“No, yeah. ” = yes.
“Yeah, no”= no
“No, yeah, for sure.” = definitelyfucking English, man
AWESOME English
In “No, yeah,” the initial “no” terminates other discussion and/or cuts off arguments to the countrary, leaving a gently decisive “yes” as in “of course yes.”
In “Yeah, no,” the “yeah"is shorthand for “I understand what you’re getting at here,” making the “no” an “of course not” or “absolutely not” with mild derision.
In “No, yeah, for sure” the “no” works the same way as in the first example – negating arguments to the contrary, especially those of reticence – and the “for sure” adds extra certainty.
All of these sound like the north-central Midwestern dialects, which are distinctly distinctly gentle-sounding due to contradictions like this and other linguistic tricks like conditional statements that deliberately weaken the speaker’s voice.