No Yes?

I once caught a show-off student of Chinese trying to intimidate new students by warning them that Chinese had a different word for "yes" and "no" for each question! That's largely true, but not the slightest bit difficult. [. . .] When you pose a question in Chinese you present both alternatives. Thus, "Are you going?" becomes "You go not go?" or "Are you going or not?" If you are going, the word for "yes" to that question is "go." If you're not going, you say, "Not go" (Barry Farber, How to Learn Any Language 160).

When I asked C (who had 3 years of Latin at his Jesuit high school) if "sī" meant "yes" as well as "if," he told me there's no word for "yes." I recalled the above passage: "Just like Chinese!" I don't know any Chinese outside "mother scolds the horse," but good ol' Barry comes through again. I can almost forgive him for dissing Latin.