Innit

Before I delve into the exciting story behind today's title, I shall first discuss Mark's new, well, not toy per se, but fun gadget-oriented hobby type thing. He's created a website, which can be found at (wait for it....wait for it.....) www.markwoturner.co.uk. It also has some mac address, but that one is easier to remember and it's all the same anyways. So if you want to learn a bit more about Mark and see some additional photos (such as Saturday's trip to the British Museum), it's the place to go. I'll add a link to my sidebar.

Now for the tale behind the title. 'Innit' is a slang word/term used by what I would term as generally annoying types. It most likely originated as the term 'isn't it', and while it has taken on a life of it's own, this is generally what it means. While it may be termed as either a north London or south London colloquialism, I'm not sure which one. They're all the same to me.

So who says innit? How do they use it? What makes these people annoying? So many questions, but the answers are relatively simple. I will use two examples. First example, Heathrow airport tube station, New Year's day, about 7:30 in the morning. Heaves of tired grumpy travellers waiting 20 minutes for the tube, and 2 young men sitting slouchily on the one bench talking at unnaturally high volumes, getting glared at by the bold, as sometimes the young men occasionally felt obliged to say something back to people they saw looking at them. They also had knew they were being loud, and seemed to savor it. As they were talking at this unnaturally loud volume (and I have no idea where they came from or why they were there at that time, I didn't see suitcases), I could hear everything they said. In the conversation between these b-boy types, approximately every other sentence has an 'innit' tagged onto the end. Here is an example sentence, 'So I met this fit girl last night, innit.' And I suppose also worth mentioning is that the innit user does not otherwise speak the Queen's English or have what we think of as a typical English accent, instead it is specifically either a north or south London accent, again I'm just not savvy enough to know the difference.

My second example is from Tuesday evening, when due to there being 2 people on the track's at various places on the District line (although not between me and my destination) my train stopped at High Street Kensington and I had to get on a bus. I was sitting upstairs and ended up sort of surrounded by some young men. The one sitting one seat over in the row in front of me made several phone calls. In a conversation basically talking about 'football' in various aspects, he again managed to use the word innit to cap off several sentences. It was again at a slightly louder than necessary volume, which just in my mind put the annoyance level just a little bit higher.

So why the prevalence of this particular word? Why does just the sound of it make so many people shudder? What power does it hold? Well, for starters, I'm pretty sure that if you went into an interview for a respectable job, the uttering of the word innit at the end of a sentence would probably be enough to ensure you won't get hired. The impression I get is that the use of the word is associated with a lot of anti-social behavior. While I'm in no way implying that if you use the word innit regularly does it mean you enjoy intimidating passers-by on the street, have no respect for authority and lack the ability to sit and speak properly, but those who do fall within those categories in certain parts of London are likely to use the term. Like a not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles situation, although again I don't think 'all' is the proper word to apply in this situation. However, the prevalence is such that the use of the word is enough to at least make many people think of 'yob' behavior and will make many people someone wary of you (aka, not willing to glare at you for speaking loudly, not asking you to turn down your music).

One of the major downsides of this slang term and all its connotations is that when you have to use the phrase 'in it', you feel like some sort of criminal who needs to justify their actions. For example, saying 'does this have tomatoes in it?', BAD. Rephrase, 'are there tomatoes in this?', GOOD. You know what I mean, innit?