# Why isn't "ain't" a word? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2006, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098 "2006-10-19T15:00:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/81 "2006-10-26T17:20:28Z")
[QUOTE=Procyon] There is so much here that I want to respond to, but I believe that the ensuing discussion would be beyond the boundaries of this thread. You, **GorillaMan** and **yBeayf** are all hounding me about this point and I apologize that I’m not able to give you a satisfactory answer without starting a new thread, which at present I do not have enough time for. [/quote] I don’t think it would be an egregious hijack, and it’s an interesting line of debate. I don’t mean to hound you on it, but I’d really like to see you expand on this. > [@](#): > > Let me say this: _even if_ every instance of the use of language falls under some incredibly broad definition of communication (which I do not believe is true), then that fact still does not imply the _purpose_ of language is communication. Unless everyone here is a hardcore Aristotelian, I don’t think that is too difficult to believe. I honestly can’t conceive of a way to use language that is not, in some way, a form of communication. Consequently, I can’t think what other possible purpose language could have than communication. > [@](#): > > I think your response assumes I was talking about academic linguists, not grammarians. I believe grammarians are in fact searching for the ideal usage. I’ve been talking about linguists in this thread. I don’t have much patience for grammarians. They’re useful for elementary-level education, but past grade school, their efforts do more to impede language than improve it. The world around us is constantly changing, and language needs to change with it. Grammarians would seek to freeze language at an arbitrary point (usually, whatever form happened to be in vogue when they were learning the language) in a quixotic quest of “correctness” that has no real-world application. > [@](#): > > The question then arises as to whether or not they are correct. Clearly, there is disagreement about what rules should be included in the language, as this thread demonstrates. I could see myself being convinced that _ain’t_ is acceptable usage. Is the crux of your disagreement with grammarians the fact that they say, essentially, “my vision of English is the One True English and all others are wrong” instead of the more diplomatic “my vision of English is more elegant, precise, and simpler than all others for reasons X, Y, and Z”? I would object to either statement. > [@](#): > > I don’t think it’s possible to “force” a language to be anything, especially one as widespread as English, but is there anything undesirable about wanting to raise the standards of language for all? Or even with disdaining people who use what one feels is lazy, sloppy, or imprecise grammar? That is simply another way the language evolves, which I’d think you’d support. I find pretty much all that to be undesirable. Everytime I’ve seen someone complain about the “standards” of English, it has not been because the usage they complain about is “lazy,” “sloppy,” or “imprecise,” but simply because it’s a usage different to what they are accustomed. (There are a few exceptions: the usage of the word “literally” to mean “figuratively” is the only example I can think of off the top of my head.) I especially object to “disdaining” people for how they speak, which usually smacks of racism or class discrimination. That’s not how language evolves. Language evolves to meet needs. If a word fulfils a specific need, that word is valuable, regardless of how it fits with the preconceptions of the grammarians. Change is good. Diversity is good. Innovation is good. Prescriptivism stands four-square against all three of these, and would be incredibly damaging to the language, if there were any possible way the prescriptivists could actually implement and enforce their preconceptions. Luckily, what they attempt to do is similar to trying to hold back the ocean with a thimble, so I can’t get too worked up about it. Language does what it does, and pays no heed to the scoldings of the grammarians. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/82 "2006-10-26T19:15:55Z")
Great. Just great. Thanks to my anti-prescriptivist stance earlier in this thread I am forced to sit on my hands and not slap **Miller** silly for his use of “different than” and “different to” when what he meant was “different from.” :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/83 "2006-10-26T19:19:55Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] Great. Just great. Thanks to my anti-prescriptivist stance earlier in this thread I am forced to sit on my hands and not slap **Miller** silly for his use of “different than” and “different to” when what he meant was “different from.” :mad: [/QUOTE] Nah. The way I see it, some things that should not apply to speech are quite applicable to writing. I say slap away. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/84 "2006-10-26T19:46:21Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] Great. Just great. Thanks to my anti-prescriptivist stance earlier in this thread I am forced to sit on my hands and not slap **Miller** silly for his use of “different than” and “different to” when what he meant was “different from.” :mad: [/QUOTE] Stop oppressing my prepositions! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/85 "2006-10-26T20:51:16Z")
Stop decaying my language! ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/86 "2006-10-26T20:52:21Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] Stop decaying my language! [/QUOTE] We ain’t!! ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/87 "2006-10-26T21:06:30Z")
[QUOTE=BayleDomon] Nah. The way I see it, some things that should not apply to speech are quite applicable to writing. I say slap away. 😃 [/QUOTE] Actually, I want to expand on this. A lot of the problems, as I see it, that occur between prescriptivism and descriptivism stem from the fact that prescriptive rules intended for _writing_ are mistakenly thought to apply to _speech_. Thing is, they’re two entirely different beasts. I proof transcripts for a living, and I can say with certainty that speech is damn near illegible when written down. I can look at a transcript and read a sentence that makes absolutely no sense to me, but if I turn on the audio from which it was transcribed and listen to the same sentence, it makes much more sense. Primarily this is because of inflection and stuff, but speech just does not translate well. Most of the clear transcripts come from moderated conversations, scripted conferences, and speakers trained to speak clearly and precisely, and even then it’s possible to tell that’s not how they normally talk. But conversations that would be perfectly easy to follow were I listening to them are almost impossible to understand when reading them. Point is that a significant amount of prescriptive rules are there to make _writing_ clean and readable. They’re not really applicable to regular speech because people can get on just fine without them. I myself would never use ain’t in writing unless I was trying to affect a conversational tone, but I use it with gleeful abandon while talking. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/88 "2006-10-27T13:38:59Z")
OK, so what about _hain’t_? Unlike _ain’t_, I don’t see _hain’t_ in general circulation. It must be a particular dialect. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/89 "2006-10-27T13:47:53Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] OK, so what about _hain’t_? Unlike _ain’t_, I don’t see _hain’t_ in general circulation. It must be a particular dialect. [/QUOTE] I think it’s older US usage, non-standard of course, and often for “have not” or “has not”, so that it’s formed on the pattern of “ain’t”. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/90 "2006-10-27T13:58:24Z")
[QUOTE=BayleDomon] Actually, I want to expand on this. A lot of the problems, as I see it, that occur between prescriptivism and descriptivism stem from the fact that prescriptive rules intended for _writing_ are mistakenly thought to apply to _speech_. Thing is, they’re two entirely different beasts. I proof transcripts for a living, and I can say with certainty that speech is damn near illegible when written down. I can look at a transcript and read a sentence that makes absolutely no sense to me, but if I turn on the audio from which it was transcribed and listen to the same sentence, it makes much more sense. Primarily this is because of inflection and stuff, but speech just does not translate well. Most of the clear transcripts come from moderated conversations, scripted conferences, and speakers trained to speak clearly and precisely, and even then it’s possible to tell that’s not how they normally talk. But conversations that would be perfectly easy to follow were I listening to them are almost impossible to understand when reading them. Point is that a significant amount of prescriptive rules are there to make _writing_ clean and readable. They’re not really applicable to regular speech because people can get on just fine without them. I myself would never use ain’t in writing unless I was trying to affect a conversational tone, but I use it with gleeful abandon while talking. [/QUOTE] See my comments above. The point is that the “prescriptive rules” are **actually descriptive** – they describe appropriate usage for English _as used in certain specific cultural applications_. It’s no different than distinguishing the various forms of honorific circumlocution of traditional-usage Japanese. Formal written communication and particular unique oral usage calls for a particular subset of English that eschews sentence fragments, contractions, a certain set of “colloquial vocabulary” words, requires a certain precision and structure in presentation (which is normally instead provided in speech by the ebb and flow of conversation)… I have been doing this song and dance on the Dope for some years now, and I think I’ve gotten one convert to the idea. But _eppur se muove_ – it does happen to be the truth. Prose style is one element of what the linguist properly describes, if he is doing his job. ---
**Author:** ![Procyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@Procyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procyon)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/91 "2006-10-27T16:32:39Z")
Fellow linguaphiles, I regret to say I won’t be able to continue this discussion until Monday because I am headed out of town. I struggled in vain to finish a post about why I don’t believe the purpose of language is communication, but, alas, _tempus fugit_. To be sure, I have enjoyed reading your responses and you have given me a good deal to ponder. In response to **PolyCarp** , which is much shorter and less mentally taxing, I will say that I agree it’s possible to talk descriptively about prescriptive grammar. A person who doesn’t use what I’ve been calling proper English is still speaking English, just some other form of it. I just happen to think that proper English is superior to most other forms in most contexts and it saddens me that a great many people are unable or unwilling to learn it. I realize it’s not particularly benevolent to judge people by their words and grammar, but it’s something I feel fairly strongly about. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2006, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/92 "2006-10-28T01:46:04Z")
[QUOTE=Procyon] I just happen to think that proper English is superior to most other forms in most contexts and it saddens me that a great many people are unable or unwilling to learn it. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure what this means. Certainly there are some people who’ve grown up only knowing one dialect of English and haven’t the means to go to school, which is where most people learn SAE. In the context of this discussion, however, the implication is that people who use ‘ain’t’ don’t have a good grasp of SAE and in fact cannot use it, either due to inability or unwillingness. I don’t believe that’s true. I don’t have a cite to back my assertion up, but the point I’ve been sort of hinting at and dancing around with my analogy is that people _can_ use SAE, it’s just that most of the time they choose not to. Besides, SAE isn’t really superior. It’s just the standard. It has some features that other languages and dialects lack and vice versa. SAE allows for distinguishing between ‘isn’t’ and ‘aren’t’ (which, honestly, is hardly a significant distinction. It’s just two forms of ‘to not be’ [hah! I split an infinitive! Take that, prescriptivists! 😃]), while other dialects only use ain’t. Conversely, SAE does not have a single word for a plural second-person pronoun and must rely on ‘you all’ and ‘you guys’ and ‘all of you’ whereas other dialects have ‘yinz’ and ‘y’all’ (yes, I’m aware it’s just a contraction of ‘you all’). SAE allows for only one modal (would, could, should, might, may, can, etc.) at a time, while some dialects allow for two. And while I’m sure ‘I might could do that’ sounds hickish to a lot of people, does it get across any less meaning than ‘I could probably do that’? Obviously, if you prefer one dialect over another, that’s fully your perogative. All descriptivists are really looking for is the recognition that different does not necessarily mean bad. It’s possible it could mean bad _in a certain context_, but not bad in general. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2006, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-aint-a-word/377098/93 "2006-10-28T05:28:41Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] But _eppur se muove_ – it does happen to be the truth. [/QUOTE] While that was Galileo’s POINT, it is LITERALLY, “E pur si muove,” or, “And yet it moves.” 😃 \* - - Speaking personally, I like Great Debates where I can use smilies since my posts are rarely earth-shaking and are, really, just\>this\