I was teaching an ESL lesson about question tags, i.e., final phrases that turn a statement into a question. For example, “You’re in my English class, aren’t you?” I was surprised to see that the book included the example: “I’m right about that, aren’t I?”
I explained to the students that “aren’t I?” is nonstandard English, but is often heard, because there’s no really good alternative. Am I right about that? Is it considered acceptable in, say, British English? In particular, the students are preparing for the Cambridge Exam for an English certificate, and asked if they such a sentence wrong if they see it on the exam.
I hear “aren’t I” quite frequently in speech. I think that some English dialects contain the more logical “amn’t I”, but not Australian English. And the more formal “am I not” sounds somewhat affected.
There is no reasonable sense in which the tag question “aren’t I?” is not standard English, arguments analogizing with ungrammatical *“I aren’t” notwithstanding.
It’s an example of the extremely weird subjunctive in English.
The English subjunctive uses the third person plural of the verb.
The subjunctive contrary-to-fact drops ‘back’ a tense (“Are you rich?” “I wish I were.”)
I can’t remember the name of the other … something about possibility? … does not drop back a tense.
" … am I not?", being in the first person present, implies the answer, “Hell, yes.”
I don’t know how the tests are scored, but I’d advise students to skip those questions. Most native English speakers (most notable Paul Simon) screw up the English subjunctive.
It has nothing to do with the subjunctive (which, in turn, has nothing to do with systematically “dropping ‘back’ a tense”, at least insofar as I can understand what that would mean).
Great answers so far! (Well, except for j666. Maybe you just want to stay out of grammar threads in the future. :p)
I’ve combed through Google for cites, and the general consensus is that it’s a problem. It’s OK for speaking, but keep it out your writing. The correct contraction is either “amn’t”, still used in parts of Scotland, and apparently Ireland, or “ain’t”, which is has been drilled into us as evil. Somehow the incorrect “aren’t” has become the lesser of evils compared with the correct, but vilified “ain’t”. I find that weird, but not as weird as some other things in English. Words ending in “ough” for example.
One exception to the waffling acceptance was the at the British Council website, which stated without any apology that “I am” is contracted as “aren’t I” in question tags. (Take that Scotland!)
Please don’t keep thinking of “aren’t I?” as having any stigma of incorrectness about it at all. In many dialects/varieties of English, including what we might call Standard English(es), “aren’t I?” will be perfectly correct, cromulent to the core, while “ain’t I?” will stand out as anomalous and “incorrect” (by which I mean only that it is not native to these varieties of English), or exist only in various fixed phrases and allusions, as a kind of foreign borrowing. If you’re going to put aside the hatred against “ain’t” (which is certainly reasonable), then all the more so you should put aside the much less understandable contrived antagonism towards “aren’t I?”.
Your pleas to the contrary, I can’t help but see a stigma to contracting “am I not” to “aren’t I”. It’s illogical, and only necessary because of overzealous persecution of “ain’t” (because ain’t was used incorrectly with other pronouns I presume). I’ll tell my students that “aren’t I” is acceptable in spoken English, and by ignorant Brits, but not the enlightened Brits of Scotland.
When I get to the section on idioms, I tell my class:
“Just because some long dead grammarian came up with a strict, complicated, and rigid set of rules for you to follow, it doesn’t mean he’s not prone to popping up out of his coffin and shouting Gotcha Ya!”
As other posters have pointed out, natural language is what it is; no point trying to make it “logical”. The Brits of Scotland happen to use “amn’t I?”, other Brits use “aren’t I?”, some use “ain’t I?”, and all use “I am”. None of them are more enlightened or more ignorant than the rest. They’re all simply speaking their native language, with all its rules and exceptional quirks.
There was an apparent pattern in this language which did not hold unrestrictedly, the use of “aren’t I?” showing one of the anomalous corners where its domain of validity ceased. This is nothing to get worked up over; it’s about as problematic as the fact that the plural of “mouse” is “mice” rather than “mouses”. You can try and get people to switch over to the “logical” thing, but you’ll fail and look silly.
