ああ

[ess_jay_arr]

Hey everyone, kindof a simple question for someone who knows the answer.

I've been using ああ as a sortof informal 'yeah' quite a lot... and yesterday my friend Kaori asked me something like 'Why do you say 'aa' so much? Is that English?' and I said 'What, isn't it Japanese?' and she said 'No, we say 'un'... if I said 'aa' at work, they'd tell me to stop messing about!'

That conversation was in Japanese, but I can't remember exactly what was said, but anyway... is that true?! I'm sure I've heard 'aa' used as an affirmative... haven't I? I'm gonna be quite annoyed and embarrassed if I've just made it up myself, because I do use it a lot!

[Yudan Taiteki]

I don't think ああ is normally used to respond to yes/no questions, although it is sometimes used to indicate agreement (sort of like a casual そうですね). But I could be wrong.

You should probably stick to うん -- this is one of those cases where even if some native speakers do use ああ, the usage is uncommon enough that your usage of ああ is more likely to be perceived as an error than an uncommon usage.

[ess_jay_arr]

Oh, okay, thanks. Time to start unlearning that one then.

[Tspoonami]

(Blame this post on extreme tiredness.)

ess_jay_arr wrote:
Oh, okay, thanks. Time to start unlearning that one then.

Instead of unlearning it, you could slowly morph it, in some sort of progression...

ああ　→　ああん　→　あうん　→　うん

[ess_jay_arr]

Or maybe just...

ああ　→　さあ

When I say 'aa', it tends to be in a 'yeah, but I'm not interested in talking about it' sort of way... so that might work.

[Shirasagi]

Sounds like you mixed up ええ, a variant of "hai," with はあ, a somewhat stiff variant of the same.

In related news, I always liked 嗚呼、青春の日々, by ゆず.

[NocturnalOcean]

I remember from one of my speaking classes this semester when we did casual dialogues, that using ああ could be used as yes, but it is only used in malespeech.

[ess_jay_arr]

NocturnalOcean wrote:
I remember from one of my speaking classes this semester when we did casual dialogues, that using ああ could be used as yes, but it is only used in malespeech.

Oh, that's good, I am male.

In fact, if that's the case, I probably picked it up from some anime where they overused it to make a character sound more masculine... perhaps.