The “no” came first, at least in Armenian, where the word
ոչ
(voch) is original to the language, while այո (ayo
“yes”)
does not have a recognized explanation, even though it appeared as
early as the Armenian translation of the Bible (fifth century A.D.).
The compound word
voch
(literally “no one, none”) is formed by the negative particle
ո
(vo)
and the sign of indefinite, չ (ch
). The combination of
ոչ
(voch
“no”) and
ինչ
(eench
“thing”) yielded the word
ոչինչ
(vocheench
“nothing”).
Voch
later transformed into the other negative word,
չէ
(che), formed by the sum of
չ
(ch
) and
է
(“to be”).
The Armenian
ayo
sounds very close to
aye
in English (“Aye, captain”) or even to
yes,
but actually, according to the great linguist Hrachia Ajarian, it is an onomatopoetic word, unrelated to its English, German (ja
) or French (oui) counterparts
.
The
word “yes” did not even exist in Greek or Latin. Actually, it was
absent from the mother language, and thus, there is not a common word
for the family of Indo-European languages.
Most strikingly,
ayo
had fallen from usage by the twelfth century, when it was replaced by its equivalent հա (ha). The Armenian jurist Mekhitar Gosh, the author of the first codification of Armenian laws,
Tadasdanakirk
(“Legal Corpus”), was even forced to explain that
ayo
meant
ha
to make it understandable to his readers.
The word
ha
entered Armenian dialects, where (for instance in Van) it was pronounced խա (kha) –the dialect aspired the
h
like a
kh
(hats
“bread” >
khats)--and became abbreviated into
խ
(kh). So, when they asked a Vanetsi, “Are you OK?,” he answered, “Kh.”
In modern times,
ayo
made a comeback. Today we normally use it as “yes,” while
ha
has
become a colloquial way to answer affirmatively (like the English
“yeah”), but not very well regarded when it comes to polite use.
However, when you answer negatively, you can say either
voch
or
che,
and both will work equally well.
In the end, it is always harder to say “yes” to anything, isn’t it?
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