Seeking Grammar Police Ruling - Typo's

[Carol]

Magpie:
> Was ain't always considered wrong? 

Carol responds:

"Ain't" (originally spelled "an't" and probably pronounced "ant"--see
"David Copperfield," for example) started out as a contraction for "am
not" and was considered correct (though informal) used with "I," but,
of course, ungrammatical used with any other pronoun or any noun
whatever. I'm not sure when or why "an't" became "ain't" but it may
have become associated with illiteracy at about the same time.

(I realize that M-W Online says that it's a contraction of "are not,"
but Online Etymology says:

"1706, originally a contraction of 'am not,' and in proper use with
that sense until it began to be used as a generic contraction for 'are
not,' 'is not,' etc., in early 19c. Cockney dialect of London,
popularized by representations of this in Dickens, etc., which led to
the word being banished from correct English."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=a&p=7

Carol, who remembers being shocked at proper little David
Copperfield's saying "I an't" when she first read the book in eighth grade



Carol