Hinglish and "innit"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 08:15:48AM -0800, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> On Nov 8, 2006, at 7:41 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
> >On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 10:23:44AM -0500, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> >>>From a BBC article about _The Queen's Hinglish_, a new book by
> >>>Baljinder
> >>>Mahal:
> >>
> >>-----
> >>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6122072.stm
> >>And the dictionary identifies how the ubiquitous "innit" was absorbed
> >>into British Asian speech via "haina" - a Hindi tag phrase, stuck on
> >>the sentences and meaning "is no?".
> >>-----
> >
> >Interesting--DARE also records (with a single quot.) _haina_
> >as a tag question; I know some people who regularly use
> >this. I'd never been aware of the Hindi use (and nor, I'm
> >sure, have the people I've heard using it).
>
> what are the pronunciations here?  i assume the hindi has [aj], but
> does the american tag have this vowel, or [e]?  if the latter, we
> could consider an etymology involving either "hey" or "hain't".  does
> DARE (or anyone) have a clue about the source of american "haina"?

DARE defines it solely by a cross reference to _ainna_, and suggests
a comparison to _huh not_ (which also has only a single quote, from
Pennsylvania).

The examples I've heard have all been--forgive me for not remembering
how ASCII IPA works--"HEY-nuh".

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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