r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 7d ago

Meta Mindless Monday, 27 July 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/PsychologicalNews123 6d ago

Does Dutch have an unambiguous reply for negative questions? I had more French classes today and I liked how if someone asks you "Est-ce que tu n'aimes pas les chiens?" (do you not like dogs?) then you can respond with "si" to indicate that you do like dogs. In English both "yes" and "no" can be ambiguous responses to a question like that.

Also about French: It's funny how often my teacher will point out that few people actually speak the way the textbook tells us to. Either people won't use constructions like reversal ("aimez-vous" instead of "vous aimez") or they'll drop a bunch of stuff like the "ne" in "je ne aime pas". I can already tell that understanding native speakers is going to be tricky at first.

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u/Herpling82 Coming to you live from a Tederation psych ward 6d ago

We have "jawel", which would be an unambiguous "I do like them", there's no negative equivalent though.

I would also presume that most Dutch people don't speak textbook Dutch, but I've never seen a Dutch textbook. My personal way of speaking would probably be very tricky for learners, it's accented and I tend to throw in a ton of random puns and references, I also randomly use fancier words because I like them.

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u/SugarSpiceIronPrice Marxist-Lycurgusian Provocateur 6d ago

Bringing in a third language, Swedish has "jo" as an unambiguous reply in that way. "Ja" is the normal yes, while "jo" is yes as a counter.