From: Rick McCallister
Message: 62852
Date: 2009-02-05
> From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...>My parents, from West Virginia, done learned me good and teached me to say "Am I not," which the last I checked was the standard form and the normal form in everyday conversation.
> Subject: Re[2]: [tied] Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic
> To: "Rick McCallister" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 12:23 PM
> At 11:57:47 AM on Thursday, February 5, 2009, Rick
> McCallister wrote:
>
> > --- On Thu, 2/5/09, bmscotttg
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> >> From: bmscotttg <BMScott@...>
>
> >>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com,
> "tgpedersen"
> >>> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >>> [...]
>
> >>>> Suppose 'ain't I' for
> 'aren't I' spread in English,
> >>>> some people might come up with
> *'amn't I'. [...]
>
> >> No asterisk. <Amn't I> is found in some
> dialects,
> >> including, if I remember correctly, Scottish
> English and
> >> Hiberno-English. I've also heard it from
> young
> >> children.
>
> > amn't seems to have been very common in Early
> Modern
> > English --at least judging by English literature of
> the
> > 1600s and 1700s. But whenever I hear "Aren't
> I", it makes
> > me cringe and answer, "Yes, you am."
>
> Whereas I grew up with it and consider it the normal
> conversational form.
>
> Brian