"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
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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

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