January 15, 2004
Ain't misbehavin'. Thanks to helpful commenters, I am now informed on the subject of "amn't" and "ain't", raised in a previous post. Languagehat discussed the point and introduced me to the expertise of Dr. Language. If you simply follow the safety precautions provided in the external links above, you should be able to ain't and amn't away with pleasure. I know I will. If over-reactive prescriptivists can bully perfectly fine forms out of standard speech, I don't know why we can't push them right back in.


Posted by Moira Breen at January 15, 2004 05:22 AM
Comments

Youse all can speak however you like. I ain't kidding.

Posted by: Jonathan on January 15, 2004

Beware the Language Police who would have us cast English in stone! They are same people who would have complained when Willie the Shake turned nouns into verbs and vice versa.

English is a mutt of a language, barely a step above a pidgin, with slovenly grammar, peripatetic sentence structure and spelling straight out a nightmare. It also has a CostCo-sized vocabulary and rules made to be broken without losing any of its meaning.

Put me down as pro-"ain't" and any other slang expression that achieves wide parliance. As long as I can understand what you are saying, go crazy, man!

Posted by: J. on January 18, 2004

It depends on what the meaning of "is you is" is.


Posted by: Jonathan on January 19, 2004

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