RussianДа нет, наверноеLiterally yes, no, perhaps, means no.
3 thoughts on “Russian : Да нет, наверное”
Да doesn’t mean ‘yes’ in this context, it means something like ‘well’.
This phrase is totally translatable as ‘well, probably not’.
No competent Russian speaker would read «да» as ‘yes’ in this context. Also, in speech, да meaning ‘yes’ and да meaning ‘well’ will have wastly different intonation: the former will have emphasis and a pause after it, while the latter won’t.
So, да ‘yes’ and да ‘well’ are just homonyms, not some untranslatable thing
«да» does not always mean “yes”, it can also mean “and” («хлеб да соль») or used closer to “well” (“да уже задолбали эти школьники в интернете») or even as “let” in “let there be” (“да будет свет, сказал монтёр и перерезал провода»).
so «да, нет, наверное»/«ну, нет, наверное» translates as “well, perhaps not”.
Да doesn’t mean ‘yes’ in this context, it means something like ‘well’.
This phrase is totally translatable as ‘well, probably not’.
No competent Russian speaker would read «да» as ‘yes’ in this context. Also, in speech, да meaning ‘yes’ and да meaning ‘well’ will have wastly different intonation: the former will have emphasis and a pause after it, while the latter won’t.
So, да ‘yes’ and да ‘well’ are just homonyms, not some untranslatable thing
Better translation is “Well, probably, no.”
«да» does not always mean “yes”, it can also mean “and” («хлеб да соль») or used closer to “well” (“да уже задолбали эти школьники в интернете») or even as “let” in “let there be” (“да будет свет, сказал монтёр и перерезал провода»).
so «да, нет, наверное»/«ну, нет, наверное» translates as “well, perhaps not”.