¿TOMAS CAFÉ, NO?

You know how I love words…. I encountered a letter to W. F. Buckley in the August 29th edition of National Review that I thought was a keeper. The letter said:

…I don’t remember ever encountering a grammatical construction such as, “Your imagination should be able to handle that, no?”
Why not end with “yes”? And what response indicates agreement or disagreement when ending the query in “yes” or “no”?

WFB answers:

….Very interesting, As in other matters in language, doing what comes naturally tends to be the thing to do. The negative is obviously called for in French (“Tu désires du café, non?”) and Spanish (“¿Tomas café, no?). If one were to expand the negative locution here, we’d have “You’re going to have coffee, aren’t you?” And there is the negative, poking its head. Aren’t you? – Are you not? The sentence you quote is constructed to suggest that the addressee’s imagination is (presumably) sufficient to cope with the problem; so that the indicated answer – if the imagination were insufficient – would be: No. A “yes” could be accomplished by a nod of the head, or – silence…

Wow – talk about brilliance in handling the language!

Check out NRO at: