Talk:da

RFD 2014 for the Russian derivation

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da

Adverb defined as "yes in Russian". Not an English word by its own admission. Equinox ◑ 15:52, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That's what I was gonna say, any citations showing it as English would contradict the definition. The noun definition (A Russian yes) has the same issue. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I've seen a few times in articles or blogs about Russia or Russians when "da" or "nyet" ("net") are used jokingly, sarcastically, etc. Like he doesn't take nyet for an answer, and the like. Perhaps similar plays are possible for other languages, e.g. oui/non, ja/nein but they are not as common in my opinion. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

1. Patrick M. Dunne, Robert F. Lusch - 2007 "When Will Wal-Mart Say da to Russia?"
2. Richmond, Yale. From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia. Boston, MA: Intercultural Press, 2008. Volkov, Solomon. Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn. London: Vintage Books, 2009 "From Nyet to Da: Understanding the New Russia" (title)
3. Vol. 18, No. 9 - Magazine "Packer merely bobbed and weaved his head, saying "Da" or "Nyet" to everything." --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

If we are going to regard it as English then we need to rework the definition (for example, it could be defined simply as "yes" with a usage note saying it indicates Russianness). Equinox ◑ 09:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I think there should be something here noting that "da" is a common representation of the Russian word for yes, at least in English. I've added some ideas to Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/April#Cross-script.2Fmutated_semi-borrowings about how to do this, though, since I think this is a bigger problem and that adding an English section is suboptimal.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

In the line "he doesn't take nyet for an answer", "nyet" isn't a word meaning "the Russian word for no". Really, "nyet" should be in quotes in that snippet, because the word is being mentioned, not used. You can embed a quotation of a word in any language in an English sentence, but that doesn't make it an English word. — Smjg (talk) 00:14, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

No, but words that you can embed in an English sentence and expect comprehension from your English-speaking audience have a decent claim on being English. And I don't know that anyone agrees with me on this, but I stand by my opinion that we should record the meanings of "da" and "nyet" at those pages, instead forcing an English speaker looking for those spellings to figure out what they really need to look up is да and нет.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:07, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

• Even when the whole point of using that word is because it's recognized as not being English, and as imparting its other-language-ness to the utterance? Such usage strikes me as decidedly not English. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:25, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

But it's used, even if for some effect. E.g. Arabic or Korean words for "yes" and "no" are never used in English, even for any special effect. Note that I'm not biased because we're talking about Russian words «да» and «нет», I think the same way about other common words used in English. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:18, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

It's decidedly not decidedly not English. It's a word a monolingual English speaker might use to another monolingual English speaker with a clearly understood clear denotation. That seems to be English to me. (I don't know if that was supposed to reply to my second sentence, whose point is that the pragmatic demand that da needs to lead to "yes" in some form should overwhelm either the idea that this is not English or the idea that Russian entries must be in Cyrillic.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:59, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't sure before, but now I think we should keep this. There are a certain set of words that almost every English speaker knows that are used to mimic other languages, such as:

• French: oui
• Spanish: sí
• Italian: sì
• German: ja, nein, und
• Russian: да (da), нет (net)

I think we should have a special context label for them and categorize them all in one place. --WikiTiki89 00:41, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I haven't seen und in English but I agree with the rest. Other foreign words commonly used in English to express some cultural or special effect:

"thank you": arigato(u) (ありがとう), gracias, grazie, merci, danke, spasibo (спасибо), xiexie (谢谢)? (ja, es, fr, de, ru, cmn)

"sorry", "excuse me": pardon, excusez-moi (fr), scusi (it)

"hello", "hi": bonjour (fr), konnichi wa (ja) (こんにちは), privet (ru) (привет), nihao (cmn) (你好), annyeong (ko) (안녕), salaam alaikum (ar) (السلام عليكم), shalom (he) (שלום), namaste (hi) (नमस्ते), ayubowan (si) (ආයුබෝවන්), aloha (haw).

The list is far from complete but it's not very big. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад)

See google books:"und he" for examples of "und". I think you are over-listing things. I have never heard English speakers use xiexie, privet, scusi, annyeong, ayubowan, or salaam alaikum, specifically to mimic foreigners. Some of those are used legitimately, like salaam alaikum is used as a real non-mimicking greeting by English-speaking Muslims, but that is a different category of words than "da" and "nyet". --WikiTiki89 01:20, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I disagree about overlisting. "annyeong" is attestable but less common than others above. "salaam alaikum" may not come directly from Arabic, it's used by all Muslims around the world with modified pronunciations. It's in various settings for various reasons - to mimic foreign accents, to sound polite in an Arabic speaking and Muslim environment, and around non-Arab Muslims, used by Muslims of any background because of their tradition. I have specific interest in some of the languages I listed and so I've come across those quite often by English speakers speaking English. We're not discussing the full list right now, so let's not digress. They can be discussed or RFV'ed/RFD'ed individually. Some have already been included and passed RFV, e.g. ayubowan. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:43, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not talking about RFVing these terms, just I think you'd have a hard time citing "salaam alaikum" used by an English speaker specifically to mimic an Arabic accent (or Persian, etc.). It's an entirely different category of words than oui/si/da/etc. --WikiTiki89 01:49, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Well that's your subjective opinion. As I said, "salaam alaikum" fits both categories and the more speaker knows about Arabic, then often, the more likely he will pronounce closer to Arabic. There are also various "prescribed" forms in languages where the term is used, explaining how a term should be spelled and pronounced (again, closer to Arabic and imitating the original pronunciation). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

What you just said is completely irrelevant to my point. I'm trying to say that da/nyet/oui/etc. are used mockingly, jokingly, or for effect, while "salaam alaikum" is used as a sincere greeting. The way it is pronounced or spelled is irrelevant to my point here. --WikiTiki89 02:20, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Kept. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:19, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

--Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Esperanto

In the usage notes, the sentence It necessarily links two nouns, contradicts the example sentence below including the phrase se mia kapo havus sufiĉe da akvo. Janadume (talk) 04:23, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Note on German

Da at least used to mean: "when" and "where", when not used as question words. Ex: "Sie sagte, da sie hier war, dass..." However, I did not add it because I am not sure if this is archaic or obsolete. Someone will want to check this. 75.121.183.70 09:43, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Italian

@GianWiki per piacere, puoi verificare le mie modificazioni? non ne sono sicuro. grazie. – Jberkel (talk) 14:14, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@Jberkel, le modifiche mi sembrano corrette. -- GianWiki (talk) 17:22, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

👌 – Jberkel (talk) 18:04, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May 2018

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da

Ety 4, abbreviation of duck's ass:

1. Hair at the back of a person's head, styled resembling the rear of a duck. (See drawing at ducktail.)

I can conceive of this being spelled "DA", "D.A." or possibly even "d.a.", but is it ever properly spelled "da"? Mihia (talk) 22:09, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

• It's DA - and we already have it. SemperBlotto (talk) 04:48, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, I've deleted it. Mihia (talk) 12:48, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Romanian

The paper linked (by Keith Andrew Massey) is complete crackpottery. There was no ‘intervocalic voicing’ in Late Latin with subsequent devoicing in Romanian; intervocalic lenition of stops is a West Romance feature. Romanian keeps Latin d and t in place. Words for ‘yes’ are borrowed extremely often. I do not think it belongs here. Guldrelokk (talk) 01:36, 23 May 2019 (UTC)