yes/no questions

There are two types of questions in English, questions such as:

Are you there?

He told you?

which require the answer yes or no and are known as yes/no questions and questions such as:

When did they arrive?

which require answers other than yes/no and which are called Wh-questions.

In parts of the world where English is not a native language yes/no questions involving negatives often cause problems. Many speakers in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, India and parts of Africa use yes to imply:

What you have said is correct.

and no to imply:

What you have said is not correct.

Thus, if A breaks a plate and B exclaims:

You didn’t break another plate?

A may truthfully reply:

No.

See: question.

yet

Yet usually functions as an adverb. When used in sentence-final position, it is approximately equivalent to ‘up to now’:

I haven’t found it yet.

In more formal circumstances yet occurs after not: I have not yet found it.

When yet occurs medially in an affirmative statement it can have negative implications:

I’ve yet to discover a satisfactory solution. (i.e. So far I have not discovered a satisfactory solution.)

In formal styles, yet can occur as a conjunction with the meaning of ‘but’ or ‘nevertheless’:

We have tried. Yet, in spite of trying, we have failed.

Some speakers experience difficulty in distinguishing the adverbs yet, still and already. Yet is used when we talk about something we expect to happen:

He hasn’t arrived yet (but he is expected).

Still is used to imply that the action is continuing:

They are still talking.

Already implies that something has happened earlier than might have been expected and often implies surprise:

Have you finished it already? That was quick.

See: UK and US English.

Yiddish influences

Yiddish is an abbreviation for yidish daytsh (Jewish German). It is a creole derived from Hebrew and German and was widely used in Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Yiddish has been carried to America, Australia, Britain and South Africa by Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe, and it is one of the official languages of Israel.

Yiddish influences were originally limited to the English of people who had spoken Yiddish as a mother tongue but it can now be detected in the English of New Yorkers (approximately 25% of New York’s population is of Jewish origin), of US speakers generally and in other parts of the world with sizable Jewish communities.

Yiddish influences are most apparent in:

1 vocabulary. Among the words borrowed are items relating to culture:

bar mitzvah (ceremony marking the religious coming-of-age of a boy)

bris (circumcision ceremony)

kiddush (blessing over bread and wine)

to food:

bagel (type of bread roll)

gefilte fish (chopped fish, often served as fish cakes)

matzo (unleavened bread)

to people:

goy (non-Jew)

klutz (clumsy person)

shiksa (non-Jewish girl)

to characteristics, expressions and exclamations:

chutzpah (cheek)

kosher (genuine) schmaltz (sentimentality) Mazel tov! (Good luck!) Shalom! (Peace!)

Oy veh! (Heavens above!)

Shtoom! (Say nothing!)

2 in syntax, including a change in word order:

A fool I have for a son!

use of noun phrases in apposition:

My son the doctor

use of:

Enjoy!

and the use of already and yet as the English equivalents of shoyn and noch:

Already he’s tired/He’s tired already! (criticism not description)

Yet he doesn’t come?/He doesn’t come yet?

See: foregrounding.

your, you’re

Your and you’re are occasionally confused, as in the following printed sign in a hospital X-ray department:

Ladies, if there is any possibility of you’re being pregnant, please tell the radiographer before treatment.

Your is a possessive adjective which precedes a noun or noun phrase:

I couldn’t forget your birthday.

It also precedes a present participle which is used as a noun:

What are the chances of your staying?

In informal speech, you is often used before present participles:

What are the chances of you staying?

You’re is a contraction of you are: Watch where you’re going.

See: apostrophe, gerund, participle.

Zambian English

The Republic of Zambia was explored by Livingstone in the 1850s and, because of its pleasant climate, it attracted a number of British settlers. It became the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia in 1911, was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953 to 1963 and became independent in 1964.

English is an official language for Zambia’s 6 million people and it is widely used in education, government, the media and in intertribal and international dealings.

See: East African English, Southern African English.

zero forms

The term zero is widely used in linguistic analyses of English in dealing with patterns which are not altogether regular. It is used, for example, to help explain:

1 words which change their classes without any affixation. Thus:

The new word classes resemble words which change their class by means of affixation:

nice (adj)→nicety (noun) (nice+ity)

up (prep)→uproot (verb) (up+root)

This phenomenon where a word changes its class without affixation is known as zero affixation.

2 words which can imply plurality without a change in form:

Singular Plural

deer sheep

This phenomenon is often referred to as zero plural. Zero plurals are frequently used in expressing age, measurements, money and weights:

a sixty-year-old man

It’s three foot wide.

That was two pound fifty.

It weighed four hundredweight.

3 the fact that conjunctions may be omitted:

He said (that) he was tired.

The man (whom) we saw was young.

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as zero connectors or zero conjunctions.

See: affix, age, conjunction, measurements, money, plurals of nouns.

Zimbabwean English

Zimbabwe, earlier Southern Rhodesia, became a British colony in 1898. By 1923 it gained a measure of self-government and was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953 to 1963. Like South Africa, Southern Rhodesia had a settled white population, the leaders of whom opposed the notion of ‘one man, one vote’. In 1965, the white minority broke away from Britain but its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was declared illegal. In 1980, general elections were held and Zimbabwe came into existence.

English is an official language for Zimbabwe’s population of 8 million. It is the language of education, government, much of the media and virtually all intertribal and international discussion.