It Ain’t Necessarily Faulty Grammar

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in a play called “And a Nightingale Sang” at the Santa Monica Playhouse. I’m no longer in it, but the run continues without me. The setting is Newcastle-on-Tyne during World War II. I learned in the course of rehearsing and performing in “Nightingale” that the Newcastle accent is called Tyneside and is notoriously impenetrable.

An actor friend, Jim Brodhead, who spent much of his childhood in Newcastle, does what I suspect is probably a very good Tyneside. He gave me some samples of it. Small wonder that the rest of England finds it incomprehensible. It sounded to me like Scottish to the fourth or fifth power. Wisely, we Americans in Santa Monica settled for a sort of broad “north country” accent, which I think we achieved rather commendably.

Bill DeLand, who plays George, the “Da” of the play’s family, has a line in the first act: “I’m block warden, amn’t I?” and another in the second act: “I bloody am her father, amn’t I?”

For the first few rehearsals, I sensed that Bill’s mouth was struggling with that unfamiliar amn’t , but it soon rolled trippingly off his tongue, and by the time we opened, amn’t I? felt as natural as aren’t I? --not only to him but to the rest of us as well.

I met amn’t I? for the first time about 15 years ago, and aren’t I? was the phrase that engendered the introduction. I had received several letters from people who wanted me to inveigh in my columns against the ubiquitous use of aren’t I, which one of my correspondents said “has no justification in logic, grammar, clarity or colloquiality.” She was wrong, I think, although I saw what she had in mind. She and her fellow purists were unanimous in their condemnation of aren’t I? as the interrogative form of I am and in their insistence upon am I not? in its place. In my view, aren’t I? has every bit as much right to be the interrogative of I am as won’t I? has to be the interrogative of I will. Logic and consistency are nice in language usage, but sometimes--unfortunately, many of us would say--they’re beside the point.

My feeling is that both am I not? and aren’t I? have their legitimate roles in the language. I’d like to give legitimacy to ain’t I? but linguistic legitimacy is not mine to give. It isn’t conferred by fiat, ukase or propositions on a ballot.

In seeking out other opinions on aren’t I? I turned to H. W. Fowler’s “Modern English Usage,” which I consider one of the great works in and of the language. Fowler and I agree about ain’t I? : “. . . it is a pity that a(i)n’t for am not , being a natural contraction and supplying a real want, should shock us.” Further, “there is no abbreviation but a(i)n’t I ? for am I not? . . . for the amn’t I? of Scotland and Ireland is foreign to the Englishman. The shamefaced reluctance with which these full forms are often brought out betrays the speaker’s sneaking fear that the colloquially respectable and indeed almost universal aren’t I? is ‘bad grammar’ and that ain’t I? will convict him of low breeding.” Evidently, Fowler didn’t know about Tyneside.

Bill DeLand tells me that he is now so comfortable with amn’t I? that he finds himself using it offstage--and why not?

I had a short-lived thought that the combination mnt was unusual and therefore difficult; but I quickly remembered words like apartment. The only time I can think of when ment isn’t pronounced mnt is in the song “These Foolish Things,” where “the tinkling piano in the next apart-meant” has to rhyme with the “those fumbling words that told you what my heart meant.”

Usually, we say apartmnt. If we can enunciate rtmnt, amn’t should be a breeze. If there are still a lot of people who object to the illogicality of aren’t I? and who can’t lower themselves to ain’t I?, perhaps amn’t I? would do the trick.