I’ve been noticing a phenomenon I call the ‘double is’. That’s where you say “The thing is, is that…”. This phenomenon has been noted before, but it’s not clear what’s happening. The ‘double is’ resembles (superficially) other grammatical sentences in English, like “How serious the problem is is less important than how serious it feels to them.” It’s also normal to put other verbs before an is, like “The thing to do is to be honest.” Even so, the ‘double is’ is sort of hard to account for grammatically.
The thing is is that people still use it. I just heard it from US President Barack Obama on his recent Jon Stewart interview.
But then Obama does it again, this time using the past tense:
The point “was is…”? Now that’s something I hadn’t heard before.
29 October 2010 at 4:05 am
Do you have any thoughts on the "Na, yeah…| "Yeah, na…"" phenomenon?
This is where someone is asked a question and commences their response with the opposite of what they actually want to say, then goes on with the correct response.
It seemed to spread quickly through the language around 5-7 years ago (at least, that's when I began to notice it).
29 October 2010 at 9:55 am
Wow, I've never heard that before, and I find it rather bizarre.
29 October 2010 at 11:06 am
Now that you know about it, I bet you'll be hearing it lots.
29 October 2010 at 1:14 pm
When I first caught myself saying "yeah, no", I realised that I was finally a speaker of Australian English.
There's an article out there called "Yeah-No, He's a Good Kid" in which the authors identify a few functions:
1) Acknowledgement 'yes' with an answer 'no'. When you want to answer 'no' to a question, you say "Yeah (I hear you) — no (the answer is no)."
2) A softener for uncomfortable situations.
"James, apologising for having missed their early
morning run, says ‘Sorry I wimped out’. Kylie replies ‘Yeah-no that’s fine’."
3) Downplaying compliments
"Yeah-no, I thought my performance went really well."
I imagine it as anticipating disagreement, or imagining that someone might disagree, and then answering that imagined disagreement. We do throw yeah's and no's around a lot.
30 October 2010 at 5:08 am
No, yeah, I noticed it when it came out of my own mouth too – then wondered how the hell it got there.
14 November 2010 at 2:37 pm
In one episode of The Big Bang Theory, Leonard said "Yeah, no, …" so I guess it's not exclusively Australian English :p