Hinglish and "innit"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

"Innit" may look cute but in my limited experience the common
South-Asian-English tag question under discussion is just plain old "isn't
it" ... although no doubt it's sometimes simplified in pronunciation as it
is in US or UK English also. I think the distinctive point is that it is
invariant and can follow any verb, e.g., "You're going, isn't it?" instead
of "You're going, aren't you?" I'm told that this is common in some UK
English varieties also; no doubt some of the (right-pond or other) savants
know much better than I.

The Hindi "haina" would be approximately /hEn@/ or /h&n@/ -- something like
"henna" or "Hannah" -- according to my limited understanding. As usual I
defer to any expert. As a tag question I think this can be translated
"Isn't that so?" or "Right?".

I suppose a naive calque would give "..., isn't?" so I doubt that this
"isn't it" is simply a calque. However the invariance which makes the
expression notable may well be taken whole-hog from Hindi (for all I know).

Incidentally one of my acquaintances returned a few months ago from a visit
to his childhood neighborhood in India (Bombay vicinity, I think) and
remarked: "nobody there speaks Hindi any more, it's all Hinglish" ... with
a couple of short examples which I think were essentially ordinary Hindi
except with heavy replacement of even very basic nouns -- and some other
words -- with English equivalents.

-- Doug Wilson


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