[Gllug] Monthly GLLUG grammar report
Dylan
dylan at dylan.me.uk
Tue Nov 26 13:20:12 UTC 2002
On Tuesday 26 November 2002 11:59, Leslie Till wrote:
> Alain Williams wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 09:55:54AM -0000, Daniel Andersson wrote:
> >>i mean, a lot of people in essex say "innit" after every sentence they
> >> say "are you going into town, INNIT?", which _I_ think shows a lack of
> >> confidence and intelligence
> >
> > Just the Essex (note capitalisation - since we are being pedantic)
> > localisation of the "y'know" that you hear elsewhere -- equally grating
> > after the 20th incantation.
>
> I thought that Innit was imported from the Caribbean, but I could be wrong.
You're absolutely right! The ancestral African languages which fed the
formation of the Caribbean Pigins and Creoles have sentence-final question
particles, equivalent to our echo questions:
He's going to the pub, is (-n't) he?
"Innit" is a generalization over all possible echo questions, and is here to
stay, sorry...
Dylan
--
"Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars"
--
Gllug mailing list - Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug
More information about the GLLUG
mailing list