OK…I’m pissed off. Today in class (a bunch of junior high kids who are usually pretty fun to teach, amazing, I know) we were discussing some grammar homewok having to do with tag questions. One question was this…
I am right, ___?
a. aren’t I
b. am not I
c.are I not
d. amn’t I
I explained that the answer was (a.) but I couldn’t explain the reason why and I said I would try to find out for them. One girl said she had asked her English teacher at school and her teacher said all of the answers were wrong and the correct answer is…
ain’t I
What? My teachers never let us use that word in English grammar. So…here’s the question…is ain’t I really the best answer? Is ain’t even a proper word? Finally, why is it …aren’t I?
After she wouldn’t believe me, I asked her to look it up in the dictionary. Because it was in there…she said …“see it’s a word …so I’m right!!”
Breaking out my Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage, aka the Grammarian Bible…gimme a second…
Ahem, okay:
If you’re following along in your own bible, the subject of today’s sermon can be found on page 480 in the book of Questions VI, chapter 466: verse 1 and page 134 in the book of Contractions, chapter 144, verse 4, Notes 5, Oxford University Press version.
[color=blue] Questions VI 466:1 - And verily unto thee Michael Swan hath sayeth,
“The question tag for I am is aren’t I?
I’m late, aren’t I?”
Contractions 144:4:5 - And Michael Swan hath also spake these words of grammarian purity,
"In non-standard [emphasis on NON-STANDARD] English, ain’t (pronounced /eInt/ or /ent/) is used as a contraction of am not, are not, is not, have not, and [i]has not.
I ain’t going to tell him. Don’t talk to me like that - you ain’t my boss.
‘It’s raining.’ ‘No it ain’t.’ I ain’t got no more cigarettes.
Bill ain’t been here for days.[/i]
And so it has been written in the Good Book of Grammar. Thy will (or shall, depending on the preceding pronoun) be done. Amen.[/color]
English is a funny thing. The words that were not considered correct 30, 20, or even 10 years ago are popping up in dictionaries as if they were correct forms of English. I understand that English is a dynamic language, but I also believe that for the purpose of maintaining the proper language such as in the incident above, there should be a firm line between what is correct English and what is informal or colloquial English. Just as “gonna” is a part of the English language, “ain’t” has earned its place; but neither of them are correct English and have no business being taught as correct forms when it comes to grammatical points like question tags.
“Am I not” works of course but is a bit long. “Amn’t I” never caught on because it is awkward to pronounce so “aren’t I” was probably just taken up by default even though it breaks the simplest subject verb agreement rule in the book. It’s just one of those weird exceptions.
[quote=“ImaniOU”] Just as “gonna” is a part of the English language, “ain’t” has earned its place; but neither of them are correct English and have no business being taught as correct forms when it comes to grammatical points like question tags.
Colloquialisms do not a native speaker make. [/quote]
Nobody gets by me without learning things like gonna, wanna, hafta etc. That is the form of the language that they will hear so it is what I teach them. I don’t teach it as “correct” spelling though of course, just standard pronunciation.
So in which context do you teach these forms, bob? Even in standard American English pronunciation, most people say /goint[schwa]/, not /gana/. And they are not forms that should be taught to second language learners as it will only confuse them even more. If they pick it up, then so be it, but it’s not something that should be taught. I’d suggest working on that damned “My home have__________” as a more practical form of English.
Well, there goes that part of English where I can’t give the technical grammar name where you have “If I were you”, etc. That one is a little easier on the head because you can’t really say “If I was you.” In the case of “I am right, _______.” you do have options. Grammatically correct options. In the fill-in, you could put, “am I not” or “aren’t I”. I guess “aren’t I” is easier to say than “am I not”. Can’t say “am’t I” That’s where we get “aint I” or “ain’t I”. I tell my students that English is stupid/doesn’t make sense sometimes and leave it at that and maybe bring it up later. Or do drills.
I teach with American movies mostly and in that context people say gonna (two schwas or close enough) and it is often written in the subtitle as gonna so for me it’s a no brainer.
I have A LOT to learn about teaching kids I admit but recently have taught a few and have been teaching the simple future by pulling out a clock and telling them that in so and so number of seconds I am going to start doing such and such a thing. From there it is on to the present progressive until I get tired of bouncING the ball or whatever. With more advanced people that can lead into the present perfect progressive and finally the simple past. Then I start into the whole thing again with a different set of actions but with more questions. Finally I encourage them to ask the yes no questions/ information questions etc and to bounce the damn ball themselves.
Anyway with all the repetition that goes on I find myself naturally saying gonna and after a while they learned it without knowing they learned it sort of deal.
My bf’s brother, who is learning disabled and can’t read, came to one of his language classes one day. The class asked what brother was going to do that day. Brother answered “Were gonna goda town”. The class didn’t understand so brother said it a little slower.
“Were…gonna…goda…town”. The thing is, that’s pretty much how everyone in Idaho speaks. Students should probably learn to recognize it even if they can’t produce it. Just like I know that when my taxi driver says “Jia la hu” he means “Jia la fu”.
Ahhh but that is the best part. It is easier to talk that way, that’s why we do it. And if you teach it then they will be able to understand what people say and therefore aquire the grammar along with the more clearly pronounced content words. People don’t pick up as much grammar listening to native speakers precisely because this aspect of the language does not recieve enough attention from teachers.
That’s acutally perfect English. We’re gonna go to(ta/da/do/de) town. I teach my students both the “going to” and "gonna’. The ones that understand. Teaches pronunciation. Right on.
It teaches more than pronunciation. It teaches grammar since grammatical words are the ones that are reduced, that is spoken much more quickly, with more silent letters and with a preponderance of shwa sounds.
Today I had a lesson where I teach them: “I want to see Mercury. Let me look.” In that lesson, I substitue the pronouns and the planets. "I wanna see Mercury. Let me look. “They wanna see Pluto. Let 'em look.” They totally understood. And used it. It was good. I get them to repeat after me after I get one student to do each number of the exercise. They do it spot on: “Let 'er look.” “Let 'im look” Funny how “Let them” and “Let him” or the same when pronouced. Exactly the same. It’s the context that differentiates and not the pronunciation. They are learning valuable lessons.
Of course there’s the influence of voice and voiceless sounds. “Eating” is actually “Eading” because the vowels that surround the “t” are voiced. “t” i voiceless so, in the certain (or all?) environments as as such, “t” becomes a “d” sound. Just like “tt” is really “d” It’s too laborious to over pronounce.
Actually, it has little to do with the meaning or function of the words and more with their accentuation. Just as American English speakers say “water” as /wad[schwa]R/ …in this case, the less emphasized syllable becomes voiced as it’s surrounded by vowels and the vowel in the less accented syllable is reduced to a schwa. Damn phonology class…
Anyways, maybe I speak more proper than others, but I usually say /goiwinjgt[schwa]/, not /gona/.
And j99…, the term you are looking for is the subjunctive mood. I’m too lazy to crack open the Good Book and see what Michael Swan has to say about it.
I also can’t see implicitly teaching students gonna, wanna, and hafta unless there was a particular context in which to teach it. Students are much smarter than you guys seem to think they are.
They tend to pick it up subtle things like that in imitation. If it’s as common as you say, then with enough exposure, they’ll start to use it, dui bu dui? Hell, I picked up the Taiwanese “si=ten and weisehme=why” thing without anyone teaching me, even though I learned “shi” and “weishenme” in Chinese class.
There are exceptions of course (I didn’t say givem ta HIM I said givem ta THEM!) but generally it has everything to do with function and meaning. Content (meaning) words ie, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are usually pronounced with at least one stressed syllable and so at least one vowel that is not schwa. They also tend to be a bit louder, a bit slower and with fewer silent letters.
Function words (of course the distinction is not so clear cut in reality as meaning is also determined by the function words - He went ta the school, He went fer the school) ie, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, determiners are frequently small words to start with and are pronounced with no stress and therefore the schwa vowel sound. They are also pronounced more quickly and with lots of silent letters. In fact the grammatical words are pronounced so quickly and lightly that non native speakers frequently don’t hear them at all.
If you don’t believe me take a few sentences and read them aloud at normal pace like you would use with a native speaker. Ask your students (I’ve only done this with adults) to repeat what you said. They’ll most likely give you a few key content words and be stuck on the rest. Read it again and again until they are able to write down or repeat exactly what you said. This will take a long time unless you start giving an unnaturally clear pronunciation to the function words despite their (no not the function words, the students silly!) having endured years of English training. Apperently their other teachers didn’t think it was neccessary to teach them the real pronunciation of the most common words in the language either.
Drawing attention to the way the language is spoken in the real world is one of the best things you can do for your students because it has the effect of increasing listening comprehension and that makes the whole process of learning a language all that much easier. It’s as simple as that really.
Note - I should tell you that I have been teaching this aspect of the language for well over a decade so dissuading me from it’s efficacy, if you are so inclined, might be quite a chore.
Remember the last time this topic came up it was just me and you in our little echo chamber preaching to the converted, each other.
I have no idea why so few teachers emphasize this and I absolutely reject in advance the argument that they don’t emphasize it because it isn’t important. I’ve seen enough robotron English learners with lousy listening comprehension to know that it is both important and neglected.
There’s an important distinction between ‘standard’ and ‘common’.
When I teach beginner and intermediate level students, I drill what is standard and just introduce what is common, but decidedly not standard. Exercises will be designed to reinforce correct pronunciation and production. That doesn’t mean they don’t get taught the meaning of “gonna” or “ain’t”, just that these non-standard forms take the backseat until the kids master “going to”, and “aren’t I?”
In question tags we always use the contraction. We never spell it out. If we choose to spell it out we use a different syntax.
They are/aren’t they/are they not
He is/isn’t he/is he not
But “am not” does not have a standard contraction. That is why it is an exception to the rule.
‘ain’t’ is common, and I mean that in both senses of the word. It is not used in educated speech (not that educated people don’t use it). It should be taught alongside ‘gonna’, ‘hafta’, and ‘yo!’. These are things we all use, but it is “lazy” English. There’s nothing wrong with “lazy” English, but it is a lower register of the language than “standard” English.
New students of English should first be taught what is standard. Learning the “lazy English” will be easy as most of the time the rules of agreement, etc. get relaxed.
You are right of course that the word standard should be reserved for, what I call at least, a “full” pronunciation, for example, “Do you want to go to the store?” In the real world that will usually sound something like /Dyawannagodathestore?/ or even /wannagodathe store?/ I would emphasize again that this is the way the language actually sounds much of the time so of course it should be taught. Why let people struggle to come to grips with how all these small grammatical words are actually pronounced when we can so easily just teach them how they are pronounced?
You are right of course that the word standard should be reserved for, what I call at least, a “full” pronunciation, for example, “Do you want to go to the store?” In the real world that will usually sound something like /Dyawannagodathestore?/ or even /wannagodathe store?/ I would emphasize again that this is the way the language actually sounds much of the time so of course it should be taught. Why let people struggle to come to grips with how all these small grammatical words are actually pronounced when we can so easily just teach them how they are pronounced?[/quote]
No disagreement from me. And it is particularly appropriate for you, Bob, since you are teaching adults who most likely are trying to learn to really communicate and aren’t as focused on passing a test.
But with younger kids the emphasis has to be on standard forms. But once the kids learn “have to”, “want to”, “like to” fairly well it is important to teach them the listening comprehension skills to recognize “wanna/want ta”, “havta/hafta”, and “like ta”. It’s just a matter of when to introduce it.
But in the OP’s case, we were dealing with a multiple choice answer and an English teacher came back and said “ain’t I” when the standard answer would need to be “aren’t I”
