Saturday Deep Dive: Yeah, Yay, Yea and Ya
Saturday, August 24, 2013 at 5:00AM Todays dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com takes us way back to 2009 when I talked about Yeah, Yay, Yea and Ya.
It's time to address a pet peeve that's been bothering me lately. I keep reading comics that misuse "Yeah" and "Yay." Often, I see novice cartoonists writing one when they mean the other.
Yeah (yě'ə) is a slang of yes. "Yeah, I agree that Larry Fine was the Forgotten Stooge." Nine chances out of ten, if you're using a slang for yes, you want to use yeah.
Yay (yā) is an excited exclamation or a cheer. "Yay! Our team won!" If you're cheering, you probably want to use yay.
Yea (yey) is also a slang for yes, but it's not interchangeable with yeah. Because yea rhymes with hay. Unless you're quoting Biblical text about walking through the valley of death, you probably shouldn't be using Yea.
Ya (yah) can be used either as a slang for yes, but again, it's not interchangeable with yeah, and it shouldn't be used unless your character is speaking with a thick German or Swedish accent (in which case, it's actually a slang for Ja): "Ya, I would like more meatballs."
Ya (yah), of course, can be a slang for you, as in "End this column already, would ya?"