¿No? ¿Verdad? And other such questions.
In English, some have the habit of ending a sentence with word like: "right?" Some words that I have run into that express the same idea are ¿no? and ¿verdad? In addition, in the region of northern Peru near Trujillo, they say "¿di?" or "¿diga?" and many in Guatamala say ¿va? Does anyone else have words like this that they have run into? Just to make sure that I've explained myself well, an example sentence would be: Hace mucho calor hoy, ¿no/verdad/diga/va? (It's really hot today, right?)
4 Answers
How do tag questions like ¿no? and ¿verdad? have a broader scope in meaning?
Well, this idea makes sense only if one is limiting such tag questions. (And, I’m not sure you were doing that. Usually, though, that’s what most people do; our tendency—myself included—is to try to translate most things literally, as much as possible.)
For instance, if one thinks of ¿no? or ¿verdad? only as a rough equivalent to right?, O.K.?, or huh? at the end of an otherwise declarative sentence, we run the risk of limiting them, in meaning, solely as an idiosyncratic thing. Like, for example, some people’s speech is interspersed with frequent you knows. As such, they don’t take on any meaning, and even can become an irritant after awhile.
This is what I was trying to get at here. We should try to think of ¿no? and ¿verdad? (or ¿di?, ¿diga?, ¿va? or ¿vale? for that matter) not merely as some habitual thing that doesn’t mean much (like the tag right? in English does not always ask for verification); but rather, usually, these tags are actually asking for verification or confirmation of something stated in the earlier part of the sentence, like isn’t it?, did you?, shouldn’t we? and the like mean to most native English speakers.
Another related idea here is that of the idiom. If we think of expressions, phrasal verbs, or even slang terms as idiomatic—usually: two or more words together take on a different, even synergistic, meaning than the individual words themselves—this might also be somewhat helpful.
Like, for instance, the word afford doesn’t really translate to one word in Spanish. But yet Spanish speakers get at the same idea of not having enough money to buy something with the idiomatic expression poder permitirse. If I think of the sentence “No puedo permitirme comprar un carro nuevo.” and try to translate it literally (i.e., not taking into account the possibility that—idiomatically—it can resonate to a completely different meaning in the mind of a native speaker), then it doesn’t really make much sense to me. “I can’t permit myself to buy a new car.” Huh? Doesn’t work. That doesn’t get at the notion of insufficient funds in English at all! But it certainly does, somehow, in Spanish. So something is lost in the translation.
This was what I was trying to get at if you were thinking only of ¿no?, ¿verdad?, ¿di?, ¿diga? and ¿va? as idiosyncratic speech. Most of the time, they’re not.
I think one of the most common words that we, the Argentines, say is 'che'. Sometimes we add it to questions. For example: ¿Qué haces, che?, ¿Hace calor, che?, ¿Tenes frío, che?... But we also say it at the beginning of the sentence: ¿Che, tenes frío?
Hi BigMike.
Debemos comer saludablemente, ¿verdad?
We should eat healthily, shouldn’t we?
We should eat healthily, right?
You didn’t stay up until 1:00 a.m., did you?
You stayed up until 1:00 a.m., didn’t you?
El restaurante va a abrir a las nueve, ¿no?
The restaurant’s going to open at nine, isn’t it?
There aren’t any more copies of that book, are there?
Es un excelente sitio de web, ¿no?
I am supposed to leave the light on, aren’t I?
It was a long drive up here, eh? (Canadian English.)
We’re going to a lot of work to learn another language, don’t you think?
Declarative sentence, word, word, word, word, more words, quick switch to (¿)question-at-the-end? ? The term for this structure, in grammar, is tag question, and everybody uses them. They’re usually a way of asking for verification of something we’re not really sure about. (O.K., some people use them more idiosyncratically, but you get the idea.)
Of course, tag questions vary by country, and even region.
I don’t remember anything other than ¿no? and ¿verdad? from when I was living in Mexico.
I do remember that we answered the telephone with ¿Bueno?, but that’s not really a tag question.
The good news is that other than right? and O.K.?, they are much easier to learn in Spanish than they are in English, with its bizarre pattern of flipping from negative auxiliary verb in the declarative part to positive auxiliary verb in the tag, or vice versa; and if the tag is negative it must have a contraction or it sounds clunky; and if you start out in positive anger, the tag stays positive (Oh, you think I am wrong, do you?!).
And, of course, there are other exceptions. It’s one of the things I teach my more advanced ESL students, and they struggle with them! So you can be happy that they’re easier to learn in Spanish, can’t you?
Unfortunately, though, it’s a mistake to limit ¿no? and ¿verdad? to right? and O.K.? and the like. That is, to not see them as translatable to isn’t it? or can’t you? etc. Tag questions in Spanish have a much broader scope in meaning than that.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if some native Spanish speakers pipe in with their regional variants!
and many in Guatamala say ¿va?
Yes.
