Re: Back to the Future (was: I'm back, sort of)

Ray Brown scripsit:

> "ain't" had been the mark of upper class aristo English for a few
> centuries;
Indeed.  The oldest pron. is probably [Ant] from "are not", parallel to
"aren't" itself.  In North America the usual pron. is [ejnt], and it's
probably *the* most stigmatized non-obscene/profane linguistic form
in use, though a tad less so when it means "am not" as opposed to
"are not" or "is not", there being no contraction of the relevant kind
available for "am not".  I have seen "amn't" in writing in books written
in England, but find it hard to believe that anybody ever actually said that.

> it retreated among "the lower orders" because of the pretensions of the
> 19th century bourgeoisie, but never disappeared.
I forget who it was that was explaining that English class accents are
a bell curve, with pronunciation (not vocabulary) shifting back toward
18th-century norms the further one moves away from the middle accent.

It was definitely JRRT who was explaining to the American soldier on the
train that RP was a middle accent, not an upper one, in the course of
which he uttered the memorable comparison of American to "English wiped
with a dirty sponge".

> "..there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain't, as you might
> say."
Ho!  Another minor mystery cleared up -- add this one to the "donkey's
years" that you explained yonks ago.

> Dunno how old "dunno" is, but it was certainly already in common currency
> this side of the Pond 50 years ago or more.
Where does the stress fall?  More common here in allegro speech is
["AId@now].

--
"Do I contradict myself?                        John Cowan
Very well then, I contradict myself.            jcowan@reutershealth.com
I am large, I contain multitudes.               http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --Walt Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_       http://www.reutershealth.com

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