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The dialogues below are said by an old man to stop a fight between young guys in two separate speech balloons. The first one is a screaming-type speech balloon which he shouted at them and the later one is a normal speech balloon which he said in a milder tone.

First balloon: おっと よしな よしな くだらねえなぐりあいなんぞやるのは!

Second balloon: どうせ やるんなら堂々と正式の拳闘でケリをつけたらどうなんだい

According to my understanding, the particle 「のは」 used for nominalizing the preceding verb and making it to be a topic marker. I would like to know why it has to be put at the end of the sentence.

2 Answers 2

9

Basically the sentence has been reversed.

よしな くだらねえなぐりあいなんぞやるのは!

is the same as

くだらねえなぐりあいなんぞやるのは よしな!
Stop it with all that stupid fist-fighting!

This な, by the way, is different from the one in よすな (don't stop!). It's an order to do something, rather than not to do something. It's most likely from なさい.

4

I think he's just saying it in reversed order:

よしな くだらねえなぐりあいなんぞやるのは!

Reversed becomes:

くだらねえなぐりあいなんぞやるのは よしな!

or in more formal Japanese:

くだらない殴り合いなんぞやるのはよせ!

On a side note, from what I've read, the old's man's style of speaking might a more of a dialect where くだらない becomes くだらね and よせ becomes よしな.

Other examples I've seen of this slang are: 面目無い → 面目ねえ 食べろ → 食べな

Interestingly I've only seen this speech style from old men.

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    That speech is definitely not limited to old men! ない->ねえ is a very common masculine way of speaking that you can hear everywhere. 食べな is actually a short way of saying 食べなさい (よしな -> よしなさい) and also quite common, young women use it too.
    – rjh
    Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 22:36

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