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What is the meaning of "que ni que?" I heard it in Mexico while conversing with a friend, when I made the comment:

Solo hay una manera de saberlo, ¿no?

And the response was:

Eso que ni que!

From context, I can tell the general meaning, was one of agreement with my statement. But what is the specific, literal, or historical meaning of the phrase?

1 Answer 1

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It's indeed a common Mexican expression and you're right on its meaning, which is usually something close to Definitivamente, No hay duda/Sin duda, basically agreeing with the previous person. Thinking about its origin, I say it is like this:

Eso que (dijiste) ni (hay) que (decirlo)!

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    Do you have a reference or did you just come up with an explanation? It beats the point of this site to give an explanation that only sounds right. Aug 28, 2013 at 17:41
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    @RodrigoA.Pérez It beats the point of what? I don't have a specific reference per se, however spanish is my first language, I read a lot of things in spanish, use it every day and I see it everywhere on media and in person...
    – DarkAjax
    Aug 31, 2013 at 23:05
  • @DarkAjax Thank you so much for this. As a native English speaker (US), it was immediately obvious to me that you "conjured up" the etymology / mnemonic as an educated guess. I felt absolutely no ambiguity, it needs no citation, you said it was your opinion after you thought about it. Furthermore, you didn't say "this is the etymology according to the RAE", and you didn't even say "this is the etymology". What you gave was arguably a MNEMONIC to remember it, and mnemonics are often more helpful for learning than etymology. (e.g. embarazada - this word is HIGHLY derived.)
    – SerMetAla
    Aug 4, 2018 at 5:20

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