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In my experience, 'oi' has a few usages: - Drawn out "oiiiiiii" and a pointed finger when someone makes a witty remark or has some kind of success. As in, "oii
by ponco 3y ago
In my experience, 'oi' has a few usages:
- Drawn out "oiiiiiii" and a pointed finger when someone makes a witty remark or has some kind of success. As in, "oiiii, nice one".
- "OI!" as a generic "hey!" shouted at someone to get their attention in the street.
- "oi?" with an upwards inflection to express disbelief
- Getting your friend's attention, usually followed by an insulting term like 'dickhead'. As in, "oi dickhead, watch out" when someone is trying to pass them on the street.
- AndrewDucker 3y agoI'm pretty sure the third one is separately descended from the Yiddish "Oy Vey"
- dcx 3y agoThat's very interesting - the Chinese "oi" has pretty much exactly the same usages, down to the little details! (I'm most familiar with the Cantonese 喂 wai2, though it's not my first language) I wonder if that suggests this is one of those universal pre-linguistic words, like "huh" [1]. That feels especially believable given the utter simplicity of the mouth sound. It's almost just a yell, in the same way that "huh" is almost just an outbreath. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/everybody-almost-every-language-says-huh-huh-180949822/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/everybody-almo...