English used to have dual pronouns (what the article is a about), proper accusatives and genitives (she/her/hers, who/whom and the apostrophe-s genitive are survivors), formal/informal 2nd person pronouns (you / thou) and quite a few other things that come up when you learn French or Latin.

Yes/No and Yea/Nay used to mean different things too: "Is this correct?" could be answered "Yea, it is correct" whereas "Is this not a mistake?" could be answered "Yes, it is correct" (which you can also parse by taking the 'not' literally).

"Courts martial" and "secretaries general" are examples where the original noun-first word order remains.

This sucks because yes its a mistake or no its not a mistake both fit