I know we don’t have a contracted way to say “am I not?” but I just don’t understand the decision of using “are” over “is” or the uncontracted version of such questions.
As it became more and more common to use the contradiction as part of the question, asking “am I not” sounded excessively formal. So people came up with a new way to say it casually.
In Southern United States English it is not a problem whatsoever because we just use “ain’t I?”.
Linguistic drift.
As it became more and more common to use the contradiction as part of the question, asking “am I not” sounded excessively formal. So people came up with a new way to say it casually.
In Southern United States English it is not a problem whatsoever because we just use “ain’t I?”.