Re: Sentence-ending particles in English

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:

Seems like the Brits have got a similar thing goin' on in English.
I hear the kiddos over there sometimes talk like this:
|Oh my gooood - uh

  Here in Berlin, we might say,

|Das ist ja voll peinlich, ey!

  (That's really embarrassing, yo!).

  This also reminds me of the Japanese よ (yo) which is used at the
  end of a sentence to add emphasis or suggest the speaker is sharing
  new information. (But the Berlin "ey" just adds some emphasis,
  it does not suggest the speaker is sharing new information.)

  It's funny how the machine translation of "ey!" suggest "yo!"
  /in English/ which sounds very similar to the Japanese よ (yo)!