Heyna for Isn’t It?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

I’m Joan from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

What’s cooking there in Eau Claire?

Well, I have a question, and it’s about a word that’s used a thousand miles away, though, in northeastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up.

And the word is Haina.

Haina.

And it’s Haina, and it’s used to mean something like, isn’t it? Sort of like a tag question.

Yep, exactly.

How do you spell it?

So when you were back in Pennsylvania, how would this come up in conversation?

Well, it’s kind of a fun word. I remember it always being positive. So, you know, for example, we might say something like, he’s a pretty good polka dancer, Hina. Or as a reply to somebody, you know, something like, these pierogi are really good. Somebody would say, yeah, Hina. That’s how we use it.

Okay, I get this. And Martha had asked how you spell it. How do you spell it?

Well, it’s in the spoken language. I don’t know. I’ve seen it written a couple different ways. H-A-I-N-A, H-A-Y-N-A, but I spell it H-E-Y-N-A, like H-E-Y-N-A.

Yeah, I think I’ve counted seven different possible spellings of this.

You’re right. You said exactly the right thing. This is orally transmitted. Sounds like a disease, but we’re talking about language. So the spellings tend to be highly variable when a word doesn’t appear often in print.

All right. So let’s lay this down here. There’s some really basic stuff. First of all, we think the origin of this probably comes from ain’t it. I realize that’s not grammatical, but there you go. So it’s literally, as you said, you used the linguistic jargon, so I suspect you’ve been Googling this. So bravo. It is a tag question. And lots of languages have these tag questions where you basically make a statement, and then you say, oh, wait a second. That was supposed to be a question. And you add something to the end of the sentence that turns it into a question.

So Martha’s hair looks pretty great today, hein? It means doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? And so this occurs in a variety of languages all across the world. For example, in the UK, in it, A-I-N-N-I-T, which is a corruption of isn’t it or ain’t it, is what they might say. That’s a lower register of English. In French, n’est-ce pas would work. I know there’s one in Spanish, but it’s not coming to me right now. In German, nicht wahr, right? And the other suspicion is that because of the heavy concentration of German speakers in the history of Pennsylvania, that there was some influence of the niktvar at the end of a phrase that combined with the ain’t it to create the heina. So heina is a corruption, a sound corruption of the original it with some influence there. That’s that.

What’s really interesting, really interesting, and I did not uncover this because I don’t speak a lick of Hindi or Urdu, but in Hindi and Urdu, there is a heina, which is a tag question that occurs at the end exactly the same way as it does in Pennsylvania English.

Wow.

But it’s just an utter coincidence. It’s totally a coincidence. They’re unrelated. One did not cause the other. Anyway, so there you go, Joan. That’s what we know about Haina. And it’s still heavily used today. If you want to find out a little bit more about this, Google the spelling H-I-N-A. Or even better, Google the word Hainabonics for a fun video. H-E-Y-N-A-B-O-N-I-C-S. And it’s been around for like 10 years or something. And it’s super fun. It’s from some PA folk kind of poking fun at the way that they talk and talking the way you would talk if you were truly a local.

Okay, great.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for calling.

Thanks for the information and for a great show.

Oh, our pleasure always. Call us again sometime, Joan.

Thanks. Bye.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

What’s the weird way they talk out your way? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org. And if you just can’t wait, find us on Facebook and Twitter.