Yes and no "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Do you not speak Norwegian?") is "Jo", while the negative answer to "both" questions is "Nei". Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Hungarian, German, Dutch, and French all have three-form systems. Swedish and Danish have "ja", "jo", and "nej". Norwegian has "ja", "jo"/"jau", and "nei". Icelandic has "já", "jú" and "nei". Faroese has "ja", "jú" and "nei". Hungarian has "igen", "de", and "nem". German has "ja", "doch", and "nein". Dutch has "ja", "jawel", and "nee". French has "oui", "si", and "non". Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also has
Yes and no not conjugated according to the person and plurality of the verb. "Ei", however, is always conjugated and means "no". Up until the 16th century Latvian also didn't have a word for "yes" and the common way of responding affirmatively to a question was by repeating the question's verb, just like in Finnish. The modern day "jā" was borrowed from Middle High German "ja" and first appeared in 16th-century religious texts, especially catechisms, in answers to questions about faith. At that time such works were usually translated from German by non-Latvians that had learned Latvian as a foreign language. By the