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Innit
Professor David Crystal
Innit. Spelt I-N-N-I-T. ‘Innit’- usually pronounced that way,
usually with a regional accent of some kind, often with a
Cockney accent of some kind, often with a Jamaican accent
– it’s because it’s come really from the fashionable use, in
London mainly, by the Asian community and the Jamaican
community, popularised by Ali G and others. It was
actually the name of a film in 1999, ‘Ali G, Innit’.
It’s easy to see where it comes from; it’s a contraction of
‘isn’t it?’ - a tag question. ‘It’s there, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s there.
Innit?’ In fact, that kind of pronunciation has been around
an awful long time. What’s happened with this new usage
though, is it’s become generalised to other persons and
tense forms of the verb. People would now say ‘we need to
go on the bus, innit?’ Traditionally you’d say ‘we need to go
on the bus, don’t we?’ ‘They shouldn’t do that, innit?’ –
instead of, ‘they shouldn’t do that, should they?’ And so that kind of
usage where innit has now become part of the whole paradigm of the
verb – I’m going, innit? You’re going, innit? He’s going, innit? She’s
going, innit? And so on. Very unusual for English – English has always
kept its tag questions very controlled in the past. But it’s not that unusual
in languages as a whole - I mean, French has ‘n’est ce pas?’, German has
‘nicht wahr?’, Spanish has ‘verdad?’ - for all the different forms of the
verb. English has never gone in that direction, until now.
I mean, basically, all that’s happening is that the phrase is asking for
agreement, asking for support in an argument. As I suppose, I’m doing
now, innit?
© British Broadcasting Corporation 2007
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