Say I say “you like that, don’t you?”, or “we could go to
Mauritius, couldn’t we?”, or “I already said so, didn’t I?” These are all ‘statement tags’, which fulfil
an important function in conversation: to request confirmation whilst not
demanding it.
In English, being proper and rule-bound, we do this
grammatically, as the few examples above show.
Hence our sentence tags are variant, being entirely dependent on the
structure of the preceding statement.
Others manage it differently. “n’est ce pas?” “non é
vero?” “¿verdad?”, “nicht war?” and so on. They’re all invariant, independent of what
they’re asking us to confirm. I could
compare them to a shrug, a quizzical smile, a raised eyebrow. Perhaps we British are not so good at body
language either.
So welcome ‘innit’.
Let’s de-yobbify it, make it respectable and draw it into the
language. You can always pronounce it “isn’t
it?” if it makes you feel safer.
Right?
Further proof that (our) language is in constant flux.And this is what makes it so interesting, innit?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your differentiation between variant and invariant.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I'm not convinced you could replace the tags in the first paragraph with 'innit' or even 'isn't it', could you?
ReplyDeleteYou get the message, yes? Job done.
ReplyDeleteThe Welsh, when speaking English, already do this, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteque?
ReplyDeleteYou could with n'est ce pas or the others though, AQ, so why not innit?
ReplyDeleteI rather prefer "is it not so?".
ReplyDeleteHow about the techies just set up autospeech macros, so that when someone says "innit" everyone hears it as "is it not so?". Could have other uses also.
If people like other people electronically surely this is a doddle?
Thank you for your meaningful contributions. And the less meaningful ones too. On reflection I have decided after all not to reconstruct the English language, at least not from this direction. So you'll just have to sort it out amongst yourselves. Hmm?
ReplyDeleteOh, you're just a tease.
ReplyDelete