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Complex Numbers #1073277 added June 28, 2024 at 9:33am
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It Ain't Wrong
Hey, look, an article about writing. Sort of. From thesaurus.com:
I still remember a rhyme from elementary school: Don't say ain't, or your mother will faint, and your father will fall in a bucket of paint.
The image was so compelling that I spent the next few days saying "ain't" every chance I got; sadly, the promised amusing scenario never presented itself.
Look, there are myriad reasons I never wanted kids, but high on the list was that they might be like me.
What’s all the fuss over ain’t about?
I always figured it was kind of like "y'all," which I did a whole entry on a while back: basically, an attempt to squelch Black vernacular.
Ain’t is a contraction that can mean am not, are not, and is not. It can also mean have not, has not, do not, does not, or did not. We ain’t joking: ain’t is incredibly versatile, a kind of one-stop-shop for saying something isn’t, didn’t, or wasn’t.
That ain't confusing at all.
Ain’t apparently begins as amn’t, a contraction for am not, which you can still hear in Ireland and Scotland today.
I also vaguely remember wondering why we didn't have "amn't" when we had contractions like aren't and weren't.
Ain’t is a perfectly valid word, but today, ain’t is considered nonstandard. At worst, it gets stigmatized for being “ignorant” or “low-class.” At best, it’s considered a no-no in formal writing.
Lots of things are frowned upon in formal writing that we can get away with in, say, texts or blog entries. But "ignorant" is how I'd describe elitist snobs who are out of touch with common ways of communication.
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). Be mindful that judging someone’s use of ain’t as “wrong” can be a very socially loaded act, to say the least.
So I was at least partially right. It's also more acceptable in the South here, though it's not as quintessentially Southern as "y'all."
Outside of regional and dialectical forms of English, ain’t also appears in a great many expressions (not to mention in important titles, from “Ain’t I a Woman?” to “Ain’t That a Shame”). In fact, it’s hard to imagine these sayings without ain’t. Try replacing them with their formal counterpoint and see if they still keep their charm.
At least it's more acceptable now than when I was a kid. I wouldn't expect to see it in business correspondence or scientific research papers (apart from those that study language, that is), but for everyday speech, there ain't nothin' wrong with it.
Maybe one of these days I'll do an entry on how a double negative is an intensifier, rather than mathematically turning a sentence a positive. But this ain't the time. |
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