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What sorts of punctuation do you wish existed, or were in common use in your language?
(en.wikipedia.org)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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I wish English had a word like the German "doch," to answer questions like "you're not afraid?"
If you said "doch" in response to that question, how would you translate what happened to an English speaker?
"Doch" is used to negate a negative question. So basically you are saying "Yes, I am afraid.", but in one word. (Or is the correct negation "No, I am afraid."? It's really very confusing in English.)
English actualy did have terms for that, they just got a bit bastardised with "yea" and "nay" dropping out of common speech:
Will they not go? — Yes, they will.
Will they not go? — No, they will not.
Will they go? — Yea, they will.
Will they go? — Nay, they will not.
That's neat. Makes me wonder, if we had another word for Nein in German as well at some point. If so, I'm sad we dropped it.
It's always nice to learn the ways English and German diverged at some point, like English dropping the -st ending for verbs for the second person singular. I. e. "thou hast" ("du hast"), "thou thinkest" ("du denkst").
You could say either yes or no in that context, but it would be more clear to just answer affirmatively with "I'm afraid."
It's also used a frightening amount for counter-arguments. Which I personally hat, since it just kills the conversation. Well unless it's already in deeply opinionated context such as this.
"You shouldn't eat ice cream with a fork." "Doch! (I strongly think the previous statement should be true)"