Saw the Film YesMan? Jim Carry’s character was taught to say ‘yes’ to every situation and how that habit lands his life in to different interesting situations forms the plot of the film. Apparently there are few other ‘yesmans’ out there who cannot take the word ‘no’ and wants it changed to ‘yesn’t’
They want no Yes or NO, they want Yes or Yesn’t.
It all started as a linguistic joke but it is actually gaining some force. Already Change.org has collected 33000 signatures in 3 days in a petition to approve the new change. I know its not a huge number, but its not too small either. The logic behind the change is that if ‘could not’ is the opposite of ‘could’ and can be read as ‘couldn’t’ then ‘yes not’ should be the opposite of yes and should be read as ‘yesn’t’. May be its tough to argue with that logic but the question is when you have a perfectly normal word existing already, why change it.
see also: Yanny or Laurel? One audio, but people hear different words. Why ?
No is a decisive word even a 1 year old can pronounce with clarity. Something as long a yesn’t would needlessly put more effort in pronouncing it and create unwarranted confusion. According to Know Your Meme, ’yesn’t’ first appeared online in April 2008 as an entry in Urban Dictionary and the definitions was may be yes and may be No and is used in contexts like
“Do you wanna go for a movie”
Yesn’t
It’s possible that soon your screen will have links asking you to sign the petition.
Will you do it ?
Yes or Yesn’t ?
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