Ya

Part of speech: pronoun

Definitions

1. A casual spoken form of the pronoun you, used to address one or more people ; a relaxed informal way of saying yes or agreeing
2. An informal rendering of the second-person pronoun you as it sounds in fast speech ; a chatty colloquial way of expressing assent meaning yes
3. The clipped, conversational pronoun meaning you, written to mimic speech ; an everyday slangy interjection signaling agreement, equivalent to yeah

Etymology: "Ya" is one of those words that turns up in several unrelated places at once. As a pronoun, it is simply a reduced, unstressed form of "you", the sort of quick spoken contraction you hear in phrases like "see ya" or "thank ya". Its pronoun use belongs to the same spoken-language shortening that gave English many other clipped forms, and it can also be heard in informal speech as a way of saying "you" without stress. The sound "ya" has a much older and more widespread life as an affirmative. In Middle English it came from Old English "ġēa" or "iā", meaning "yea" or "yes", and it survives in modern English through "yeah" and related informal forms. Some of these affirmative senses may also have been reinforced by similar words in other languages, including Dutch "ja" and German "ja", which share the same Germanic ancestry.

Synonyms: you