Dah

Meaning

The demonstrative 'that' or 'this', pointing to a specific thing — most often paired with 'deh' (there) or 'yah' (here) to fix its distance: 'dah bwoy deh' means that boy over there, and 'dah one yah' is this one here. It can also stand in for a reduced 'the'. Among the small but essential pointing-words of the language, 'dah' does the plain grammatical work of singling out a particular thing, near or far, and it is heard constantly in everyday speech directing attention to this or that.

Examples

• Dah one deh nice.

  That one there is nice.

  'dah ... deh' frames 'that ... over there'.

• Gimme dah book yah.

  Give me this book here.

  With 'yah' it points to something close.

• Weh yuh get dah idea deh?

  Where did you get that idea?

Origin

From English 'that', reduced and reshaped. Rebel One displays it as 'dah'; the source form 'daa' is preserved as an alias.

How it’s used

Usually works together with a following 'deh' or 'yah' to show whether the thing is far or near. On its own it can also weaken to mean 'the'.