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Bookmark or Share- word choice - Difference between "isn't" and "ain't" - English Language ...@ pyrAmider, True for English English; you might use Ain't in quotation, or to show dated slang as in the TV series 'It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.' Or to indicate Mockney attitude to a situation. Or to indicate Mockney attitude to a situation.
- history - When did "ain't" become slang? - English Language & Usage ...When ain’t went from being just any old colloquial contraction to being a specifically lower-register colloquial contraction is a good question, though. Something tells me we’re looking at the 19th century, but I have a hunch it probably happened at different times in different places and dialects.
- formality - Why is "ain't" not listed in dictionaries? - English ...At the same time ain't's uses were multiplying to include has not, have not, and is not, by influence of forms like ha'n't and i'n't. It may be that these extended uses helped fuel the negative reaction. Whatever the case, criticism of ain't by usage commentators and teachers has not subsided, and the use of ain't is often regarded as a sign of ...
- grammaticality - Origin and correctness of “ain’t no”? - English ...Leaving aside ain't, which is a different issue, the phenomenon called "double negation" is not so simple as it may seem. Most of the languages of the world use multiple negatives to emphasize the negation, like the (respectively) French, Spanish, and Yiddish examples below:
- How does "ain't" work? - English Language & Usage Stack ExchangeAin't is also used (perhaps more commonly) with an -ing form: (4) He ain't helping me. Generally ain't is used for a negative contraction of a be form, but occasionally it appears also for a negative contraction of a have form, as in (2). (3) is what (2) sounds like at normal speech rates, when /ent'hɛlptmi/ reduces to /en'ɛlpmi/ .
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