In Abstractica’s chapter 34, the demon Furfur writes up a contract that will be later signed by the protagonist, Aurora. Since our demon is a driven character, he comes up with some novel ideas to accomplish his task.
“What if I add a yes/no column?” he thinks.
Let me give you an example of what he’s imagining:
| Pledge | Yes/No |
|---|---|
| Do you renounce all your benevolent thoughts? | |
| Do you commit yourself to doing evil things? | |
| Will you forsake all those who do right by you? |
As everyone knows, the language in which infernal contracts are written is Latin. So, when he opened an ancient grimoire to learn how to say yes and no in Latin, he found out that these words didn’t exist!
You heard it right, yes and no don’t exist in Latin.
But how’s that possible? How did Romans answer questions?
It’s not so strange. Many languages don’t have words for yes or no: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Quechua, Cherokee and others. And some languages have the words, but they think it’s impolite to answer questions with just them; instead, they prefer to repeat the verb. For example:
“Will you go to school tomorrow?” “Yes, I’ll go.”
In fact, this way sounds more respectful than a single, dry yes.
But, if Latin doesn’t have a word for yes, how come that its children do? Sí in Spanish, oui in French, sì in Italian, and so on. Well, for Spanish, sí is the abbreviation of sic est, meaning “that is so”. For French, oui comes from hoc ille, meaning “that he is.”
As a bonus, I’ll tell you that Old English had four words for yes and no: yes, no, yay and nay, which were used depending on how the question was asked.
After learning this, Furfur decided on a more suitable way to express the signatory’s will and wrote: “Please, mark your preferred choices with an inverted cross.”