Re: OT: Latin subject-verb agreement

On Dec 13, 2007, at 7:37 AM, Jeff Rollin wrote:

> In the last episode, (On Thursday 13 December 2007 13:23:42), Mark
> J. Reed
> wrote:
>> "Ungrammatical" according to English textbooks, sure,
>
> No, ungrammatical according to me. Not that I'm setting myself up
> as any
> authority, but though I've since reread the post I was replying to,
> initially
> I missed the "my" in "my English has fixed this".
>
>> but we're
>> talking about real live English as she be spoke.  "I, who are" sounds
>> weird to me, but I can see where it would work, along the same lines
>> as "Aren't I?'
>>
>
> I suspect that "aren't" is only "aren't" here because
> phonotactically, you
> can't say "amn't?" "I, who are" doesn't have that problem.
>
> Jeff.
Some people do say _amn't_. There's no problem with its phonotactics
that, e.g. _doesn't_ or _haven't_ don't also suffer from (it's two
syllables, AIUI).

I also hate "aren't I", so I replace it with either "amn't" or "am I
not" -- but mostly just in internal monologue. I don't have much
occasion to say them out loud (and when I do, I say "am I not").