‹ Back to the text

yo

ya

masc nom sg of ya (letter); masc nom sg of ya (pron); masc nom sg of ya (cs)

1. ya (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever
2. ya (letter): (gram) letter y; 34th letter of the alphabet; palatal semi-vowel
3. ya (cs): (gram) ya; suffix used to form impersonal and passive verbs
4. ya (cs): (gram) ya; conjugational sign of group 3 divādigaṇa verbs
5. yo (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever

Etymology. Pali ya derives from PIE *yo-, the same root as Latin qui, English who, Greek hos. The nom sg masc yo shows the bare stem + zero ending typical of old pronouns. Related to English who, whose, whom; Latin quis; Greek hos, hē, ho; German wer. This pronoun stock is among the oldest in Indo-European.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version