"Is it" appended to questions
Laurence Urdang
urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET
Thu Jun 7 13:14:08 UTC 2007
A common British tagline is isn't it? usually spelt "i'nit?"
L. Urdang
Russ McClay <mcclay at TAOLODGE.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Russ McClay
Subject: Re: "Is it" appended to questions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 12 May 2007, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> South African English is known to have that tag question. See:
>
> http://www.askoxford.com/globalenglish/types/
Good call on that, Ben. I worked with a South African
here in Taipei a couple of years and started doing it
myself... =)
It's used very much like, "oh is that so?", "oh, really."
Me: "I just got back from down south."
SA friend: "Is it."
-r
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list