Glossary and vocabulary

[Jaquobus]

@legitpancake That's because “hai” doesn't strictly means yes, but that the proposition of the question is true. There's actually a linguistic paper from 1998 about this topic. Just shows you that translation between languages, especially between different language families can be tricky.

[myskaros]

@legitpancake said in Glossary and vocabulary:

@paul-nebeling What’s extra confusing is when “hai” means no. I never understood that lol

It can happen in English too. Consider the question "You don't want a drink?"

• Yes, I don't want a drink.
• No, I don't want a drink.

It's just dependent on context and how the translator is translating.

[Paul Nebeling]

@myskaros Something tells me that in Japanese, that sentence would start with Hai, no matter how it is written in English.