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I am getting quite confused by:

  1. That's also the same story, know?
  2. That's also the same story, no?

Which is correct formation? This is very confusing to me.

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    Please clarify your question. It is not at all clear wht you're asking.
    – Robusto
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 4:55
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    Using ' no?' at the end of a sentence in place of 'isn't it?' or its equivalent sounds all wrong to me. It makes sense, but it sounds like a non-English idiom translated into English. Or is that just me? ;)
    – gpr
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 6:25
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    I guess user4777 is being confused from the fact that, hearing the sentence (or similar sentences), he is not able to understand if the speaker is saying know, or no. In fact, the American pronunciation reported by the NOAD is the same for both the words: /nəʊ/.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 7:52
  • @gpr: to my ear, it’s a regional thing — a fairly strong marker of certain dialects. Unfortunately I’m not honestly sure which ones, and I have no documentation for this — but it certainly has a strong feeling of “this is unusual to me, but for the people who use it, very common”.
    – PLL
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 10:57

3 Answers 3

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The answer is no?, not know?. As mentioned in Justin Morgan's answer, no? is used instead of isn't it? which one would expect as a tag on the end of this sentence to make it a question (due to the negative form of the be verb which has been shortened in this sentence here: that's).

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Ending a sentence in , no? is the same thing as , isn't it? or , don't you think? But from your examples, neither one is correct because you are missing a verb.

That is also the same story, no?

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Just to nuance the two existing answers, what you might be thinking of is this:

That's the same story, you know?

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  • This construction is generally phrased as a statement, not a question. If I wanted to ask whether the person knows this, I'd say something like "You know that's the same story, don't you?"
    – Marthaª
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 14:31
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    Some people habitually insert meaningless filler words into their conversation, mostly to cover pauses. "You know" is one such filler. Um and ahh are others. I hypothesis that a learner of English, who was in frequent contact with such a person, might become confused about the usage of "you know".
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 14:55

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