Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Is it acceptable to use yes as a question tag?



I am aware that, for example, Russian and German speakers tend to use yes as a question tag (most likely because it is acceptable in their native language), as in





You will come to the party, yes?




However, I was quite certain that this use was not correct English.



Today, while watching the movie Alien, I noticed that the science officer Ash repeatedly uses yes as a question tag, even though he does not have a particular foreign accent. Is this simply an artistic device, or is yes indeed used by native speakers as a question tag? If so, how colloquial is it?


Answer



In the US we most commonly use right for that purpose:





She's pretty, right?
That movie sucked, right?
You're an extraterrestrial, right?
It's really raining out there, right?




Using yes in these instances would indicate that you were not from our neck of the woods.


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