Yair
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In an Australian novel, I recently encountered hundreds of cases where an informal assent is spelled in an unexpected way, e.g. "Yair, that’s true enough."
This spelling was new to me, but the OED has it covered:
…including the fact that the pronunciation is basically the same as "yeah":
…reflecting the origin in a non-rhotic dialect, where syllable-final /r/ is only an influence on the quality of the preceding vowel, as in the British tradition of writing filled pauses as "er" and "erm" rather than "uh" and "um" (though some Americans adopt a mistaken spelling pronunciation, rendering "er" with a final [r]).
The OED's audio clips are pretty much all the same, their alleged IPA differences aside:
| British: | ||
| American: | ||
| Australian: |
The OED's citations include something that surprised me: a quotation from a Faulkner novel that I've never read, namely Pylon. There's a open-access digital version available from our Canadian neighbors here, in which we can count 234 instances of "yair" and 0 instances of "yeah". I haven't checked all of the 17 Faulkner novels available from that source, but (for example) Absalom, Absalom has no instances of either "yair" or "yeah", Intruder in the Dust is similarly empty of both, and The Reivers has no instances of "yair" and just one instance of "yeah". Presumably Faulkner associated "yair" with New Orleans, and thought that "yeah" was infra dig (though the OED's citations go back to 1863)? Perhaps a Faulkner scholar can tell us more.
The OED's citation list starts with a quote from this 1903 publication, identified in terms of the publisher's series…
Meanwhile, in other dictionaries, Merriam-Webster's entry for yair has only the gloss "an enclosure for catching salmon as the tide ebbs", and Wiktionary has exactly the same thing.
jin defang said,
February 14, 2025 @ 8:38 am
what about the New England "ay-up"?
cameron said,
February 14, 2025 @ 9:15 am
is this a situation where "yeah" is so commonplace that some authors feel that they need an alternative in a context where they want to use eye-dialect to indicate the otherness of certain characters' language?
Yennefer said,
February 14, 2025 @ 9:37 am
It's also an analogy with "naur" :)
Philip Taylor said,
February 14, 2025 @ 12:16 pm
« some Americans adopt a mistaken spelling pronunciation, rendering "er" with a final [r] » — well, speaking as a Briton, my "er" pauses, if prolonged, also end with an phoneme, although where exactly in the mouth I produce it I cannot be sure. Certainly it is totally unlike the trilled/r/ with which I might say "Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run run run", but I think that it might be fairly close to the phoneme in my Maigret or Rien de rien.
Stephen Goranson said,
February 14, 2025 @ 12:26 pm
There is Yair House or The Yair and Yair Bridge in Scotland. Others may correct me, but, as far as I know, the r is pronounced.
Yves Rehbein said,
February 14, 2025 @ 1:33 pm
I parse ye, yea, yeah in increasing intensity and expected "yair" just from the title to be the Lil' John yeah superlative. I was sorely disappointed. However, is it not like dayum ("damn") to darn? Can we find *yang corresponding to dang? Probably not, though I recall exactly one uncertain instance of r-epenthesis which keeps bugging me from Slavic nasal vowels borrowed in German, which usually become n as nasals go and maybe a liquid l.
In the case of Westcountry now prototypical pirate arr I suspect the rhotic is etymological, which I understand is also stereotylical Australian. It is related to aye, which was borrowed from Norse. The dialectology in those parts is difficult because sources are heavily skewed. The root noun shows the ending *z in reconstruction, which was normally lost in West Germanic and became what is transcribed R, regularly in Tyr, Thor and unlike Tuesday, so the story goes. Yet there is no evidence of this in the Norse cognates of aye, cf. Proto-Norse: *ᚨᛁᚹᚨᛉ (*aiwaʀ) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/aiwaz The pirate arr, yarr is thought to be due to later dramatization in plays https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arr whether a spelling pronunciation or not …
Yves Rehbein said,
February 14, 2025 @ 1:39 pm
On second thought, Berliner metrolect wa is derived from war, interpreted by high German sources as wahr. I very much disagree with that but I take the W and the R thank you very much.
J.W. Brewer said,
February 14, 2025 @ 3:35 pm
Last year I set myself the noble aspiration of reading an oft-overlooked Faulkner novel I'd never looked at before (it was the 75th anniversary of his Nobel Prize), which indeed happened to be _Pylon_. I got about two chapters in before abandoning the project as yielding insufficient reward for the effort. Homer nods, etc. Eye-dialect approximations of the way people might have spoken in New Orleans were not the primary obstacle to aesthetic enjoyment.
Philip Taylor said,
February 14, 2025 @ 5:31 pm
Oops, brain only part engaged when I wrote my earlier comment. What I intended to say was "my "er" pauses, if prolonged, also end with an <r> phoneme …" and there are also later points at which I intended to write <r>. Sorry.
Chips Mackinolty said,
February 14, 2025 @ 11:05 pm
Perhaps the spelling "yair" is indicative of the slightly stretched pronunciation in Australia of the word spelt "yeah" elsewhere. That certainly seems their case in the Northern Territory where I live. Then again there is always the negative "naah" which is often heard in the wonderfully ambivalent "yair, naah"!
Michael Vnuk said,
February 15, 2025 @ 2:46 am
(Australian English speaker here)
The Australian Macquarie Dictionary lists both 'yair' and 'yeah' pronounced as '/jɛə/ (say yair)' [which would be non-rhotic]. The definition for 'yair' just points to 'yeah'.
Perhaps the spelling 'yair' is meant to suggest a longer sound, as Chips Mackinolty suggests, but I'm not sure, as I can easily imagine 'yeah' also being stretched out in some contexts. I don't think that written English shows such partly stretched vowels, unless they are more extreme, eg 'Soooo'.
My guess, untainted by research (not that I would know how to research such a topic), is that 'yair' is a simple spelling variant that more clearly indicates pronunciation (to Australian readers) and it has caught on. And the 'yeah' is weird anyway, as it is the only word I know that has that spelling.
Peter Cyrus said,
February 15, 2025 @ 3:30 am
I immigrated to Australia (from New York) in 1974, and one of my first cultural problems was understanding that "mm" (or maybe "um") meant "yes"- in my dialect, it meant "say it again, please – I didn't get it the first time".
Much mirth ensued in situations where I kept repeating my question, louder each time, and my boss kept saying "mm" even louder each time.
Philip Taylor said,
February 15, 2025 @ 7:12 am
For me (a Briton), "mm[m…]" can signify assent, but only if pronounced with a falling tone contour. "Mm[m…]" ascending signifies Peter's "say it again, please – I didn't get it the first time" or possibly "Are you sure ?".
Philip Taylor said,
February 15, 2025 @ 7:22 am
I might add that having fractured my spine in two places last May, and also having had open-heart surgery later the same year, I frequently make "mm[m…]" noises while undertaking almost any activity that might previously have taken place in complete silence. It seems to indicate "Hmmm, this is more tiring and/or more painful than I remember it being in the past".
Chris Button said,
February 15, 2025 @ 7:30 am
Surely "yair" is just meant to rhyme with "hair", "fair" etc to a non-rhotic speaker? That would make it akin to "yeah" (and possibly slightly distinct from "yeh" without the schwa-like off-glide).
Matt McIrvin said,
February 15, 2025 @ 9:36 am
@Yennefer: My immediate thought.
In celebration, a mega-montage of Jenny Tian saying "naur" on Taskmaster Australia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8M2ev7Ijl0
Mark P said,
February 15, 2025 @ 10:41 am
Philip Taylor and Peter Cyrus bring up a question I have wondered about. There are a number of non-word communications that I’m familiar with, like the mm-hmm and uh-uhn (always hard to spell those) that indicate yes or no, or “hmm” for “that’s interesting”. I’m sure many of them are language specific, but are there any that are more universal?
Rodger C said,
February 15, 2025 @ 11:03 am
In the 70s I knew a young African-American from Oklahoma who said "yair" (rhotically) for "yeah." I think it was just a hypercorrection.