Yo… & …yo

Trevor @ Wednesday April 28th 2004 14:33

I don’t think that John McWhorter’s “YO!” has really “floated to the ends of sentences and lost its shouting intonation, and … become what linguists would call a pragmatic marker.” It’s just like football: there are always a few pragmatic markers hanging around on the margins of matches, and then there are Dutch defenders who shove their “YO!” in your face, in your shins, at the beginning of the sentence, as it were:

“If there’s a fight on the pitch, then I always run straight over if it’s not too far. Mostly I don’t need to, because I’m involved.”
Glasgow Rangers defender, Fernando Ricksen

“If someone gets past me, he’s getting away with part of my salary.”
Johan Neeskens

“When we played for Holland I always used to make a [50 guilder] bet with Wim Suurbier. The first one to knock an opponent down so that a doctor had to come onto the pitch won.”
Hugo Hovenkamp

Who do I have to bribe to ensure that “Dutch” becomes redefined as an antonym of “pragmatic”?


Categories: Ball-playing, Languages, Splog

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