How does one contract the following phrase:
“You are not”
Is there a difference between “You aren’t” and “You’re not” ?
And since it’ll come up with some of the SD chuckleheads, why not “Y’aren’t”?
Both of the first two are correct; you can choose which you use based on personal preference.
We don’t use the third (y’aren’t) because we don’t. English didn’t happen to develop that word, that’s all. A lot of language development is down to chance.
When speaking, I tend to prefer not contracting the “not” – e.g., “I’ve not” rather than “I haven’t” – because I think it’s less likely to be misheard.
Either contraction is correct, but to use the non-contracted “You are not” seems more emphatic.
Actually, that word y’aren’t definitely does exist, and is reasonably common in the South. It would usually be used for the second-person plural, as with ya’ll. Though you can use it with singular plural.
How about y’ain’t?
Y’isn’t.
Wouldn’t the standard form of the double contraction be “you’ren’t”?
This works very well; it is never mistaken for its opposite, “yer.”
Don’t Central Asian nomads live in you’ren’ts?
Nitpick: “Y’all,” not “ya’ll.”
The plural of y’all is “all y’all.”
I think we should contract it is and is not into it’sn’t.
No it’s not, a lot of language development has to do with things like phonetics and other things that it is possible to theorize about. This is what linguists do. I’m not sure why you would say that a lot of it is chance, because that’s clearly false.
It’s a question of emphasis. The non-contracted word gets more stress and is more important. But either is grammatically fine.
I have spent years in both VA and NC, weeks in GA and FL and about a week in SC.
I have never once heard y’aren’t, and I surely would have if it was at all common
in the Atlantic coast states.
There was a thread not long ago about the difference between “it’s not” and “it isn’t”. Can someone find that thread and link to it? I can’t find it, possibly because of the difficulty in searching for short words. We say the same thing about the differences in those words.
Why isn’t Germany speaking a Romance language? War never changes, and randomness is always a factor in war. Had a pincer maneuver not worked, who knows. For the want of a nail after all. The theories you talk about have their place after the stage has been set, but how does the stage get set in the first place?
This is the main difference in practice.
Think of the difference if your mother says:
“You aren’t allowed to use that word in this house!”
or is she says:
“You are not allowed to use that word in this house!”
Even as a little child, I could tell the difference in emphasis there!
I’ve recently read that “YOU’VE NOT” as in “You’ve not done your homework” is the preferred construction in the UK whereas “YOU HAVEN’T” as in “you haven’t done your assignment” is chiefly American. Does the same apply to “YOU’RE NOT” and “YOU AREN’T”, the former being more widespread in the UK and the latter being the preferred construction in the US? Please comment.