About tag questions (You think Peter comes from England, doesn't he?)

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Please look at the two sentences below:

1.You thinks Peter comes from England ,doesn’t he ?

2.You thinks Peter comes from England,don’t you?

I know the first sentence is grammatically true but in my opinion, ‘‘YOU’’ think Peter comes from England and that means it may not be true because ‘‘YOU’’ just think so and ‘‘YOU’’ don’t know very clearly.Why does the speaker ask ‘‘doesn’t he’’ which means the speaker want to your opinion whether it is true.Please explain it for me and by the way can I say ‘‘You thinks Peter comes from England,don’t you?’’ ?

2

Hi Duc

First of all, you need to get rid of the S on the word ‘think’.

That said, I personally would NOT use sentence 1. To me, sentence 2 would be the correct and more commonly used sort of sentence.

Sentence 2 basically means this:
You think (X), don’t you?

(X = what the person thinks.)

I would use “doesn’t he” this way:
Peter comes from England, doesn’t he?
.

3

So what about ‘‘I think Peter comes from China,doesn’t he ?’’ Is it good ?

4

Yes, it is.

NB You should have a space after the comma, and not before it.

5

Using ‘I think’ instead of ‘you think’, it is OK to use the tag ‘doesn’t he’ at the end of the sentence.

Now let’s look at another sentence:
“John thinks Peter comes from China, doesn’t he?”
I would interpret the word ‘he’ in that sentence to mean ‘John’.
.

6

Then there might occur:

“Oh, so John doesn’t think Peter comes from China, doesn’t he?”