You don’t need to figure out what “ja” and “da” mean to figure out if this fellow is a knight or knave. Likewise, you don’t need to figure out if he is a knight or knave to determine the meanings of “ja” and “da.” You can check the original problem here.
Solution
To figure out if the fellow is a knight or knave, simply ask him, “does ja mean yes?” If he says “ja,” he is a knight. If he says “da,” he is a knave.
Let’s say, for this example, that “ja” means “yes.” To answer your question, the knight would say “ja,” or yes, it means yes. If “ja” means no, then the knight would still say “ja,” meaning no, it does not mean yes. The knave, alternatively, would lie to you about these things, and so give you the opposite word, “da.”
To figure out what the words mean, without knowing if the fellow is a knight or a knave, you ask, “are you a knight?” Either way, they will say “yes,” so whichever word they use is the affirmative one.
Interestingly enough, to figure out if the person is a knight or a knave, you ask what the words mean, and to figure out what the words mean, you ask if the person is a knight. The person’s response, though it does not answer your question, gives you information.
Make sure to keep this in mind when wandering in foreign lands, and make sure to come back next week for another riddle!
*See all of our riddles here.
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