[Gllug] Monthly GLLUG grammar report

[Dylan]

On Tuesday 26 November 2002 13:30, Tethys wrote:
> Dylan writes:
> >> 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?
>
> In which case, how do you explain its prevalence among Greeks and
> Cypriots (and more recently, among the Asian community)?
> Harry
> Enfield's Stavros may have been comedy, but what made it work was that
> we've all seen it before in real life, innit. More recently, Ali G has
> done exactly the same -- if the community he's parodying didn't really
> say "innit" after every sentence, it wouldn't work...
>
> Tet


I can't say for Greek (including Cypriots, since they are linguistically 
similar) but certainly some Asian languages have similar devices, and there 
is sociolinguistic evidence for 'solidarity' effects etc.

Dylan
-- 
"Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars"

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