay I just said: No, jasne!, with rising intonation. It was a reaction of my brain over the realized knowledge about so many different meanings and contexts of our Slovak word “no”. We just use words and things without stopping, without realizing their true value. We do not see those things because we are very much into them. It is exactly as with observing a big canvas in a gallery. We don’t get the true image unless we don’t keep a certain distance. So, thank you for coming here and pushing us a bit backwards. I am getting to be more proud of my mother tongue.
In my head, there is an image of a micro dialogues, consisting of all the different examples of Slovak word “no” and said in all the possible intonations…
October 30th, 2006 at 3:02 am
After reading your essay I scanned through the comments of my classmates and I think they did their best in analyzing the problem of “no” from every possible aspect. I would like to add some comments on the Hungarian aspect of the word „no“.
Kinga is absolutely right when she says that „native“ Hungarians (I mean Hungarians living in Hungary) do not use the word „no“ to express „yes“. Until I met my ex-boyfriend who lives in Hungary I used the word „no“ naturally, without thinking about it. My boyfriend was however surprised by the word so I had to give him an explanation what does „no“ mean and what is it derived from. First I thought that it is the „dialectal“ version of the Hungarian „na“ but I realized that „na“ doesn’t mean „yes“, it is only an interjection. So finally I had to resign myself to the fact that our „no“ is a Slovak borrowing.
However thinking about it more thoroughly (and making it more complex) I think that the Hungarian „no“ borrowed only one aspect of the Slovak „no“, namely the meaning of „yes“, all the other ways of use correspond to the usage of the Hungarian „na“. E.g. we do not use „no“ in the place of „but“.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
We’ve discussed the problem with NO, and all of it’s possible meanings and connotation. I would like to rise a question on whether No should be considered to be a word or a listeme. If we look at the definitions of both: Word- is a combination of vocal sounds, used in language to express an idea, it is a minimal unit of speech , which has a meaning as such.
No and what meaning will it carry.
Listeme- is smaller than a word, here belong affixes and idioms. It doesn’t seem that easy to define NO either as a word or as a listme. No is kind of tricky. It could carry a meaning as such but it also doesn’t have to. Like: Ex: No do kelu- no doesn’t carry any meaning but EX: Si chory? No – here no carries a meaning of a confirmation. So we have to come to a conclusion that NO is not a clear word – in some cases, but with the use of a different intonation while speaking we make NO into a word, since it can carry many different meanings. So it is up to the speaker how he/she usees-misuses