2110: No Word for ‘Yes’ in Ancient Hebrew Sep 24, 2020

Latin doesn't have one word for 'yes', which is why so many Romance languages' words for it are different to each others. Another ancient language not to have a word for 'yes' is Hebrew, which today uses the word כן (ken). In older forms of Hebrew, this word, also spelt כאן meant 'thus' or 'so', and it is not difficult to see how people took the meaning of 'it is so' and turned it into a more generic exclamation for agreement.