Too flirty. 😉 If you know you’re using it correctly, good for you. Explore celebrity trends and tips on fashion, style, beauty, diets, health, relationships and more. I grew up in Hicksville, USA. The guy biked 6 hours to the college to register for classes but the dorms didn't open for … How to use ain't in a sentence. I ain’t got nothing else to add but a little detail: “Ain’t” may sound really bad for some listeners when it comes to redundancy: I ain’t got nothing = I got nothing. . Or am I wrong? We’ve used some in this article already. Country or region United States I say “ain’t” and yes it is incorrect English. grammaticality etymology double-negation negative-polarity-items. The word has been derided by usage authorities throughout its history, and it’s still considered unacceptable in formal writing, but it has a secure place in spoken English. Booklover: I thought they were being facetious. Are we gonna get anywhere here? (If we’re only to phrase any given thought in particular manners dictated by convention rather than rule, poets should be quickly out of function). Um …. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Back when I taught junior high school English I used to tell my students that they were allowed to use the word “ain’t” in their speaking and writing. “Alligator” vs. “Crocodile”: Do You Know The Difference? If you understand there are people ignorant of its correct usage who will consider you uneducated for using it, even better. Or am I beeing naive once more? You might hear ain’t in songs, like Bon Jovi’s “This ain’t a love song” (This isn’t a love song). But, ain’t became associated with lower-class characters (as in the works of Charles Dickens) and was treated as a vulgar form to be avoided. Absolutely. Umm…Philip; the instrument “piano” (as opposed to the direction on sheet music) has three syllables (“pee-AN-oh”, not “pya-no”), and the person who plays one is properly called a “PEE-an-ist” (again, three syllables — not a “pee-nist”). This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. At worst, it gets stigmatized for being “ignorant” or “low-class.” At best, it’s considered a no-no in formal writing. I wasn’t able to find anything online related to the origins of this incorrect usage. “They could, however, say or write Hilariously, one of my pet peeves is the use of apostrophes in plurals. Too flirty. Later, while still very young, I learned that, “ain’t” aint a word and the reasoning behind it. It should always be ‘aren’t I’. If the purpose of your communication is to communicate your ideas, you still succeed. I have a problem with the last post that represents my main problem with the word “ain’t” in common usage. We can find ain’t (and its related, historic forms like an’t) in the mouths of upper-class characters in literature, for instance. Once is enough. Man No I ain't. Yet taken strictly as a part of speech, the term functions perfectly well as a verb. Then again, your reasoning for disallowing the other uses of “ain’t” seem not to be concerned with the fact that “ain’t” is “am not”, which is inappropriate entirely for those instances, which I think is more important than the existence of alternative phrasings. In fact, it’s hard to imagine these sayings without ain’t. Ain’t is a contraction that can mean am not, are not, and is not. I just think it’s ok depending on the situation. aren’t I? Would anyone ever say “are I not?”. Now, put THAT into the dictionary! “Oh–I feel badly about his mother dying.” Would these rocket engineer’s say “I feel goodly about his mother’s recovery.”? The Dictionary.com Word Of The Year For 2020 Is …. With Lester Bibbs, Tobin Costen, Side 2 Side. That’s why it’s important to distinguish between being understood, e.g., “the reason why” and “I ain’t got no money,” and speaking and writing clearly, concisely, and correctly, e.g., Grammar is not the matter. I’m more confused now. . So, I must say I probably agree with y’al..ooops, you all. A key contributor on special teams and one of the team’s more explosive pass-catchers, Mickens appears to be angry at the NFL’s rules and protocols surrounding COVID-19, after both he and fellow Bucs wide receiver Cyril Grayson were placed on the list earlier this week. I feel that language should always strive to provide a single correct word for a single meaning. “Joe Biden told every single one of us we ‘ain’t black’ . I just feel that it makes more sense as a contraction of “am I not?” than “aren’t I?” does. They may be redundant, but there is no inherent logical error or risk of ambiguity in them that comes immediately to my mind. Subscribers get access to our archives with 800+ interactive exercises! But with ‘ain’t’, oddly enough, we do. It is just that you´ve gotta know when and how to use it. While a lot of people consider ain’t improper, it’s a very regular and legitimate part of many forms of English, including in Black English (AAVE).