OK.  So we all (native speakers, that is) know about question tags, don’t we?  We know how to and when to use them.  We use them automatically, without thinking, all the time for many, many situations.  They open a conversation with a stranger, they give others the chance to show that they agree with us (or not, of course), we use them when we’re unsure about something, etc.  And, depending upon the fall or rise of the tone will tell the other person what we are trying to say (after all, they may be called question tags, but they aren’t always questions that we create, are they?)

Having taught English for a while here and seen how people struggle with these very weird things (and, incidentally, learning so much more about my own language) I can see the problem.

S, with whom I work, speaks quite good English (probably lower intermediate level for those who want to know) but has tremendous problems with them.  Her tag is almost always “isn’t it” regardless of the sentence.  So, we get, for instance, “it’s not here, isn’t it?” or “he has that, isn’t it?” – and always rising, so that she can make it a question.  It does the job and sometimes I correct her as they like to feel they’re learning from me.  Sometimes I smile to myself as it just sounds too funny.

And then there’s N.  Now she’s an American who has lived here for years and speaks Italian like a native (or probably better, if only I was good enough myself to know).  But, for Italians, in their language, to make a question tag, they just use “no?” at the end.  And she’s either forgotten how to make them or, because she speaks Italian 90% of the time, just uses the Italian question tag instead of the English ones.  So there I was, wondering why, sometimes, she just bloody annoyed me?  And then, when I did my lessons on question tags I understood.  Things like “it”s a lovely day, no?” were fine.  But other things like “He’s not very good, no?” just drove me to distraction.  It’s so difficult to answer that.  To answer “no” felt wrong because it was a negative against a negative question tag (which feels wrong – try it yourself) and I wanted to agree with her and say “yes”.  But did “yes” mean he was good or “yes, I agree with you, he’s not good”.  So there was no answer I could give and I just felt frustrated all the time that I could not answer in a correct way.

And, I was reminded of the problem when I was reading the Italy is falling blog (link on the right).  He’s talking about going to New York and he says –

But all is going to turn out good, is it.

Of course, he means to say “isn’t it?”  And to that we can easily answer ‘yes’ (negative tag – positive reply).  And. I suppose we can still answer yes, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising the blog or his English, which, overall, is bloody good.  And to write a blog in a language that is not your own is also very impressive, but it was just that it did remind me of the problem non-native speakers have with, what is to us, a very simple way of changing a statement into something else.  By the way, I really enjoy reading his blog and, as he’s here in Milan, I feel that I would really like to get to know him better and that, maybe, we could be friends (of course, I will never meet him and, in a way, it is better that I don’t know him, because then he is only in my imagination – if, in fact, he is a ‘he’ at all).

And the driving!  Well, the other day, I’m driving, much like an Italian, so I’m merging with traffic to my left (and here, one should always (well, sometimes) give way to traffic from the right), but this guy just does not want to let me in.  But, I am in a much older car and don’t care (it was already a bad morning as I had had to get up in the first place), so, with him blasting his horn I am in!  So, when he gets the opportunity at the next queue, he pulls up beside me and wants me to wind my window down, which I do.  Then he asks me if I had seen him and I said yes and he said I should not have cut in front of him and I say that he should give way to traffic from the right and he says that he doesn’t have to do anything of the sort – and then races ahead to cut in front of me.  OK, so nothing special there – except he was Italian and the whole conversation was in English and, I have to admit, as soon as he was ahead of me and I had realised that, I wanted to say to him that I thought his English was excellent and it was a shame that his driving wasn’t!  But I missed that chance, so I thought I would say it here.

And, that night, I was walking up a street and had to cross a side street at a pedestrian crossing.  It was similar to a crossroads, except that it was basically two small side streets onto a larger one.  So I start crossing and there is an old geezer in and equally old Fiat waiting to cross the larger road.  However, he’s still there and I’m on a pedestrian crossing.  But then, just as I was a step from the pavement he comes past me, blasting his horn at me!  They’re all quite crazy!  As I say, siamo in Italia!