What someone on another forum said about "ain't".

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That's a stupid thing to say, ain't it? I doubt that judgment was backed by any research and, yet, he is "quite sure." Fascinating.

When we talked about "ain't" in a linguistics class in college, I learned that it's supposed to be a contraction between "am" and "not."

"I ain't working tomorrow."
"I ain't pregnant."

That sort of thing. In any case, sometimes people use it to be humorous, down-home, or to emphasize a point. Those are valid reasons, too. It irritates me when people are rigid about grammar and spelling.

No they're not necessarily stupid. One of the best science teachers I had, when he saw I was about to use a very high-magnification setting on a microscope to examine bacteria, said "they b'ain't that little*." I got the point immediately. Many teachers and experts use overcomplicated language that only makes sense to the student if they already know the subject very well - and if they already know it that well, they don't need to be taught. But he would deliberately use the simplest English to explain things, and unlike dummying down, he lost nothing in the translation.

My gut reaction to poor English is often that of a grammar snob, probably because we got a lot of stick at school for not getting it right, but these days I don't take that reaction seriously unless the mistakes in what is said make it hard to understand what they're on about. Language is functional.

I used to think that "innit" was the mark of a moron, but I started using it myself occasionally in an ironic way, for comedic effect. It's only stupid if the one who says it doesn't know any better. Even then it's not really stupid, just uneducated.

* "b'ain't" is the form of "aren't" used in the Westcountry in England. Westcountry folk are often deemed stupid, but they b'ain't.

People sure have some unusual hang ups. I hear innit all the time. Granted, I wouldn't use it when writing formally. However, for casual use it is fine. It's just slang.

Regarding ain't: https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/ain ... int-baint/

It is correct yet looked down upon. Frankly I think that's silly.

Personally I consider English to have a 'correct form' and a 'casual speaker form'. Neither shows a lack of intellect. I switch depending on audience and situation.

"amn't" was reduced to "an't".

"aren't" was reduced to "an't"

"isn't" was reduced to "in't"

"in't" later merged with "an't" and they became "ain't".

My mom sometimes says Ain't. She was always a straight A student & English was her best subject in school. She became a teacher & taught 8th grade English for half of one year; she taught pre-K after that. My dad says Ain't too but he dropped out of college after failing English twice & being told by the teacher she would never pass him. Dad has dyslexia & ADD & of coarse with my luck he's the one I took after with school. I sometimes say Ain't as well. My parents have lived their whole lives in the deep south so far. Louisiana is well known for having some very stupid & poorly educated people partly due to the politians wanting to fund education as little as possible so they can help out big buisnesses.

It's hard to believe saying "ain't" will still freak people out when they can practically use the F word all the time these days and get away with it.

Thats one rule that quite arbitrary. "Aint" is perfectly fine contraction of "am" and "not".

In part of England they even combine "be" with "not" and say "baint".

On the other hand its considered perfect correct and proper to say "mutual friend".

If you think about it the phrase "mutual friend" is idiotic, and illogical.

If you and I are both friends with person X than X would not be our "mutual friend". Person X would be our "common friend".

"Mutual" means the parties are doing the same thing for each other (mutual protection, or mutual benifit). So you and I could be "mutual friends" with each other, but that would just be a tautology. Because by definition "being friends" means you are doing friendship to each other mutually.

The way it was explained to me in third grade (c.1965), the word "ain't" is a word used by "those colored people", so us white kids (in an all-white school in an all white town) were not to imitate the "lower classes".

Ain't that a hoot?

I ain't about to change the way I speak or write just to appease the spirit of a racist teacher who ain't alive any more.

In my case it's not the contraction of "isn't it" into "innit" that I have disdain for. In Yorkshire where I was born, "i'n't it" was (and likely still is) part of the local dialect, and it's music to my ears. It's things like "They're too big, innit?" when they mean "They're too big, aren't they?" But I heartily approve of it when it's done to parody the ones who normally talk like that.

You won me over with the bit about not imitating the lower classes. We used to get a lot of that crap as kids, and it just made us do the opposite. There was no race element because everybody in the area was white. We just didn't like the Big People trying to impose arbitrary rules on us, so it was a matter of honour and principle to rebel.

People who whine about ain't are idiots who assume people who use vernacular are less intelligent than themselves simply on the basis of how they word things. I don't take such people seriously.

That post just...breaks my heart...and makes me cry like rain.


https://youtu.be/2FDYyf8Kqrs

In my neck of the woods, it was the older folks (those born from 1880-1910), as well as the old-order Amish and Mennonites who insist on using ain’t.


As the old school rhyme went:

Ain’t ain't a word
‘Cause the teacher said it ain’t
So I ain’t gonna use it any more
Ain’t that nice?

Never heard that it was a "Black" thing. Po White hillbilly foks use aint too. Its supposed to be just an "any ignorant person thing" ...if you buy into it being "wrong" to say it.

And in truth "aint" goes back to England. Dickens put the word into the mouths of many of his characters...though it was usually his lower class characters. "Aint no better teacher than Fagan" in how to be a pickpocket.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 11 Oct 2023, 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In my neck of the woods, it was the older folks (those born from 1880-1910), as well as the old-order Amish and Mennonites who insist on using ain’t.


As the old school rhyme went:

Ain’t ain't a word
‘Cause the teacher said it ain’t
So I ain’t gonna use it any more
Ain’t that nice?