Friday, December 9, 2011

Talking in questions

In response to Gaynor's comment on my last post, I wanted to point out a phenomenom that we don't necessarily notice.

Gaynor commented that she hopes that the trend of speaking in questions doesn't catch on. I whole-heartedly agree (although I think it might already be too late) if the questions we are referring to are the kind that end sentences with a "Yeh?" For example:

"It's gonna be great, yeh?"
"You're gonna love it, yeh?"

Another pet hate is rising intonation, but we will deal with that another time.

The fact is, we all speak in questions most of the time, we just don't notice it. These questions are not questions at all, really. They are called "tag questions", and their purpose is not to illicit a true response, rather to aid the flow of the conversation by constantly including the interlocutors (other people in the conversation). Here are a few examples that you may find familiar:

"Ay, he's bloody good on that guitar, i'nt 'e?" (isn't he)
"She looks lovely in that frock, du'nt she?" (doesn't she)
"It was a belter, that film, wa'n't it?" (wasn't it)
"I've said it before, 'avn't a? (haven't I)

Imagine having a conversation without using these tag questions. Better still, try to have a conversation without using them, and see how stilted and abrupt the conversation seems.

The reader will notice that the verbs in the tag questions agree with the verbs in the main clause, as follows:


  • "He is bloody good on that guitar, isn't he?
He - personal pronoun, third person, masculine
is - to be, present tense, third person, non gender specific

It would sound ridiculous to use verbs that do not agree as follows:

  • "He is bloody good on that guitar, wasn't he/hasn't he/didn't he?"


The verbs are invariably switched according to whether the verb in the main clause is negated or not, so a declarative statement that says, "He is bloody good..." is followed by an interrogative tag question "...is he not?" (isn't he):


  • He is... isn't he


If the declarative statement is negated, "He is not very good on that guitar..." then the interrogative tag question is not negated "... is he?"


  • He is not... is he

An interesting side note is the use of tag questions by the youth particularly in the London area, where the tag question "Isn't it?" is usually contracted and pronounced as "Innit?" We have all heard this, but the interesting feature of its use by young people is that it does not agree with the verb is in the main clause.

For example, I have heard young people (15 - 25) in the London area say the following:

  • "I'm goin' out, innit?"
  • "I don't care, innit?"
  • "I told him I don't want to, innit?"
They seem to be favouring the "to be" verb in all tag questions, rather than matching the verb in the tag with the main clause. As a comparison, I would say the above statements as follows:

  • "I'm goin' out, aren't a?"
  • "I don't care, do a?"
  • "I told 'im I don't want to, di'n't a?" (didn't I)
Note: The final sentence is actually more complicated than it looks at first glance. The verb that the tag question (didn't I) actually agrees with is the non verbalised "did" in the main clause, and NOT the "don't" in the "I don't want to".

To simplify things, imagine that I had said, "I did tell him" instead of "I told him" and you will see that the verb in the tag does indeed agree.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Knew, New, and News.

During my visit to Warrington last month, I was surprised to hear my sister pronounce a word in a way that I thought impossible in the dialect. The word was "knew", as in "I knew it."

I had always thought that we Warringtonians, like the vast majority of people in the country, pronounce "knew" with the phonetic /j/ after the "n" as follows:
/nju/
as opposed to our American cousins who generally pronounce it without the phonetic /j/ as follows:
/nu/
I thought that this held true for all the words with this combination of sounds: "new", "knew", "news"; apparently not!

I was surprised, nay, shocked, to hear my beloved older sister pronounce "knew" without the phonetic /j/. I listened more closely, thinking perhaps that she had been thinking of another word and had mispronounced accidentally, but no, she repeatedly pronounced it as /nu/.

The one thing I didn't do was compare her pronunciation of the other words normally pronounced with the /nj/ combination: "new" and "news" (my rationale being that there may be some interference from the present tense form of the verb "to know", which, of course, is never pronounced with /nj/).

I will report back on this topic the next time I speak to her.

How do my fellow Warringtonians pronounce "knew"? Let me know. Post a comment.