“A lost cause, that is.”

Question

I tend to finish with a ", that is." in a couple of situations:

I come in and see a heavily damaged machine, and I say

A lost cause, that is...

And it is not always with the "that is" phrase, it also happens with "I say":

I am discussing with someone, and I say:

Your arguments are baseless, I say.

Is this kind of "ending" for my phrases correct, or is it some kind of absurd bad habit I developed?

Answer 1

Sure, they're correct. The appended "I say" tends to sound a bit haughty or archaic, while the "that is" sounds a bit colloquial, but both are well within the bounds of accepted usage.

Answer 2

That is probably not a good habit. It certainly will make you sound more "foreign."

Such phrases aren't confusing, but they don't seem to express anything. Few people nowadays add such flourishes; common ones I can think of are man, dude, yo, or no? — all of which relate to some kind of stereotypical, hackneyed speech.

By the way, the idiom is lost cause, not lost case.

Answer 3

Of object and subject just an inversion it is... Kind of natural, it's easily understood, thats why. Worst contortions have we heard from all scopes of combinatory spoken. Etc!