Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I credit my fellow citizens of the Southern U.S. with the addition of "ain't" into the dictionary, and I'm serving public notice that we won't stop until "y'all" is taught in English departments worldwide as the proper plural of "you".
|
Actually, "ain't" has been a part of English for an awfully long time. You get it all over the place in Dickens's dialogue.
In the early part of the 20th century, "ain't" became very "upper-class" in British English. Dorothy L. Sayers' "Lord Peter Wimsey" uses it a lot. Eg:
Quote:
|
He screwed his monocle into his eye, adding: ‘I see you’re troubled here with the soot blowing in. Beastly nuisance, ain’t it? I get it, too – spoils all my books, you know. Here, don’t you trouble, if you don’t care about lookin’ at it.’
|