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A comment on Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware Product. Parent comment

Re:Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware P... by bojan on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @05:46AM (#46884187)
> ‘Yes’ means ‘yes, sir’ only in the army.

Not really, if you get a "yes" in the Netherlands, Nordics, Germany or Poland it does mean, simply, yes.

The consequence of which is that actually getting a "yes" takes a lot of work.

I don't dare speak for other countries, no experience there.

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Re:Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware P... by myst on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @12:36PM (#46888817)
I live in Germany. 'Ja' here means 'ich stimme zu' only when explicitly asked. That's why Germans stick 'Ja?' after every second sentence. Ja? In general, 'ja-a...' means 'I hear you', same as almost everywhere else. That has been my experience.
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Re:Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware P... by nuancebydefault on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @04:23PM (#46891996)
The 'ja?' with a question mark means 'right?'. It just happens to be the same word as 'yes'. So no, not same as almost everywhere else.
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Re:Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware P... by myst on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @04:57PM (#46892395)
And why do they say ‘right?’ every time? Because without it my ‘ja’ does not mean ‘yes, sir’, but rather ‘I hear you, go on’. So, same as everywhere else.
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Re:Lessons Learned Shipping 500 Units of My First Hardware P... by nuancebydefault on Thursday February 05, 2026 @02:19PM (#46903777)
The answer to 'right?' usually is 'yeah', to indicate: yes, I agree.

So 'Ja? Ja.' in German can be translated as 'Right? Yeah.' in English.

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