What does やい mean?


Someone ended their sentence with やいな. What dialect is this? What does やい
mean? I assume that な means the same thing as in standard Japanese?

**Update:** the original sentence was 「もう出来あがり？仕事はやいな～」.




**Update** : This is not an instance of やい, but rather 速い【はやい】, so the
information in my original answer is not actually applicable in this case.

* * *

[Wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%9A%E5%A4%9A%E5%BC%81) suggests
that at the very least, this is a feature of **Hakata dialect** (though it is
also likely a feature of other dialects as well, as suggested by my comment
above). In Hakata dialect, it is used as a light suggestion/command, like the
～て form of verbs in other dialect:

>   * 「やい」(軽い命令)  
>  動詞の連用形に接続。「やれ」の転化したもの。  
>  例  
>
>     * 「ちょっとあそこを見て」→「ちいとあすこば見やい」
>

な would then be the same as in standard Japanese, as you assumed.




**Update** : This is not an instance of やい, but rather 速い【はやい】, so the
information in my original answer is not actually applicable in this case.

* * *

[Wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%9A%E5%A4%9A%E5%BC%81) suggests
that at the very least, this is a feature of **Hakata dialect** (though it is
also likely a feature of other dialects as well, as suggested by my comment
above). In Hakata dialect, it is used as a light suggestion/command, like the
～て form of verbs in other dialect:

>   * 「やい」(軽い命令)  
>  動詞の連用形に接続。「やれ」の転化したもの。  
>  例  
>
>     * 「ちょっとあそこを見て」→「ちいとあすこば見やい」
>

な would then be the same as in standard Japanese, as you assumed.

