Scottish speakers tend to use the ‘I’ll not’ and ‘they’ve not’ forms in preference to ‘I won’t’ or ‘they haven’t’. Some Scots dialects also contain the absolutely glorious ‘amn’t I?’ which, when you think about it, makes a huge amount more sense than ‘aren’t I?’ for the first person (we don’t say ‘I are’).
I can't think of a more British contraction than mightn't. It simply does not exist in American English. But you missed talking about the fancier multi-contractions. "Wouldn't've" or "shouldn't've." Those you'll never see written, but you hear them all the time.
My dad once said "I like your emails son. You write like you speak." That made me smile! I often use double contractions like "wouldn't've" because if you're trying to write like you speak they're very handy.
Czech people often replace contractions with full forms when reading English sentences aloud. They usually shoot themselves in the foot. Common examples are "she is got a cat" (she's got) or "this is Peter is car" (where they analyse the possessive "Peter's" as the verb to be).
Many English learners pronounce (or write out) the components of contractions erroneously, not just Czech learners. I'm sorry to report that this even happens with native English speakers. I frequently see "should've" written as "should of."
@@jamesmcinnis208 to be fair to natives, the 've and "of" sound very similar. At this point it's a mistake that probably counts as an acceptable alternative lol.
Yup. My English is very much on a native speaker level, but these videos are still very interesting, consciously making me aware of things I've subconsciously been doing right for a decade or more.
Fun times for Southern American English speakers, we also have double and triple contractions like "y'all'ld've" (you all would have. I've never seen it written outside of specifically talking about the constructions, but they are used verbally often.
Great video. I like the example of “It’s not” versus “Isn’t it?”. In broad Yorkshire dialect, multiple contractions are used, which includes losing the “s”. My grandma and dad would say “‘ti’n’t” or “I’n’t it?” The first is a contraction of “It isn’t”, losing both the initial “i” and the “s”. My grandma used to use a phrase that sounds like “Tin tin tin”, but is actually a contraction of “It isn’t in the tin”.
Is gonna *really* a contraction though, or is it just a different word? For example, "ain't" isn't a contraction of "is not". Because you could say: "that ain't my problem", but also, "I ain't too worried about the consequences". Of course some pedant might claim that "I ain't..." is "incorrect".
@@frankdayton731 gonna is a contraction. "going to", just like "hafta" "wanna" or "woulda", only has 1 meaning. whereas "ain't" basically just means 'almost any negative helping verb'
I'm really enjoying your videos Dr. Lindsey. I realize this is more of a southern U.S. contraction, but I was waiting to see if you'd mention our beloved "y'all". Great video!
I would LOVE to see a breakdown of "y'all"! I inherited several southern-isms from my maternal grandparents (including "arn" my clothes) which occasionally filter into my Pacific Northwest speech patterns, though I'm generally unaware until it's pointed out. I have noticed that the word "y'all" has it's own specific grammatical rules and distinct "proper" and "improper" forms of usage, which I can recognize, though not define. To see Dr. Lindsey address this extremely American turn of phrase would be fascinating indeed!
Some of my favorite contractions are an interrogative word + did or would Who'd What'd Where'd Why'd How'd They're technically grammatically correct if they use a did (not a would) and are very common in spoken English but rare when written, so it's a fun novelty when I do read them.
Someone on twitter wrote “You’ve to do this” and I thought *You’ve to?* I didn’t know why, but it didn’t sound right. I realized that “You’ve only to..” is ok and I suppose that’s because the stress is on ‘only’. Very excited to have discoverd your channel, especially your analysis of King Charles’ speech. Thank you!
I can end up doing this sometimes on twitter, as it saves characters, tbh! You'll also hear it quite a bit in some Yorkshire and Scottish dialects - and I daresay some others too!
@@rezonthe can confirm what vatican cameos says, as a yorkshire folk we use you've a lot. "reyt tell us what you've to do" featured a lot in my school days when I needed homework help, also let me introduce wain't, a local contraction of "will not"
Referring to the part when you talked about non-native speakers (like myself): I believe nowadays the learning process of specifically the English language is a different process then it was some time ago. While we do learn a lot about it in written form there have also been listening comprehension excercises when I was in school (up until 2016). Another point is, of course, the internet. Since English is the lingua franca of the internet, younger people tend to learn the language by consuming all sorts of media and content in English. Especially people who play multi-player video games learn it by typing to other players or speak to give out information about what ever game they are playing. Learning has (luckily in my opinion) become much more of a "learning by doing" process and shifted away from a more theoretical approach. That way I feel like it is much easier to learn a language. While I did have English lessons since I was about eight years of age, I feel like I learned most about it after my school time ended; through TH-cam, gaming, movies and other media. I might still make plenty of mistakes and still can't get rid of my accent, I do think that media is more responsible for giving me the ability to communicate with others than what I learned in school. Disclaimer: I'm not saying that learning grammar in school and/or how the language works theoretically isn't important. This is only how my personal learning worked.
I hate non-native English speakers because they all write amazingly and end it with "I make so many mistakes", don't be so down. You write better than a lot of natives.
@@benhancock6253 thank you very much! I had to look up some words for this comment. What I actually feel rather insecure about is the usage of comma (and I don't even know the plural of that word) because the rules for those are very different in German. I usually don't add the typical "sry for mistakes - non-native" but since I'm commenting underneath a video which literally has language as it's topic I expected people to be somewhat critical about how I write. Thanks for your response :D
I think learning a language like English from consuming (specifically) internet media is incredibly useful, as it exposes non-natives to the nuances of the language that they otherwise might not experience during lessons. You may not get the grammar nailed down via media (I'm sure I don't, even as a native), but you'll be able to converse in a more fluid and natural manner with native speakers.
He leans over the camera, thinking it'll give him more gravitas. But, to paraphrase an old episode of "Yes Minister," that just makes him look like he's selling insurance.
What really stood out to me with Robby the Robot (the first robot featured in the video, from the film Forbidden Planet) was that he said "a hundred and eighty seven" instead of "one hundred eighty seven". That gave him away, to me, as not being a real robot. I would bet that this occurred because the script had 187 written with numerals rather than words, and the voice actor just read it as he would naturally say it.
@@calmeilles I don't understand your reasoning. I think an American voice actor of that era would be very likely to read the numerals 187 as "a hundred and eighty seven".
@@lasentinal Are you British? I just learned that the British almost never exclude "and" following the digit in the hundreds place (e.g., two hundred AND sixty). Americans sometimes do, however, so the omission of "and" does not sound unnatural (or lazy) to us. In fact, to me, the British way, which would require saying "and" four times when saying a large number such as 956,324,167,580 sounds rather superfluous. Anyway, all of that is beside the point, as I feel that the use of "A hundred" instead of "ONE hundred" has a much greater impact in giving the impression that this is not genuine robot speak (to me at least), than does any use or non-use of "and".
@@allendracabal0819 In situations where one would use "the" before a counted value in the range 2-99 or 200-999 (e.g. "here are the five 'hundrun' forty seven cards you requested", including the digit "one" would seem very odd [e.g. one would say "here are the hundred and seven widgets" versus "here are the one hundred and seven widgets"]. I think a similar principle is at play when using the indefinite article to describe *quantities*, as distinct from *values*.
Super interesting! I’m an English language assistant abroad who has no formal training in teaching English but I find grammar super interesting. I was explaining to a class that both “I’ve not” and “I haven’t” are acceptable, but have a different vibe! The best I could come up with was that I’d be more likely to say “I haven’t” whereas my grandma would be more likely to say “I’ve not” 😅
Imma try and give describing the feeling difference a shot: To me I've not is for something that you have said you would do, or something you needed to do, and not done it. Haven't is more for a choice, like I haven't been to the new theater in town yet.
It is odd. And although this doesn’t really explain why, I think “cannot” and “can not” might be used slightly differently, as in replying to “Can you not do that?” “I can not”, where “not” is emphasized and meaning “I am able not to”, versus “I cannot do that” meaning “I am not able to…”. But this ambiguity is deemed fine enough in “do not” etc.
I came here, a bit late to the party, mind, from watching you with Simon Roper. Absolutely fascinating! Studying languages is a hobby of mine, so a lot of these examples were familiar to me, from just considering how odd English must seem sometimes to foreign learners, but I'd never looked at them in such a multi-dimensional way. Loved it! I would mention also, referring to the point made around 3:09 , that where I'm from (Oldham, Greater Manchester), "didn't", "isn't" and "haven't", are very often said as "din't", "in't" and "'ant". Thank you for your content, instantly subscribed!
I've also noticed that a lot of non-native english folks want to end written sentances with contractions where we normally wouldn't. I've seen a lot of sentances like 'The thing is what it's', or more commonly a situation where they are asked a question like 'Are you a doctor?' And they'll respond with 'I'm'. I've only encountered this in wrting though and it's very strange.
While listening to your vid on Weak Forms and this one on Contractions, I was reminded of some of my challenges speaking French while living in France. The two phrases that were the most extreme were "Je ne sais pas" (I don't know) and "Je n'ais pas" (I don't have). I learned my French pronunciations in the US, years before moving to France to study, so I pronounced each word fully (using the Strong Forms of each word). Native French speakers will pronounce "Je ne sais pas" as "Shai pa", and "Je n'ais pas" as "Djai pa" with the "pas" (pa) is pronounced weakly. Thanks for your videos, and thanks for helping me better understand my native language.
I lived in Iran for three years. I found myself avoiding contractions to slow down my speech and hopefully make myself easier to understand to my listeners. I find myself still doing this while living in the United States, maybe as a subtle insult to someone I think deserves it.
I find this interesting because the thing that got me to finally stop using contractions in academic writing was when someone explained it to me as "it's more accessible for English language learners" and I was like, "Oh! That's actually a good reason, okay then!"
As a French and English speaker, I find it fascinating that French REQUIRES all possible contractions in formal writing, but in English, professors and pedants tend to insist on avoiding contractions in academic writing, despite how stilted it actually sounds.
@@ilghiz I've never seen contractions written out in Spanish, but Spanish speakers definitely do mush words together out loud. Like "Que es eso" is usually pronounced "Que's eso". An example from a song is the lyric "Que mañana es fiesta y al otro también" turning into "Que mañana's fiesta y'al otro también"
@@guy-sl3kr Si, lo se )) When I said “never contract” I meant “never in writing”. And at least officially. In oral speech cotractions are inevitable of course. I know a few songs in Spanish by heart. It took me some effort to figure out how to contract without seeing it written. I had some friends from Ecuador, they were sometimes hard to understand. _Que dice_ turned into _ketsé:_ two syllables instead of two and the stress shifted to the last syllable. They also had hard time with me, when I asked “¿Quieres vivir?” holding my knife in a cafe. And they corrected me “beber?” With little practice, I always confuse words %)))
@@guy-sl3kr That depends wildly by dialect. Some dialects truly don't contract, like mine. Same way some places avoid the S like it would hurt them haha. Spanish is quite diverse.
Your examples are absolutely to the point and hilarious! Good job, Geoff! BTW, the robot examples might signal that a typical syllable-timed language might sound robotic to the native English ear. How sad!
Thank you for this very insightful video. I was reminded of my English lessons in school, about thirty years ago, where we were taught that contractions should only be used in spoken English, never in writing. As you have shown there are plenty examples to disregard this 'rule', so I might think of it as another form of teaching non native speakers vocabulary and sentence structure. 🙂
The bit about where contractions which can go either way is interesting. I have a friend from Ireland who would use "I'm not" and "I amn't" interchangeably (I'd never heard the latter before speaking to him). There's no overwhelming reason why it shouldn't be contracted at both ends, I suppose. "I'mn't" "I'dn't" "We'lln't" I suppose, except for convention. (Won't is an interesting one actually, isn't it? I feel like in older English I've heard "wiln't" used to be, I wonder why that changed to won't when it still means 'will not')
I'd love to hear some discussion on what is going on with "there's" in modern English. In my experience as a 45 year old U.S. north-midwest college educated native speaker, "kids these days" are all using "there's" with PLURAL subjects, which rings in my ears as incorrect. "There's lots of..." and "There's many ways..." seems to be positively universal in speakers younger than I am. I want to scream "There ARE!" It seems analogous to German's "es gibt" in that "there's" now functions independently from the number. I'm endlessly fascinated to be old enough that I'm starting to hear changes in the language. My grandparents were just older enough that I could detect some things they said as sounding "old-fashioned" to my young ears, and now I'm hearing new changes in the young. English seems to be giving up entirely on "correct" subject/object pronouns. Above, just about everyone would say "in speakers younger than me." Old fashioned "younger than I" sounds silly and academic, now, so I try to compromise by including the (understood) verb. "Just between him and I..." and "Her and I went..." are commonly heard by the likes of our highest elected officials. English *actively* avoids the "correct" pronouns, as sounding wrong or stilted. One truly inexplicable but very real change, which has indeed been the subject of academic papers, is the switch from doing something "by accident" to "on accident", with a fairly sharp cut-off age not too much younger than I am, so, people born some time after 1980. What could possibly account for a change in one of these arbitrary but heretofore FIXED phrase patterns!? Hasn't it been "by accident" and "on purpose" and "by mail" and "for granted" etc. for centuries? Or has English played shenanigans with those before? A pronunciation change I hear more and more now is in words like "button", "important", and "Britain": Where I pronounce all those with a very American "stop t" with no vowel at all between the t and n, younger speakers are pronouncing those as VOICED "d"s, with the vowel pronounced, sounding to me like buddin, impordant, and Briddin. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, definitely says "impordant" -- so maybe this is something from his Alabaman Southern-U.S. accent leaking into the more general U.S. accent? Huge thanks for your incredibly interesting and extremely well done videos!
I love this channel and I do agree that spoken English and formal written English are distinct. I write academically and professionally and the style of writing is entirely different to how I would voice the same subject.
even in academic journals I still find it odd when running into a non-contracted 'not' phrase. It's like I'm humming along at 60 mph and all of a sudden I'm slowing down to 30 mph. It's not because it's a particularly difficult topic it's that it seems so odd and out of place. Then I start wondering about the nature and future of academic writing and whether this was done by choice or by mandate and why.
👍🏻 Interesting and entertaining, all in one, thanks! Have you noticed the differences in native speaker dialects, especially the strange case of "can't" due to the American accent? Often when exploring the logic of something, they'll sum up an argument with something like "So it can't be done". Or "It can't be that way", etc. And it's very difficult to tell whether they're trying to say "can" or the very opposite "can't" .. which they often notice themselves, but instead of cleverly clarifying with "cannot" .. they go and compound the confusion by repeating their "can't" louder 😆 Another curiosity is "ain't", which is often far more than just "aren't" with an American twang. It seems also to be a wildcard for "am not", "isn't", and even "haven't" .. now ain't that strange! 😉
so a good rule of thumb is “can” is pronounced like “kuhn” or “kin” and can’t is pronounced like “can”. we tend to drop t’s at the ends of words, as well put more emphasis on the negative (probably why people try to clarify by repeating loudly! lol). so using one of your examples: “it can be that way” = “it kin be that way” vs “it can’t be that way”= “it CAN’(t) be that way” there are lots of good videos on youtube that explain this difference better than i can but that’s the gist of it
I am a non-native speaker and learnt English mostly from books. What I learnt was thi (another 'the') has to be used when 'the' precede a word that starts with a vowel or a vowel sound. In the video, as you talk to the American he kept on using 'thi' to many words that do not start with a vowel or a vowel sound. Words like 'hotel' 'herb' etc, what I learnt can also be understood as semi-vowels, are said to be some exceptions. I really wish you could clear this little doubt of mine. Thank you
What you were taught about "the" matches my own accent: I say "the chicken" ðətʃɪkɪn but "the egg" ðɪjɛg. This is still true a lot of the time for younger speakers. But 1. a lot of younger speakers always pronounce "the" with schwa, separated from a following vowel by a glottal stop: ðəʔɛg. 2. speakers can also pronounce "the" as ðɪj before a consonant; I hear this in a lot of YT videos which explain things, e.g. ðɪjtʃɪkɪn. 3. Before a vowel, speakers can also use both ðɪj and a glottal stop: ðɪjʔɛg. In other words, things are more variable nowadays, but it's fine to stick to what you were taught! Please see my blog articles: www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/it-wasnt-acceptable-in-d%C9%99-80s/ www.englishspeechservices.com/pronunciation/thee-you/ Also my book English After RP, p. 92-3. (Btw, you should use "question", or "uncertainty", rather than "doubt". Doubt means thinking that something may not be the case, e.g. "I doubt he'll be on time.")
It should also be noted that the moments where he uses thi in the way you describe, there's a long pause where he's searching for the next word to use and accidentally ends up with a mismatch. He does correct to the other version in at least one case where he catches himself.
@@gcewing indeed. The reason for the pronunciation of the as thee is two fold-emphasis as you say and before a vowel sound. It's used before a vowel sound to make the language flow more naturally. One of the things about the speech of many Americans that really, really jars is their utter refusal to use the thee pronunciation before a vowel sound. It makes them sound stilted, clumsy and frankly unintelligent in their use of language. They aren't unintelligent in general, but they _sound_ as such due to this poor usage.
I once knew someone from eastern Europe who spoke heavily accented English passably well, but never used contractions. In fact, when I pointed this out and that to sound more natural she should try using them a little, she actually argued that contractions are "low" English. I just laughed at her. This is what she was taught.
In Argentina (or at least when I was in secondary school) our teachers always taught us the full forms of AUX verbs but always the contraction of NEG verbs. I didn't know "don't" and "doesn't" were contractions of "do not" and "does not" respectively until I watched a video explaining it. I thought contractions were cool when I learned them. I asked my teacher if I could use contractions of AUX verbs not only NEG verbs and they said "yes, Why not?" I was very happy 😄
A little while ago on another channel (another linguistics channel, it so happens), somebody in a comment used the word "it'd've". It stood out enough for me to remark on it. Then the next thing you know, YT brings me to this video from over 2 years ago! Discovered this channel over the last week or two. Love it! Also, I love all the sci-fi references in this one, especially the Star Trek!
It's one of those contractions we definitely use but don't acknowledge in writing for whatever reason. Most people I know definitely say "I wouldn't've" rather than "I wouldn't have" or "I'd have not" or "I'd not've".
Thanks! Your videos are great! There are also "wanna" and "gonna", which are a bit informal, but very common all over the English speaking world. And kinda slangy contractions like "Imma", "innit" or "dunno", which are, in fact, contractions of contractions. I'm a non-native, but I've got used to contractions listening to songs and watching films in English. By the way, modern robots can use contractions. I've got a Google speaker and she (my Google speaker has a female voice) speaks with contractions.
I know this video is over 2 years old, but if you happen to read this, could you do a video on contractions that move "through" other words? I think they're always negations, like "is it not" vs "isn't it", or "am I not" vs "aren't I" (I really like the last one especially because the verb changes form completely, why isn't "amn't" allowed? Two nasal sounds back to back?)
Interestingly in Scots dialect 'I'll not' is actually very common, but the 'not' becomes 'no' (as usual) and the 'I' sounds like 'ah'. Ahl no be there (I'll not be there). Didn't you see him? Did yae no see him? (Did you not see him?)
@@221b-Maker-Street According to the intonation of the "frugal Scotsman" character on the BBC radio programme "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue", there is definitely no question mark at the end of that sentence.
12:28 thanks to you, Pr., Boris just found a new (probably) lucrative walk of life: voice over for Looney Tune cartoons. Perfectly fitting for the character.
I remember English at primary school. We were not allowed to use contractions when writing. At all. At one point, the teachers were threatening to, and sometimes did, dock one house point per apostrophe in a word. I understand it was to get us all to talk proper innit, but it did make some stuff feel quite clunky. The other thing was the "One And per sentence" rule. To stop "I did that and then I did that and then he said this and she did that and it was great". But it also meant that the sign outside the chippie advertising "Fish and chips and bread and butter" was not right. Even though "Fish, chips, bread, and butter" sounds more like a shopping list than something you would want to get for lunch. I suppose at that age, you have to learn the rules to know when to break them
As strict as they were, I think they failed to teach that everyday language happens, and while the meaning of the advertising is 'fish-and-chips and bread-and-butter', you are bound to find a series of 'and' in the real world. Though I must admit it makes me chuckle how rhythmical 'fish and chips and bread and butter' is and I would have done my best to avoid that lol
The setting determines my usage a lot of the time. If I'm speaking at a Homeowners Association meeting about a resolution banning flag poles I'll say "I WILL NOT stand for this tyranny!" but if I'm talking to my buddy about fixing my own car I'll say "I ain't gonna do that shit, dude." And if I wasn't commenting online I wouldn't even type "I'll say..." I would say "I'd be like..."
When you start learning English you are really exasperated by its fluidity and lack of logic - then you feel it’s charms and how flexible and rich it can become.
I went to a very proper high school in Toronto in the 1960s and we were forbidden to use any contractions in our writing. If you used a contraction in answering an exam question it was considered a major grammatical error and if you had two of them on the same exam you failed the exam. I did not realize how much this was drilled into me until about my fifteenth year of teaching when one of my students said to me, "You know sir that you never use a contraction." After that, I thought I'd use them as it's a more natural form of speech, but I still have a problem ending a sentence with a preposition.
Reminds me of my favorite English professor joke: A sharp country boy finds himself at Harvard with a scholarship. As he's wandering around on the first day of classes, he stops a fellow student to ask "Hey, where's the library at?" The student responds "Here at Hahvahd, we do not end ouh sentences prepositions!" To which the country lad says "Alrighty... Where's the library at, you stuck-up snob?"
@Greenicegod that's a very PG version of the joke, which somewhat spoils the impact of the punch line. It usually goes "OK then: where's the library at, asshole?"
I used to coach young Vietnamese English learners and felt that I would have to constantly correct their overuse of contractions in their writing. The point being that if they were writing a college essay, a corporate report or a job application, they needed to lean more toward the formal as opposed to the conversational. These days, God forbid, they are probably tempted to use emoji’s in their formal writings.
@@221b-Maker-Street Don't know why you say that. Using superfluous apostrophes for plurals seems to be quite a frequent mistake among even native speakers. That's my experience, anyway.
It’s funny, because when I’m reviewing essays and applications, the thing that makes non-native speakers stand out most of the time is the inappropriate *non-use* of contractions in circumstances where they should be used. English teachers have a habit of teaching the language as it was (theoretically) several decades ago, and this is a prime example of that.
I enjoyed this tremendously. I had no idea Star Trek had gone down the route of discussing contractions! I was hoping that you were going to tackle the one that annoys so many of us, That is, the use of "would of" instead of "would've". Also, I found myself at a loss when trying to teach the apostrophe in "shan't" for "shall not". Was is ever "sha'n't"? (I just said that two apostrophes in one word was too many).
I'd be willing to bet that the particular form of NEG contractions having only one apostrophe comes from the already compound "cannot". It would certainly make more sense if all the other NEG contractions has alternate aux verb-neg compounds, like "wasnot", "hasnot", and "isnot". But when did English ever make sense?
I had a job where we had to put notes into software that had only been used in one call centre in Indian before coming to Australia. It didn't allow apostrophes in call notes. I found it almost unusable, a quick simple notwas all that was needed but I had to use either such formal English as to use absolutely no contractions, or such messy English as contractions with no apostrophes. From there I noticed that few staff used them in speech and then the difference in the intonation they used. It became an unexplainable, ludicrous reality break between the Indian English used by most of our staff, and how foreign it sounded to many older Australian callers. It led to the completely ridiculous situation of older callers that had little exposure to Indian English, asking to speak to local staff and being presumed to be racist. The complete lack of understanding institutionally or at the coalface that the "very good English" spoken by many Indian staff that was very good, and completely understandable with a little familiarity, sounded not just foreign, but possibly rude, or sarcastic, or even robotic to people with no familiarity. Your point about the robotic sound of the lack of contractions, is in that context a revelation to me. I had noticed the the even, unstressed intonation used could sound cold and emotionless and even robotic to some callers, the lack of contractions would be taken the exact same way by some, and reinforce the effect.
I’ve always wondered why some contractions seem to even jump over other words: Don’t you have a dog - if avoiding contractions I would think the more common is: do you not have a dog.
I think 'can not you' was the right interrogative construction in early forms of English, but I would say that since 'not' is a negative adverb, now it's put in the same position in the interrogative sentence as other adverbs such as 'always' and 'already', while the interrogative inversion construction only involves the subject pronoun and the auxiliary verb at the beginning.
When I was younger, I taught myself to always prefer "NEG" whenever I must choose between it and "AUX" when forming a sentence. I did this because people used to interrupt conversations with things like, "Hahaha, you said SNOT!" if somebody said, "it's not", for example, which really annoyed me and derailed my train of thought. I've carried the habit to this day. I still say, "I'm not", because people would surely misunderstand me, or at least worry about me, if I said, "I am't".
Touched on but not fully explored is just how important contractions are in giving the idea that all is well, all is normal, all is friendly. As soon as the contracted word is fully stressed then there is a mood change and an extra beat to the rhythm. ‘I’m going to town” v “I am going to town.” “I’ve done the washing” v “I have done the washing.” “I’ll pick up the kids” v “I will pick up the kids”. I urged my students to always use contractions because the non-contracted form is a powerful way of manipulating communication and as such should only be used if they really need to reinforce or make a point. It can often be read as anger and hence the need to always use the friendliness of contractions.
I love the humorous illustrations. On the subject of non-native speakers, over-use of non-existent contractions is an opposite error that people can be prone to. For instance my Indian relatives might ask when searching for something, 'where's it?' Where I would always say 'where is it?' in full. Although 'where's my coat?' is used by both of us.
@@jon3nnb646 Ah yes, I should have been more specific. I too would say 'where's it got to' or 'where's it all gone wrong?' and so on - just never a simple 'where's it?' i.e. 'where's it' always has to be followed by something else, otherwise it has to be 'where is it?' From observation, this rule seems to hold.
@@jon3nnb646 also don't you mean 'I and those around me speak'? You could use 'me' if you turned it around and said 'in the English spoken by me and those around me', however. You say 'I speak' not 'me speak'.
@@kirankataria6491 If you want to be particular, it should be "The people around me and I see". "I" is always last in a phrase about oneself and others. "Bill and I went to school." not "I and Bill went to school" Unless you're in Jamica then "I" means something else entirely and has different rules.
@@SineN0mine3 You got me. You are completely correct and of course I knew that but forgot in the heat of the moment! Thank you! But now I'm curious - how does 'I' mean something else entirely in Jamaica? What does it mean?
I am working on writing my doctoral dissertation now (nearly done in fact!), and it's taken some time to get used to avoiding contractions. In my first couple of chapters, my advisor would proofread them and there would be more than one contraction marked for me to change. I've now taken to always using the find function after completing each chapter to search for apostrophes to make sure I haven't inserted any stray contractions. It really is such an unnatural way to convey information, and it takes getting used to.
It’s all about tone. A doctoral dissertation demands a more formal tone than, say, a magazine article or a TH-cam comment. As a (now retired) computer documentation writer, I always made it a point to use contractions freely in conceptual or tutorial manuals, but avoid them in reference materials. Tone matters.
I know of one character (Noah from the webcomic El Goonish Shive) who avoids contractions purely to help him regulate his emotions and keep him from reacting to things too readily -- because he's working on some anger/impulsivity issues. Also: Do you cover "ain't" in any of your videos? I've long understood that it's a normal word (just not acceptable in certain registers like college papers), but it was a bit of an eye-opener when someone explained that it's actually an *intensifier* -- "I'm not doing it" is normal but "I ain't doing it" is stronger.
one big difference I notice in British and American contractions is that we never contract have if it's NOT an auxiliary verb or part of the expression "has/have got" for ownership. For example in this clip of the first movie of Harry Potter, th-cam.com/video/nnD8FKXzIGs/w-d-xo.html at 7:05 Harry says, "I haven't any money." We would not say this in AmE.
I noticed that in a Finnish book for learning English, that I use in reverse to learn the Finnish. There's a scene with Donald Duck struggling to get sugar out of the jar for his coffee, and it ends with him saying "I've a solution", as he pours his coffee to the sugar jar and drinks from it. It just sounds so strange to me, to see the active verb "have" contracted like that. Probably the writers simply didn't know the difference.
@@carultch great example! Absolutely it's very jarring to see/hear those constructions as an American. I just can't help but feel sorry for people learning English as a second language, too many levels to this crap 😂
This isn’t really very common in modern BrE. It’s a bit old-fashioned and/or upper class. I’d have to scour the books to see whether JKR actually wrote this line or whether it’s a scriptwriter, but I’m only a couple of years younger than her and I wouldn’t say it.
The chess column in my then-hometown paper (the San Francisco Chronicle) used to run a regular feature titled “It Is Your Move.” Grated on me every time I saw it.
Hi Mr.Lindsey, I really like your blog posts on your website and content on youtube. I was wondering if you could recommend a person or people, who share quality info on phonetics just as you do, for american english?
Many thanks for your kind words Ahmet. I can't exactly think of an American equivalent of myself (!) but a lot of my videos and blog posts apply equally to BrE and AmE (e.g. aspiration, weak forms, contractions, deaccenting, compound stress). I have some blog posts specifically about AmE like the one last year on American /t/-glottaling; you could use the search box for topics you're interested in. I used to enjoy the posts at dialectblog.com/. And you'll find posts by experts many of which touch on AmE at languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=24.
My teachers used to like saying "ain't ain't a word". They would often use the question "If ain't is a word, than what is it a contraction of?" to try and shut down it's usage in the classrooms. This'll never hold up against the academics out there; but I did come up with an answer that got the teachers to think a little and, at the very least, not try to use that question anymore regarding the word "ain't". It IS a contraction... Take the 'a' from 'am' or 'are'... take the 'i' from 'is' or 'will', and finish it up with n't from not [a i n't]. Because ain't is usually used as "am not", "are not", "is not" and "will not"... There are other uses, but these are the most common here in my part of Michigan.
The lack of contractions in the dialog in the Coen brothers' "True Grit" is a conspicuous stylistic choice that dominates the experience of watching that film. I've seen it described as a "King James" sort of speech - though to be honest I haven't, myself, searched the King James Bible for the prevalence or absence of such contractions.
In Ireland “I am not” is often contracted in speech to “I amn’t” rather than “I’m not”. It takes me by surprise sometimes when autocorrect doesn’t like it. Which of course it wouldn’t. It shouldn’t be a word.
@@jennifercufley1728 I think it's because generally speakers of English don't like to pronounce 'mn' but (certainly in Irish, maybe in Gaelic) in Irish 'mn' is common and easily said. Take "ainmneacha" for instance. That's one theory. Another is that it shouldn't be 'aren't' but should be 'a'n't' (am not)(m and o removed)
As kids, my sister and I thought we invented “amn’t.” We thought it seemed a worthy contraction and would use it at home. Neither of us ever knew that it’s a known contraction, anywhere. This is the first I’ve heard this information. Interesting
Dude, you are breaking my _brain._ I have been trying all my life to avoid contractions in written English, and now you show me just how much I am over-compensating. Thank you for teaching a teacher. I still love Data, though. 😉 Then again, I always tell my students to forget about the exceptions and just roll with the rules. Who cares about the 10% deviation that is generally tolerated if just sticking to the rule makes you 90% correct? I know I don't. Contraction intended.
It's one of my favourite scenes from a tv show called Brooklyn 99, where Craig Robinson, playing a con man, explains how he committed dog fraud; instead of selling someone a Pekinese, "'Twas a cat."
When I try out a new keyboard I typically enter the first two lines of Lewis Carroll's poem _Jabberwocky_ in a text editor: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbol in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. If spell checking is enabled it underlines many of the words, but I've occasionally been disappointed to see it labels " 'Twas " as a misspelling.
Regarding contracts, as a native speaker the worst thing I notice with other native speakers is, I think, a result of them miss-hearing the contraction of have in should've and could've and then they write could of and should of. That's not a mistake non-native speaks tend to make once they get the hang of contractions.
Many people are taught that contractions are improper and as a result, they underuse them even in speech. They don't even know how most of the contractions are properly pronounced, so when they read aloud a text they pronounce the full forms. The sad state of language teaching.
I was really hoping to find you contracting “I shall not”. Somehow it seems to be common in my speech to say shant, much to friends mocking me, but I never know how that contraction is written. Sha’n’t? Shan’t?
In the 1890s, Lewis Carroll argued that can't, won't, shan't should be spelt ca'n't, wo'n't, sha'n't, because the verb is contracted. And Shaw sometimes omitted the apostrophes from all contractions. I'm not aware of any other author who used those spellings. Everyone spells them can't, won't, shan't.
"Shan't" is the standard spelling, and as a 69-year old Brit, it seems to me to be a perfectly standard contraction. It only seems a little old-fashioned because many people have lost the shall/will distinction, and so say "won't" instead.
The lack of contractions (precisely 0), in Otto Warmbier’s apology speech in court, in North Korea, was one of the tells, to Westerners, that the speech was completely scripted, and by non-natives, too (namely, by the North Koreans) 😅.
I was trying to explain to a Dutch friend why he can't just say "I'm." as a full sentence. But, I don't feel my explanation is right. I told him a contraction can't be a full sentence. But I figure there has to be a rule. We can say "Don't!" And it doesn't sound wrong. I guess it has to do with the Aux vs the Neg. I will have to rewatch the part of video that explains the difference and see if that will help me explain it to my friend better.
Notably, in some American English, including mine, there’s the contraction “I’ma”, being a contraction of the phrase “I am going to” initially being contracted to “I’m gonna” then to “I’ma”
It's funny you should say that; there's these youtubers called 'Double Toasted' who discuss movies, they're both Texan, and one of them came up with my favourite use of "y'all" - trying to work out where the budget of a movie went: "Someone stole all y'all's money!"
@Jules Moules a lot of nyorker types use “youse” (see what I did there?” but typically followed by guys. “Hey, youse guys…” I’ve noticed them spelling it like that as well.
5:30 Basically, contractions *_don’t_* like to occur at the end of a statement; which makes sense: *_They’re_* reduced forms, typically reserved to the middle of a sentence/utterance, where not much attention is, typically, paid to them; or, *_SOMETIMES,_* to the beginning; but, *_NEVER_* to the end 🤔.
That's debatable. You could argue that a robot's programming language plays a similar role to DNA in humans. Humans are "built" with DNA, but they aren't consciously fluent in DNA, even if it does dictate how they "work."
4:05 In geordie (newcastle/gateshead) english, we use the contracted 'is' and 'are' for negative statements as well. E.g. geordies would say "You've not done your chores" and "I'll not go to the shop" whereas other people say "You haven't done your chores" and "I won't go to the shop". Geordie is a fantastic and weird accent. We use these phrases every day that sound Shakespearean to other people. But I'll not just prattle on about my hometown patriotism
I'll not go to the shop' is pretty standard English in other parts as well. I always wondered where the Geordie contraction 'Divvn't' comes from as in 'Divvn't dee that, man. It's daft.'
I read voraciously, and when reading things that could be contracted but the author has chosen not to, for whatever reason, if the tone is familiar or informal enough, I often find myself automatically contracting the phrases "in post" as it were. I consistently pronounce "it is" as "it's" in my internal narrative, or "they are" as "they're." So it doesn't particularly matter that the author has chosen to eschew contractions, I still thwart them by editing them in anyway.
I tend to write a bit more formal than I speek sometimes, though not a ton. And I do choose to not use contractions sometimes for emphasis. I think more about using them or not in writing, though. When speaking, I tend to let the speach more naturally flow.
I always found data’s inability to use contractions as pretty silly. Like contractions are not hard for a robot to replicate, and data is to w most advanced artificial intelligence known to star fleet. Like current “””AIs””” already use contractions flawlessly, but data just can’t figure it out cause he’s like not human enough? Data could literally just write a subroutine with very simple logic to determine when to contract. I suspect the reason he’s like this is because some writer wrote down that data doesn’t use contractions as a way of conveying he’s a cold robot and the writers just got carried away with it. I think the reason that sci-fi robots don’t use contractions is because the first fictional robots were probably imagined as servants to powerful people therefore would talk as formally as possible, and the trope got used over and over.
I am soooo glad I found this channel. 🤔 I'm so glad I found... 🤔 (I also react badly to inappropriate contractions in written language. I'm just over-sensitive... 😅)
The logic of the situation is that the 'contracted' morphemes are becoming clitics and inflections. There is no apostrophe in speech to remind us that something is 'omitted'; the perception that there is is not only writing-based but historical, and synchronically there are just words combining an auxiliary with either /nt/ or a pronoun. Already with the NEG contractions we have to treat them as inflections of the verb, and of course it's not just a simple morpheme addition as in many case the auxiliary morpheme is altered (will, won't). With the AUX contractions it's not so obvious that they are inflections rather than clitics, as the auxiliary morpheme can appear at the end of nouns or whole phrases ("the one in the back's not good enough").
I don't pay attention to contractions because I'm from the USA and 77. When I first started using the computer, I had many people ask what I had written or what I meant because the 'translator' or 'computer' used British English exclusively. To this day, when writing to friends who don't speak English, I specifically don't use contractions. I even double check myself. I have been thanked many times over the years. Very recently, I noticed that subtitles for regular vlogs on TH-cam are in Australian English, Canadian English and United States English, not just English. I feel that is going overboard and just use Australian English because it is first on the list, alphabetically, and completely forget as I never notice a difference. I don't use contractions in my writing for people who use, what I call 'stilted' English, and Robin Hood. Robin Hood? Well, I have series that is based on the BBC/Showtime Robin Hood/Robin of Sherwood. I don't know why, but I feel the contractions are wrong for that era. Of course, the object of the 1984 programme is that it was specifically written for young people of the 80s. The actors had long hair and were in their early twenties. So, Richard Carpenter used contractions in the scripts to make the speaking flow along the 1980s' speech patterns. However, Scarlett said "ain't" so often, that I use it for him. However, it is to be noted that Ray Winstone was raised speaking Cockney and, since he wasn't given a specific direction, he spoke wif a Cockney accent wot 'adn't even been invented in those days. When Carpenter finally caught it, he thought it was hilarious and left it. It make Will/Ray stand out. AND, most people didn't even notice. So I do leave his character alone. Obviously, with so many choices in English now-a-days, I'm sure a 'translator' wouldn't have a problem with...well...wouldn't.
I noticed something about contractions when I read the fantasy book series "The Wheel of Time." The series was created by Robert Jordan, and he wrote the first 11 books. Then after his untimely death, Brandon Sanderson wrote the bulk of the last three books (books 12-14), based on Jordan's notes and incorporating some passages that Jordan had written. I immediately detected a jarring change in writing style when I started reading book 12. At first I couldn't put my finger on what specifically was different. But then I realized that while Robert Jordan used many contractions in his prose, he never (as far as I can tell) used contractions ending in 'd (such as he'd, she'd, they'd). On the other hand, Brandon Sanderson used these 'd contractions so often that I felt like maybe he was getting a bonus for every one that he used. I liked Jordan's style much better than Sanderson's on the issue of 'd contractions -- I guess because the 'd contractions seem to me more informal than other contractions, and just too informal for that particular genre of literature. (I also don't like the fact that these contractions are ambiguous. For example, "he'd" can mean "he would" or "he had".)
On a similar topic -and if you haven’t made a video on it already it might be one worth mentioning for non-native speakers- is certain contracted and/or assimilated words which are common in speech (even across many dialects) but almost never found in writing (except in extremely informal instances). For example: “gonna” ~ (going to..) “which’re” ~ (which are) “Imma” ~ (I am going to) Some of such rapid-speech contractions may fall under the umbrella of “weak forms” which I know you touched on once before in another video. However, some are so commonplace that I would argue, if it weren’t for standardized spelling, they might have morphed into essentially a kind of quasi-inflected morpheme, where the contraction has become so thoroughly fused that they are viewed by the speaker as a single unit (though that’s a topic for another discussion). Terms like “gonna” are so frequent that the auxiliary verb within it can be redupliacted without any notice by the speaker, such as in the bewildering and [seemingly] redundant phrase “I’m gonna go to the store”; which at least in American English (if not elsewhere) has de facto replaced the more straightforward “I will go to the store.” Some of this may come down to simple changes in phrasings and the kinds of statements speakers feel most comfortable with, but for a non-native speaker the effect can be viewed as strange, since one can understand why a foreign speaker would be baffled at the idea of not using a phrasing such as “I intend to” or “I will.” “I’m gonna // imma go to the store. Y’want anything?” Anyways, that’s just something this video made me think about.
"I'm gonna go to the store" is expanded to "I'm going to go to the store." In my opinion, it doesn't say the exact same thing as "I will go to the store." "I will go to the store" is ambiguous in time. When will you go to the store? Now? Tomorrow? In five days?" "I'm gonna go to the store" means you are going to either right now or very soon. The timeframe between those is slightly different.
@lumbrefrio Very true. I was mainly using it as an illustration of both a phonological contraction and of a phrasing which can seem bewildering to some non-English speakers who might see the phrasing as seemingly redundant. You’re absolutely correct though, and it isn’t truly redundant, since it conveys a subtle distinction between a _Perfective_ intended action instead of an _Imperfective_ intended action. “Will go” is stated where the speaker is resolute in the action being performed, whereas “going to” is not. So yeah, it isn’t actually the same, but it’s functionally similar, hence why I decided to include it (particularly for the aforementioned strangeness of the construction).
Additionally, if it peaks your interest: my study of Sumerian has actually caused a great deal of introspection into the eccentricity of English grammar, since Sumerian is extremely different both to English and most Indo-European languages in general. For instance, the sort modal difference between “will go” and “going to” is found embedded within the verb morphology in Sumerian, where the modal prefix [ga-] denotes intent to carry out an action, but where the speaker does not state definitively that the action will have taken place. This is because most uses of [ga-] occur on verbs in the Imperfective aspect. (You could use it on verb in the Perfective aspect, it’s just less common to do so). This is contrasted with the use of the prefix [ḫa-], which when used on a verb in the Perfective aspect denotes either certainty, requirement, or expectation that the action will have been completed (whether in the future or past). This is because Sumerian doesn’t embed tense into verb conjugation, which for an English speaker is bewildering. However, a Sumerian speaker would be equally baffled by the kind of distinction between “will go” and “going to go,” being contrasted with “will have gone,” because to them “will have gone” would seem to be the proper Perfective Aspectual statement, and “will go” and “going to go” would both look like incomplete actions, for which they’d ascribe an Imperfective aspect. They’d consider the distinction superfluous and seemingly redundant. Cool stuff! (For a language nerd like me) :)
Here in America we take contractions (like everything else) to the extreme. Double contractions (she'd've, couldn't've) are very common, and even triple contractions (y'all'd've, I'mma) are used frequently in some dialects.
Different American slang will in fact contract words not normally contracted. Normally I say "Have a gud'un" I naturally would drop the H some times or make the last and in rather then un. It's "Have a good one" How ever after asking it so many times, shortening one is easier to say.
I've noticed that it is usually young native speakers who confuse contractions and their homophones, like you're and your, while for me, as a non-native speaker, it was always clear what the difference is. I think that this might be because native speakers first learn by overhearing, rather than logical study, so they just don't think what contractions are actually derived from when writing. I've also noticed that I never actually pronounce the contraction in they're (and sometimes you're). Or at least, I pronounce them like "theya" and "you ah", even though I'd spell them with contractions when writing.
I don't think it's so much about age. It's mostly less-educated people who confuse these words (although of course, everyone confuses them now and then).
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
Scottish speakers tend to use the ‘I’ll not’ and ‘they’ve not’ forms in preference to ‘I won’t’ or ‘they haven’t’. Some Scots dialects also contain the absolutely glorious ‘amn’t I?’ which, when you think about it, makes a huge amount more sense than ‘aren’t I?’ for the first person (we don’t say ‘I are’).
I (an American) insisted on using “amn’t” when I was a kid. My parents kept trying to tell me that it wasn’t correct but I thought it made more sense.
I don't know if this is used outside the US, but we have "ain't" for 'am not' or 'are not'.
I amnae = I'm not
@@julietardos5044 it certainly is - though it's considered slang
Aye. My dad, an Ulsterman, always used amn't I, and I like it.
I can't think of a more British contraction than mightn't. It simply does not exist in American English.
But you missed talking about the fancier multi-contractions. "Wouldn't've" or "shouldn't've." Those you'll never see written, but you hear them all the time.
Whomst'd've
But you do see 'would've' written down - though far too often it's spelt as 'would of' which makes no sense.
@@Matthy63 Beat me to the punch
@@kirankataria6491 See also, _"should of"._
"Shan't" is another that is used in British English but you'll rarely if ever hear it in American English (although we know what it is of course).
My dad once said "I like your emails son. You write like you speak."
That made me smile!
I often use double contractions like "wouldn't've" because if you're trying to write like you speak they're very handy.
Czech people often replace contractions with full forms when reading English sentences aloud. They usually shoot themselves in the foot. Common examples are "she is got a cat" (she's got) or "this is Peter is car" (where they analyse the possessive "Peter's" as the verb to be).
Ouch.
Many English learners pronounce (or write out) the components of contractions erroneously, not just Czech learners. I'm sorry to report that this even happens with native English speakers. I frequently see "should've" written as "should of."
@@jamesmcinnis208 you don't get it.
They pronounce it incorrectly. Putting in blanks "is" instead of "has"
@@snafuet Thank you for your gracious correction. I have edited my comment.
@@jamesmcinnis208 to be fair to natives, the 've and "of" sound very similar. At this point it's a mistake that probably counts as an acceptable alternative lol.
I think, this will turn into my new "binge-watch" channel. Each episode is amazingly insightful!
I agree!
lol me too. i've learned so much here.
me too, fascinating channel.
Yup. My English is very much on a native speaker level, but these videos are still very interesting, consciously making me aware of things I've subconsciously been doing right for a decade or more.
Yep, exactly how I feel
Fun times for Southern American English speakers, we also have double and triple contractions like "y'all'ld've" (you all would have. I've never seen it written outside of specifically talking about the constructions, but they are used verbally often.
I'dn't've comes up a lot
@@katmannsson I don't think I've ever heard that, I've heard "I wouldn't've." Is "I'dn't've" a British thing?
@@hunterra217 Not that I've heard, we tend to use "I wouldn't've" too
@@katmannssoni also havent heard that one before
Aw, y’wouldn’t’ve
Great video. I like the example of “It’s not” versus “Isn’t it?”. In broad Yorkshire dialect, multiple contractions are used, which includes losing the “s”. My grandma and dad would say “‘ti’n’t” or “I’n’t it?” The first is a contraction of “It isn’t”, losing both the initial “i” and the “s”. My grandma used to use a phrase that sounds like “Tin tin tin”, but is actually a contraction of “It isn’t in the tin”.
I'n't milk brilliant?
Something for the _Fast Show_ fans, there... 😬
innit?
ooh chip spice, nice in’t it?’😅
It’s in cases like these that subtitles come in handy while watching movies with all sorts of accents 😊
Or in the the black country we say "t' ay"
There're also contractions without the ' , like "gonna", "wanna" and so on, which are strictly forbidden in formal writen English
Forbidden? By whom?
@@Novumvir it's just considered informal. Your publisher is likely to tell you not to use them.
Is gonna *really* a contraction though, or is it just a different word? For example, "ain't" isn't a contraction of "is not". Because you could say: "that ain't my problem", but also, "I ain't too worried about the consequences". Of course some pedant might claim that "I ain't..." is "incorrect".
@@frankdayton731 gonna is a contraction. "going to", just like "hafta" "wanna" or "woulda", only has 1 meaning. whereas "ain't" basically just means 'almost any negative helping verb'
Doint.
The Boris Johnson scene in the last second of the video is awesome. The rest of the video, too, of course.
Very funny yes. As an American, I kind of like Boris. The Star Trek examples were hilarious too.
I'm really enjoying your videos Dr. Lindsey. I realize this is more of a southern U.S. contraction, but I was waiting to see if you'd mention our beloved "y'all". Great video!
I would LOVE to see a breakdown of "y'all"!
I inherited several southern-isms from my maternal grandparents (including "arn" my clothes) which occasionally filter into my Pacific Northwest speech patterns, though I'm generally unaware until it's pointed out.
I have noticed that the word "y'all" has it's own specific grammatical rules and distinct "proper" and "improper" forms of usage, which I can recognize, though not define.
To see Dr. Lindsey address this extremely American turn of phrase would be fascinating indeed!
I just love your channel. Your passion for phonology and phonetics really shines through.
Thank you!
YES. Your face literally shines quite often when you speak in videos.
Some of my favorite contractions are an interrogative word + did or would
Who'd
What'd
Where'd
Why'd
How'd
They're technically grammatically correct if they use a did (not a would) and are very common in spoken English but rare when written, so it's a fun novelty when I do read them.
True. Also the '"...'d" there could be a contraction of " had".
Whatchado can mean...
... what you do
... what do you do
... what did you do
... what would you do
You need to know the context to understand
I like the triple contractions with interrogative word + did or would + have
"Who'd've guessed that?"
@@RazorBeamz I use 'd've so much and hear it a fair amount too. even better for the lovely 'not a contraction' Y'all'd've.
Someone on twitter wrote “You’ve to do this” and I thought *You’ve to?* I didn’t know why, but it didn’t sound right. I realized that “You’ve only to..” is ok and I suppose that’s because the stress is on ‘only’. Very excited to have discoverd your channel, especially your analysis of King Charles’ speech. Thank you!
I can end up doing this sometimes on twitter, as it saves characters, tbh! You'll also hear it quite a bit in some Yorkshire and Scottish dialects - and I daresay some others too!
@@221b-Maker-Street Interesting!
@@rezonthe can confirm what vatican cameos says, as a yorkshire folk we use you've a lot. "reyt tell us what you've to do" featured a lot in my school days when I needed homework help, also let me introduce wain't, a local contraction of "will not"
@@rach_laze I’ve learned something. Much appreciated, Rachel!
Referring to the part when you talked about non-native speakers (like myself):
I believe nowadays the learning process of specifically the English language is a different process then it was some time ago. While we do learn a lot about it in written form there have also been listening comprehension excercises when I was in school (up until 2016).
Another point is, of course, the internet. Since English is the lingua franca of the internet, younger people tend to learn the language by consuming all sorts of media and content in English. Especially people who play multi-player video games learn it by typing to other players or speak to give out information about what ever game they are playing.
Learning has (luckily in my opinion) become much more of a "learning by doing" process and shifted away from a more theoretical approach. That way I feel like it is much easier to learn a language.
While I did have English lessons since I was about eight years of age, I feel like I learned most about it after my school time ended; through TH-cam, gaming, movies and other media.
I might still make plenty of mistakes and still can't get rid of my accent, I do think that media is more responsible for giving me the ability to communicate with others than what I learned in school.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that learning grammar in school and/or how the language works theoretically isn't important. This is only how my personal learning worked.
I hate non-native English speakers because they all write amazingly and end it with "I make so many mistakes", don't be so down. You write better than a lot of natives.
@@benhancock6253 thank you very much! I had to look up some words for this comment. What I actually feel rather insecure about is the usage of comma (and I don't even know the plural of that word) because the rules for those are very different in German. I usually don't add the typical "sry for mistakes - non-native" but since I'm commenting underneath a video which literally has language as it's topic I expected people to be somewhat critical about how I write. Thanks for your response :D
@@Dec0y4711 plural of comma is commas
I think learning a language like English from consuming (specifically) internet media is incredibly useful, as it exposes non-natives to the nuances of the language that they otherwise might not experience during lessons. You may not get the grammar nailed down via media (I'm sure I don't, even as a native), but you'll be able to converse in a more fluid and natural manner with native speakers.
Don't lose your accent, they add so much interest to speech
I love the way you kept a straight face when referring to Johnson's speech as "serious"!
Bahaha! I'm glad someone else had this thought too!
He leans over the camera, thinking it'll give him more gravitas. But, to paraphrase an old episode of "Yes Minister," that just makes him look like he's selling insurance.
What really stood out to me with Robby the Robot (the first robot featured in the video, from the film Forbidden Planet) was that he said "a hundred and eighty seven" instead of "one hundred eighty seven". That gave him away, to me, as not being a real robot. I would bet that this occurred because the script had 187 written with numerals rather than words, and the voice actor just read it as he would naturally say it.
That would make sense to me if the voice actor spoke British English but as Marvin Miller was thoroughly American it seems less likely.
@@calmeilles I don't understand your reasoning. I think an American voice actor of that era would be very likely to read the numerals 187 as "a hundred and eighty seven".
One hundred and eighty seven is actually correct English. People saying one hundred eighty seven sounds dumb and lazy.
@@lasentinal Are you British? I just learned that the British almost never exclude "and" following the digit in the hundreds place (e.g., two hundred AND sixty). Americans sometimes do, however, so the omission of "and" does not sound unnatural (or lazy) to us. In fact, to me, the British way, which would require saying "and" four times when saying a large number such as 956,324,167,580 sounds rather superfluous.
Anyway, all of that is beside the point, as I feel that the use of "A hundred" instead of "ONE hundred" has a much greater impact in giving the impression that this is not genuine robot speak (to me at least), than does any use or non-use of "and".
@@allendracabal0819 In situations where one would use "the" before a counted value in the range 2-99 or 200-999 (e.g. "here are the five 'hundrun' forty seven cards you requested", including the digit "one" would seem very odd [e.g. one would say "here are the hundred and seven widgets" versus "here are the one hundred and seven widgets"]. I think a similar principle is at play when using the indefinite article to describe *quantities*, as distinct from *values*.
Super interesting! I’m an English language assistant abroad who has no formal training in teaching English but I find grammar super interesting. I was explaining to a class that both “I’ve not” and “I haven’t” are acceptable, but have a different vibe! The best I could come up with was that I’d be more likely to say “I haven’t” whereas my grandma would be more likely to say “I’ve not” 😅
Imma try and give describing the feeling difference a shot: To me I've not is for something that you have said you would do, or something you needed to do, and not done it. Haven't is more for a choice, like I haven't been to the new theater in town yet.
Related to contractions, I find it interesting that we treat cannot as a single word, unlike will not, do not, may not etc
It is odd. And although this doesn’t really explain why, I think “cannot” and “can not” might be used slightly differently, as in replying to “Can you not do that?” “I can not”, where “not” is emphasized and meaning “I am able not to”, versus “I cannot do that” meaning “I am not able to…”. But this ambiguity is deemed fine enough in “do not” etc.
True. I wonder how that happened!
I came here, a bit late to the party, mind, from watching you with Simon Roper. Absolutely fascinating! Studying languages is a hobby of mine, so a lot of these examples were familiar to me, from just considering how odd English must seem sometimes to foreign learners, but I'd never looked at them in such a multi-dimensional way. Loved it! I would mention also, referring to the point made around 3:09 , that where I'm from (Oldham, Greater Manchester), "didn't", "isn't" and "haven't", are very often said as "din't", "in't" and "'ant". Thank you for your content, instantly subscribed!
Me too. Thanks Simon Roper. Am embarking on teaching English as a foreign language so this is all grist to the mill.
If I ever could find "I can not believe it is not Butter" I'd buy out the store
I've also noticed that a lot of non-native english folks want to end written sentances with contractions where we normally wouldn't. I've seen a lot of sentances like 'The thing is what it's', or more commonly a situation where they are asked a question like 'Are you a doctor?' And they'll respond with 'I'm'. I've only encountered this in wrting though and it's very strange.
While listening to your vid on Weak Forms and this one on Contractions, I was reminded of some of my challenges speaking French while living in France. The two phrases that were the most extreme were "Je ne sais pas" (I don't know) and "Je n'ais pas" (I don't have). I learned my French pronunciations in the US, years before moving to France to study, so I pronounced each word fully (using the Strong Forms of each word). Native French speakers will pronounce "Je ne sais pas" as "Shai pa", and "Je n'ais pas" as "Djai pa" with the "pas" (pa) is pronounced weakly. Thanks for your videos, and thanks for helping me better understand my native language.
I lived in Iran for three years. I found myself avoiding contractions to slow down my speech and hopefully make myself easier to understand to my listeners. I find myself still doing this while living in the United States, maybe as a subtle insult to someone I think deserves it.
I find this interesting because the thing that got me to finally stop using contractions in academic writing was when someone explained it to me as "it's more accessible for English language learners" and I was like, "Oh! That's actually a good reason, okay then!"
As a French and English speaker, I find it fascinating that French REQUIRES all possible contractions in formal writing, but in English, professors and pedants tend to insist on avoiding contractions in academic writing, despite how stilted it actually sounds.
The Spanish never contract. It blows my mind when I try to learn a song in Spanish. Though french songs are kinda the same in terms of difficulty.
@@ilghiz I've never seen contractions written out in Spanish, but Spanish speakers definitely do mush words together out loud.
Like "Que es eso" is usually pronounced "Que's eso". An example from a song is the lyric "Que mañana es fiesta y al otro también" turning into "Que mañana's fiesta y'al otro también"
@@guy-sl3kr Si, lo se )) When I said “never contract” I meant “never in writing”. And at least officially. In oral speech cotractions are inevitable of course. I know a few songs in Spanish by heart. It took me some effort to figure out how to contract without seeing it written. I had some friends from Ecuador, they were sometimes hard to understand. _Que dice_ turned into _ketsé:_ two syllables instead of two and the stress shifted to the last syllable. They also had hard time with me, when I asked “¿Quieres vivir?” holding my knife in a cafe. And they corrected me “beber?” With little practice, I always confuse words %)))
@@guy-sl3kr That depends wildly by dialect. Some dialects truly don't contract, like mine.
Same way some places avoid the S like it would hurt them haha. Spanish is quite diverse.
@@crusaderACR Mind sharing where you're from? Because I've never heard a Spanish speaker that doesn't shorten their words somehow
Your examples are absolutely to the point and hilarious! Good job, Geoff! BTW, the robot examples might signal that a typical syllable-timed language might sound robotic to the native English ear. How sad!
Thanks, Ben. Yes, weak forms and contractions are important for English rhythm.
Thank you for this very insightful video. I was reminded of my English lessons in school, about thirty years ago, where we were taught that contractions should only be used in spoken English, never in writing. As you have shown there are plenty examples to disregard this 'rule', so I might think of it as another form of teaching non native speakers vocabulary and sentence structure. 🙂
The bit about where contractions which can go either way is interesting. I have a friend from Ireland who would use "I'm not" and "I amn't" interchangeably (I'd never heard the latter before speaking to him).
There's no overwhelming reason why it shouldn't be contracted at both ends, I suppose. "I'mn't" "I'dn't" "We'lln't" I suppose, except for convention. (Won't is an interesting one actually, isn't it? I feel like in older English I've heard "wiln't" used to be, I wonder why that changed to won't when it still means 'will not')
I'd love to hear some discussion on what is going on with "there's" in modern English. In my experience as a 45 year old U.S. north-midwest college educated native speaker, "kids these days" are all using "there's" with PLURAL subjects, which rings in my ears as incorrect. "There's lots of..." and "There's many ways..." seems to be positively universal in speakers younger than I am. I want to scream "There ARE!" It seems analogous to German's "es gibt" in that "there's" now functions independently from the number.
I'm endlessly fascinated to be old enough that I'm starting to hear changes in the language. My grandparents were just older enough that I could detect some things they said as sounding "old-fashioned" to my young ears, and now I'm hearing new changes in the young. English seems to be giving up entirely on "correct" subject/object pronouns. Above, just about everyone would say "in speakers younger than me." Old fashioned "younger than I" sounds silly and academic, now, so I try to compromise by including the (understood) verb. "Just between him and I..." and "Her and I went..." are commonly heard by the likes of our highest elected officials. English *actively* avoids the "correct" pronouns, as sounding wrong or stilted.
One truly inexplicable but very real change, which has indeed been the subject of academic papers, is the switch from doing something "by accident" to "on accident", with a fairly sharp cut-off age not too much younger than I am, so, people born some time after 1980. What could possibly account for a change in one of these arbitrary but heretofore FIXED phrase patterns!? Hasn't it been "by accident" and "on purpose" and "by mail" and "for granted" etc. for centuries? Or has English played shenanigans with those before?
A pronunciation change I hear more and more now is in words like "button", "important", and "Britain": Where I pronounce all those with a very American "stop t" with no vowel at all between the t and n, younger speakers are pronouncing those as VOICED "d"s, with the vowel pronounced, sounding to me like buddin, impordant, and Briddin. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, definitely says "impordant" -- so maybe this is something from his Alabaman Southern-U.S. accent leaking into the more general U.S. accent?
Huge thanks for your incredibly interesting and extremely well done videos!
I love this channel and I do agree that spoken English and formal written English are distinct. I write academically and professionally and the style of writing is entirely different to how I would voice the same subject.
.... different from...
@Real Aiglon it shouldn’t be but it is. It would be nice for it to change though.
@@irenejohnston6802 'different to' and 'different from' are both correct
I've been speaking English all my life, and never knew the first thing about it! I'm learning so much from your videos. Thank you.
even in academic journals I still find it odd when running into a non-contracted 'not' phrase. It's like I'm humming along at 60 mph and all of a sudden I'm slowing down to 30 mph. It's not because it's a particularly difficult topic it's that it seems so odd and out of place. Then I start wondering about the nature and future of academic writing and whether this was done by choice or by mandate and why.
I think it is it make it more readable with a shorter style guide.
👍🏻 Interesting and entertaining, all in one, thanks!
Have you noticed the differences in native speaker dialects, especially the strange case of "can't" due to the American accent? Often when exploring the logic of something, they'll sum up an argument with something like "So it can't be done". Or "It can't be that way", etc. And it's very difficult to tell whether they're trying to say "can" or the very opposite "can't" .. which they often notice themselves, but instead of cleverly clarifying with "cannot" .. they go and compound the confusion by repeating their "can't" louder 😆
Another curiosity is "ain't", which is often far more than just "aren't" with an American twang. It seems also to be a wildcard for "am not", "isn't", and even "haven't" .. now ain't that strange!
😉
and ain't that the truth.
Ain't is common in several british accents too, though is usually seen as more informal or lower-class.
With the "can/can't" confusion I find myself just saying "can't" again and really spitting out that "t"! 😄
That's definitely an area where "can't" and "can" are distinguished solely by tone.
so a good rule of thumb is “can” is pronounced like “kuhn” or “kin” and can’t is pronounced like “can”. we tend to drop t’s at the ends of words, as well put more emphasis on the negative (probably why people try to clarify by repeating loudly! lol). so using one of your examples: “it can be that way” = “it kin be that way” vs “it can’t be that way”= “it CAN’(t) be that way”
there are lots of good videos on youtube that explain this difference better than i can but that’s the gist of it
I am a non-native speaker and learnt English mostly from books. What I learnt was thi (another 'the') has to be used when 'the' precede a word that starts with a vowel or a vowel sound.
In the video, as you talk to the American he kept on using 'thi' to many words that do not start with a vowel or a vowel sound. Words like 'hotel' 'herb' etc, what I learnt can also be understood as semi-vowels, are said to be some exceptions.
I really wish you could clear this little doubt of mine. Thank you
What you were taught about "the" matches my own accent: I say "the chicken" ðətʃɪkɪn but "the egg" ðɪjɛg. This is still true a lot of the time for younger speakers. But 1. a lot of younger speakers always pronounce "the" with schwa, separated from a following vowel by a glottal stop: ðəʔɛg. 2. speakers can also pronounce "the" as ðɪj before a consonant; I hear this in a lot of YT videos which explain things, e.g. ðɪjtʃɪkɪn. 3. Before a vowel, speakers can also use both ðɪj and a glottal stop: ðɪjʔɛg. In other words, things are more variable nowadays, but it's fine to stick to what you were taught! Please see my blog articles:
www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/it-wasnt-acceptable-in-d%C9%99-80s/
www.englishspeechservices.com/pronunciation/thee-you/
Also my book English After RP, p. 92-3.
(Btw, you should use "question", or "uncertainty", rather than "doubt". Doubt means thinking that something may not be the case, e.g. "I doubt he'll be on time.")
@@DrGeoffLindsey Thank you so much for the reply and also for the correction. Means a lot to me. May God bless you.
It should also be noted that the moments where he uses thi in the way you describe, there's a long pause where he's searching for the next word to use and accidentally ends up with a mismatch. He does correct to the other version in at least one case where he catches himself.
"The" is sometimes pronounced "thee" for emphasis. Also "a" can be pronounced "ay" for the same reason. "Not just *ay* chicken, but *thee* chicken."
@@gcewing indeed. The reason for the pronunciation of the as thee is two fold-emphasis as you say and before a vowel sound. It's used before a vowel sound to make the language flow more naturally. One of the things about the speech of many Americans that really, really jars is their utter refusal to use the thee pronunciation before a vowel sound. It makes them sound stilted, clumsy and frankly unintelligent in their use of language. They aren't unintelligent in general, but they _sound_ as such due to this poor usage.
I once knew someone from eastern Europe who spoke heavily accented English passably well, but never used contractions. In fact, when I pointed this out and that to sound more natural she should try using them a little, she actually argued that contractions are "low" English. I just laughed at her. This is what she was taught.
In Argentina (or at least when I was in secondary school) our teachers always taught us the full forms of AUX verbs but always the contraction of NEG verbs. I didn't know "don't" and "doesn't" were contractions of "do not" and "does not" respectively until I watched a video explaining it. I thought contractions were cool when I learned them. I asked my teacher if I could use contractions of AUX verbs not only NEG verbs and they said "yes, Why not?" I was very happy 😄
A little while ago on another channel (another linguistics channel, it so happens), somebody in a comment used the word "it'd've". It stood out enough for me to remark on it. Then the next thing you know, YT brings me to this video from over 2 years ago!
Discovered this channel over the last week or two. Love it! Also, I love all the sci-fi references in this one, especially the Star Trek!
It's one of those contractions we definitely use but don't acknowledge in writing for whatever reason. Most people I know definitely say "I wouldn't've" rather than "I wouldn't have" or "I'd have not" or "I'd not've".
@@GoodWoIf Yep, exactly. I think I never realized that we do use it, until I saw it in writing, and thought, "oh... yeah!"
Thanks! Your videos are great! There are also "wanna" and "gonna", which are a bit informal, but very common all over the English speaking world. And kinda slangy contractions like "Imma", "innit" or "dunno", which are, in fact, contractions of contractions. I'm a non-native, but I've got used to contractions listening to songs and watching films in English.
By the way, modern robots can use contractions. I've got a Google speaker and she (my Google speaker has a female voice) speaks with contractions.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda 😂
I know this video is over 2 years old, but if you happen to read this, could you do a video on contractions that move "through" other words? I think they're always negations, like "is it not" vs "isn't it", or "am I not" vs "aren't I" (I really like the last one especially because the verb changes form completely, why isn't "amn't" allowed? Two nasal sounds back to back?)
'Amn't' is actually common usage in a few parts of Ireland I think
also this is in the context of black english in the US
Am I not would just be "ain't I".
Many Scottish people say ‘amn’t’
Interestingly in Scots dialect 'I'll not' is actually very common, but the 'not' becomes 'no' (as usual) and the 'I' sounds like 'ah'.
Ahl no be there (I'll not be there).
Didn't you see him?
Did yae no see him? (Did you not see him?)
In related news, my personal favourite: _"You'll've had your tea?"_
@@221b-Maker-Street According to the intonation of the "frugal Scotsman" character on the BBC radio programme "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue", there is definitely no question mark at the end of that sentence.
12:28 thanks to you, Pr., Boris just found a new (probably) lucrative walk of life: voice over for Looney Tune cartoons. Perfectly fitting for the character.
I remember English at primary school. We were not allowed to use contractions when writing. At all.
At one point, the teachers were threatening to, and sometimes did, dock one house point per apostrophe in a word.
I understand it was to get us all to talk proper innit, but it did make some stuff feel quite clunky.
The other thing was the "One And per sentence" rule. To stop "I did that and then I did that and then he said this and she did that and it was great". But it also meant that the sign outside the chippie advertising "Fish and chips and bread and butter" was not right. Even though "Fish, chips, bread, and butter" sounds more like a shopping list than something you would want to get for lunch.
I suppose at that age, you have to learn the rules to know when to break them
Blimey, where did you go to school? This seems rather rigid...
As strict as they were, I think they failed to teach that everyday language happens, and while the meaning of the advertising is 'fish-and-chips and bread-and-butter', you are bound to find a series of 'and' in the real world.
Though I must admit it makes me chuckle how rhythmical 'fish and chips and bread and butter' is and I would have done my best to avoid that lol
@@novembertheghosts1645 I mean for an advertisement rhythm is good, lol, makes it more memorable
If contractions were good enough for Shakespeare, they're bloody well good enough for me.
House points. Bloody hell, I forgot about those.
American here, I genuinely thought house points were made up for Harry Potter, I didn’t realize they were a thing in real schools!
I wouldn’t’ve thought about this today if this video hadn’t’ve popped up
In this case, the second contraction should be "hadn't."
'Tis and 'tisn't persisted at least into the 19th century. They occur in a lot of literature of this period.
'Twas brillig
Still used in Ireland.
The setting determines my usage a lot of the time. If I'm speaking at a Homeowners Association meeting about a resolution banning flag poles I'll say "I WILL NOT stand for this tyranny!" but if I'm talking to my buddy about fixing my own car I'll say "I ain't gonna do that shit, dude." And if I wasn't commenting online I wouldn't even type "I'll say..." I would say "I'd be like..."
Brilliant video. Who knew contractions were so dramatic!! I cannot believe this has not had more views. I'll be sharing it!
Thanks! I could not be more grateful ;)
When you start learning English you are really exasperated by its fluidity and lack of logic - then you feel it’s charms and how flexible and rich it can become.
I went to a very proper high school in Toronto in the 1960s and we were forbidden to use any contractions in our writing. If you used a contraction in answering an exam question it was considered a major grammatical error and if you had two of them on the same exam you failed the exam. I did not realize how much this was drilled into me until about my fifteenth year of teaching when one of my students said to me, "You know sir that you never use a contraction." After that, I thought I'd use them as it's a more natural form of speech, but I still have a problem ending a sentence with a preposition.
Reminds me of my favorite English professor joke:
A sharp country boy finds himself at Harvard with a scholarship. As he's wandering around on the first day of classes, he stops a fellow student to ask
"Hey, where's the library at?"
The student responds
"Here at Hahvahd, we do not end ouh sentences prepositions!"
To which the country lad says
"Alrighty... Where's the library at, you stuck-up snob?"
@Greenicegod that's a very PG version of the joke, which somewhat spoils the impact of the punch line. It usually goes "OK then: where's the library at, asshole?"
My curiosity was slightly piqued by the title. Even still, this was far more interesting than I would have guessed.
I used to coach young Vietnamese English learners and felt that I would have to constantly correct their overuse of contractions in their writing. The point being that if they were writing a college essay, a corporate report or a job application, they needed to lean more toward the formal as opposed to the conversational. These days, God forbid, they are probably tempted to use emoji’s in their formal writings.
*emoji or emojis 😉
I sense that perhaps you're not a native speaker yourself?
@@221b-Maker-Street Don't know why you say that. Using superfluous apostrophes for plurals seems to be quite a frequent mistake among even native speakers. That's my experience, anyway.
@@221b-Maker-Street or, you know, they just made a mistake and you’re being a dick?
It’s funny, because when I’m reviewing essays and applications, the thing that makes non-native speakers stand out most of the time is the inappropriate *non-use* of contractions in circumstances where they should be used. English teachers have a habit of teaching the language as it was (theoretically) several decades ago, and this is a prime example of that.
I enjoyed this tremendously. I had no idea Star Trek had gone down the route of discussing contractions! I was hoping that you were going to tackle the one that annoys so many of us, That is, the use of "would of" instead of "would've". Also, I found myself at a loss when trying to teach the apostrophe in "shan't" for "shall not". Was is ever "sha'n't"? (I just said that two apostrophes in one word was too many).
I'd be willing to bet that the particular form of NEG contractions having only one apostrophe comes from the already compound "cannot". It would certainly make more sense if all the other NEG contractions has alternate aux verb-neg compounds, like "wasnot", "hasnot", and "isnot". But when did English ever make sense?
The difference between "Don't do that" and "DO NOT DO THAT" is huge, such as DO NOT ENTER as opposed to "Don't enter".
And “Do NOT enter” ?
I had a job where we had to put notes into software that had only been used in one call centre in Indian before coming to Australia. It didn't allow apostrophes in call notes. I found it almost unusable, a quick simple notwas all that was needed but I had to use either such formal English as to use absolutely no contractions, or such messy English as contractions with no apostrophes.
From there I noticed that few staff used them in speech and then the difference in the intonation they used. It became an unexplainable, ludicrous reality break between the Indian English used by most of our staff, and how foreign it sounded to many older Australian callers. It led to the completely ridiculous situation of older callers that had little exposure to Indian English, asking to speak to local staff and being presumed to be racist. The complete lack of understanding institutionally or at the coalface that the "very good English" spoken by many Indian staff that was very good, and completely understandable with a little familiarity, sounded not just foreign, but possibly rude, or sarcastic, or even robotic to people with no familiarity.
Your point about the robotic sound of the lack of contractions, is in that context a revelation to me. I had noticed the the even, unstressed intonation used could sound cold and emotionless and even robotic to some callers, the lack of contractions would be taken the exact same way by some, and reinforce the effect.
I’ve always wondered why some contractions seem to even jump over other words: Don’t you have a dog - if avoiding contractions I would think the more common is: do you not have a dog.
I think 'can not you' was the right interrogative construction in early forms of English, but I would say that since 'not' is a negative adverb, now it's put in the same position in the interrogative sentence as other adverbs such as 'always' and 'already', while the interrogative inversion construction only involves the subject pronoun and the auxiliary verb at the beginning.
People definitely used to say it that way, I've been reading Austen's books and characters use 'Is not this nice?' 'Do not you think?' quite a lot.
When I was younger, I taught myself to always prefer "NEG" whenever I must choose between it and "AUX" when forming a sentence. I did this because people used to interrupt conversations with things like, "Hahaha, you said SNOT!" if somebody said, "it's not", for example, which really annoyed me and derailed my train of thought. I've carried the habit to this day.
I still say, "I'm not", because people would surely misunderstand me, or at least worry about me, if I said, "I am't".
It IS very interesting and useful! Thank YOU very much indeed.
You're welcome! Nice to hear from you - I hope you're well.
Touched on but not fully explored is just how important contractions are in giving the idea that all is well, all is normal, all is friendly. As soon as the contracted word is fully stressed then there is a mood change and an extra beat to the rhythm. ‘I’m going to town” v “I am going to town.” “I’ve done the washing” v “I have done the washing.” “I’ll pick up the kids” v “I will pick up the kids”. I urged my students to always use contractions because the non-contracted form is a powerful way of manipulating communication and as such should only be used if they really need to reinforce or make a point. It can often be read as anger and hence the need to always use the friendliness of contractions.
I love the humorous illustrations. On the subject of non-native speakers, over-use of non-existent contractions is an opposite error that people can be prone to. For instance my Indian relatives might ask when searching for something, 'where's it?' Where I would always say 'where is it?' in full. Although 'where's my coat?' is used by both of us.
This contraction specifically is very ccommon, at least in the English me and those around me speak. For example "where's it at" or "where's it going"
@@jon3nnb646 Ah yes, I should have been more specific. I too would say 'where's it got to' or 'where's it all gone wrong?' and so on - just never a simple 'where's it?' i.e. 'where's it' always has to be followed by something else, otherwise it has to be 'where is it?' From observation, this rule seems to hold.
@@jon3nnb646 also don't you mean 'I and those around me speak'? You could use 'me' if you turned it around and said 'in the English spoken by me and those around me', however. You say 'I speak' not 'me speak'.
@@kirankataria6491 If you want to be particular, it should be "The people around me and I see". "I" is always last in a phrase about oneself and others.
"Bill and I went to school." not "I and Bill went to school" Unless you're in Jamica then "I" means something else entirely and has different rules.
@@SineN0mine3 You got me. You are completely correct and of course I knew that but forgot in the heat of the moment! Thank you! But now I'm curious - how does 'I' mean something else entirely in Jamaica? What does it mean?
I am working on writing my doctoral dissertation now (nearly done in fact!), and it's taken some time to get used to avoiding contractions. In my first couple of chapters, my advisor would proofread them and there would be more than one contraction marked for me to change. I've now taken to always using the find function after completing each chapter to search for apostrophes to make sure I haven't inserted any stray contractions. It really is such an unnatural way to convey information, and it takes getting used to.
It’s all about tone. A doctoral dissertation demands a more formal tone than, say, a magazine article or a TH-cam comment. As a (now retired) computer documentation writer, I always made it a point to use contractions freely in conceptual or tutorial manuals, but avoid them in reference materials. Tone matters.
I know of one character (Noah from the webcomic El Goonish Shive) who avoids contractions purely to help him regulate his emotions and keep him from reacting to things too readily -- because he's working on some anger/impulsivity issues.
Also: Do you cover "ain't" in any of your videos? I've long understood that it's a normal word (just not acceptable in certain registers like college papers), but it was a bit of an eye-opener when someone explained that it's actually an *intensifier* -- "I'm not doing it" is normal but "I ain't doing it" is stronger.
one big difference I notice in British and American contractions is that we never contract have if it's NOT an auxiliary verb or part of the expression "has/have got" for ownership. For example in this clip of the first movie of Harry Potter, th-cam.com/video/nnD8FKXzIGs/w-d-xo.html at 7:05 Harry says, "I haven't any money." We would not say this in AmE.
I noticed that in a Finnish book for learning English, that I use in reverse to learn the Finnish. There's a scene with Donald Duck struggling to get sugar out of the jar for his coffee, and it ends with him saying "I've a solution", as he pours his coffee to the sugar jar and drinks from it. It just sounds so strange to me, to see the active verb "have" contracted like that. Probably the writers simply didn't know the difference.
@@carultch great example! Absolutely it's very jarring to see/hear those constructions as an American. I just can't help but feel sorry for people learning English as a second language, too many levels to this crap 😂
This isn’t really very common in modern BrE. It’s a bit old-fashioned and/or upper class. I’d have to scour the books to see whether JKR actually wrote this line or whether it’s a scriptwriter, but I’m only a couple of years younger than her and I wouldn’t say it.
The chess column in my then-hometown paper (the San Francisco Chronicle) used to run a regular feature titled “It Is Your Move.” Grated on me every time I saw it.
Hi Mr.Lindsey, I really like your blog posts on your website and content on youtube. I was wondering if you could recommend a person or people, who share quality info on phonetics just as you do, for american english?
Many thanks for your kind words Ahmet. I can't exactly think of an American equivalent of myself (!) but a lot of my videos and blog posts apply equally to BrE and AmE (e.g. aspiration, weak forms, contractions, deaccenting, compound stress). I have some blog posts specifically about AmE like the one last year on American /t/-glottaling; you could use the search box for topics you're interested in. I used to enjoy the posts at dialectblog.com/. And you'll find posts by experts many of which touch on AmE at languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=24.
My teachers used to like saying "ain't ain't a word". They would often use the question "If ain't is a word, than what is it a contraction of?" to try and shut down it's usage in the classrooms.
This'll never hold up against the academics out there; but I did come up with an answer that got the teachers to think a little and, at the very least, not try to use that question anymore regarding the word "ain't".
It IS a contraction... Take the 'a' from 'am' or 'are'... take the 'i' from 'is' or 'will', and finish it up with n't from not [a i n't]. Because ain't is usually used as "am not", "are not", "is not" and "will not"... There are other uses, but these are the most common here in my part of Michigan.
I have not.
I've not.
I haven't.
I'ven't.
Jony Ive'nt.
The lack of contractions in the dialog in the Coen brothers' "True Grit" is a conspicuous stylistic choice that dominates the experience of watching that film. I've seen it described as a "King James" sort of speech - though to be honest I haven't, myself, searched the King James Bible for the prevalence or absence of such contractions.
In Ireland “I am not” is often contracted in speech to “I amn’t” rather than “I’m not”.
It takes me by surprise sometimes when autocorrect doesn’t like it. Which of course it wouldn’t. It shouldn’t be a word.
As a child I always wanted to get "amn't" to catch on. I'm American, had no idea anyone actually used it.
So do Scots. We also say amn't I? not aren't I? , as the English do. Why? They don't say I are.
@@jennifercufley1728 I think it's because generally speakers of English don't like to pronounce 'mn' but (certainly in Irish, maybe in Gaelic) in Irish 'mn' is common and easily said. Take "ainmneacha" for instance.
That's one theory. Another is that it shouldn't be 'aren't' but should be 'a'n't' (am not)(m and o removed)
in informal USA speech, that's when we go for, 'ain't.'
As kids, my sister and I thought we invented “amn’t.” We thought it seemed a worthy contraction and would use it at home. Neither of us ever knew that it’s a known contraction, anywhere. This is the first I’ve heard this information. Interesting
Dude, you are breaking my _brain._ I have been trying all my life to avoid contractions in written English, and now you show me just how much I am over-compensating. Thank you for teaching a teacher. I still love Data, though. 😉
Then again, I always tell my students to forget about the exceptions and just roll with the rules. Who cares about the 10% deviation that is generally tolerated if just sticking to the rule makes you 90% correct? I know I don't. Contraction intended.
I'm sure I'm not the only person here who occasionally uses 'tis but that's more for fun and definitely on purpose
It's one of my favourite scenes from a tv show called Brooklyn 99, where Craig Robinson, playing a con man, explains how he committed dog fraud; instead of selling someone a Pekinese, "'Twas a cat."
When I try out a new keyboard I typically enter the first two lines of Lewis Carroll's poem _Jabberwocky_ in a text editor:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbol in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.
If spell checking is enabled it underlines many of the words, but I've occasionally been disappointed to see it labels " 'Twas " as a misspelling.
I shouldn’t’v started watching these. I can’t stop.
My favourite contractions are: "innit", "ain't"
Regarding contracts, as a native speaker the worst thing I notice with other native speakers is, I think, a result of them miss-hearing the contraction of have in should've and could've and then they write could of and should of. That's not a mistake non-native speaks tend to make once they get the hang of contractions.
Many people are taught that contractions are improper and as a result, they underuse them even in speech. They don't even know how most of the contractions are properly pronounced, so when they read aloud a text they pronounce the full forms. The sad state of language teaching.
Do you think let’s is used over let us because of lettuce?
I was really hoping to find you contracting “I shall not”. Somehow it seems to be common in my speech to say shant, much to friends mocking me, but I never know how that contraction is written. Sha’n’t? Shan’t?
In the 1890s, Lewis Carroll argued that can't, won't, shan't should be spelt ca'n't, wo'n't, sha'n't, because the verb is contracted. And Shaw sometimes omitted the apostrophes from all contractions. I'm not aware of any other author who used those spellings. Everyone spells them can't, won't, shan't.
@@rosiefay7283 Thanks for that. I know Henry James used sha’n’t on occasion
"Shan't" is the standard spelling, and as a 69-year old Brit, it seems to me to be a perfectly standard contraction. It only seems a little old-fashioned because many people have lost the shall/will distinction, and so say "won't" instead.
"Shan't" is extremely old-fashioned, to the point where people are likely to comment on it if you use it (at least in the US).
The lack of contractions (precisely 0), in Otto Warmbier’s apology speech in court, in North Korea, was one of the tells, to Westerners, that the speech was completely scripted, and by non-natives, too (namely, by the North Koreans) 😅.
I was trying to explain to a Dutch friend why he can't just say "I'm." as a full sentence. But, I don't feel my explanation is right. I told him a contraction can't be a full sentence. But I figure there has to be a rule. We can say "Don't!" And it doesn't sound wrong. I guess it has to do with the Aux vs the Neg. I will have to rewatch the part of video that explains the difference and see if that will help me explain it to my friend better.
I think the reason is that a contracted pronoun cant be the end of a sentence, or maybe even clause.
@@ansatsusha8660 _I'm_ doesn't have a contracted pronoun in it. It's the verb that gets contracted _am_ -> _'m_.
@@viinisaari Well, yes. But I meant a contraction that contains a pronoun
That's because "I am vs I'm" is an entire sentence. Saying "don't" is an example of ellipsis such as "Don't (do that)!"
Notably, in some American English, including mine, there’s the contraction “I’ma”, being a contraction of the phrase “I am going to” initially being contracted to “I’m gonna” then to “I’ma”
"y'all" is my favorite contraction. it may be the National contraction of Texas, my home Country.
It's funny you should say that; there's these youtubers called 'Double Toasted' who discuss movies, they're both Texan, and one of them came up with my favourite use of "y'all" - trying to work out where the budget of a movie went: "Someone stole all y'all's money!"
@@gwenivercall oh yeah! all y'all is normal for us.
@Jules Moules a lot of nyorker types use “youse” (see what I did there?” but typically followed by guys. “Hey, youse guys…” I’ve noticed them spelling it like that as well.
Texas isn't a country.
5:30 Basically, contractions *_don’t_* like to occur at the end of a statement; which makes sense: *_They’re_* reduced forms, typically reserved to the middle of a sentence/utterance, where not much attention is, typically, paid to them; or, *_SOMETIMES,_* to the beginning; but, *_NEVER_* to the end 🤔.
A Brit calling a Dalek a robot? Now I've seen it all.
If we want to be technical, a robot is also a non-native speaker, since its native language is whatever it is programmed in.
That's debatable. You could argue that a robot's programming language plays a similar role to DNA in humans. Humans are "built" with DNA, but they aren't consciously fluent in DNA, even if it does dictate how they "work."
that ending 😂😂
Thank you for bringing up Data! I was waiting for him!
4:05 In geordie (newcastle/gateshead) english, we use the contracted 'is' and 'are' for negative statements as well.
E.g. geordies would say
"You've not done your chores"
and
"I'll not go to the shop"
whereas other people say
"You haven't done your chores"
and
"I won't go to the shop".
Geordie is a fantastic and weird accent. We use these phrases every day that sound Shakespearean to other people. But I'll not just prattle on about my hometown patriotism
"You've not" is something I broadly find more British in general. I don't think I have ever heard an American say it.
That's not nearly as strange as I expected when I saw that you said you were geordie.
In southern English dialects, this is still present sometimes.
I'll not go to the shop' is pretty standard English in other parts as well.
I always wondered where the Geordie contraction 'Divvn't' comes from as in 'Divvn't dee that, man. It's daft.'
I read voraciously, and when reading things that could be contracted but the author has chosen not to, for whatever reason, if the tone is familiar or informal enough, I often find myself automatically contracting the phrases "in post" as it were. I consistently pronounce "it is" as "it's" in my internal narrative, or "they are" as "they're." So it doesn't particularly matter that the author has chosen to eschew contractions, I still thwart them by editing them in anyway.
I tend to write a bit more formal than I speek sometimes, though not a ton. And I do choose to not use contractions sometimes for emphasis. I think more about using them or not in writing, though. When speaking, I tend to let the speach more naturally flow.
Why are you not? > Why are not you? > Why aren’t you?
I always found data’s inability to use contractions as pretty silly. Like contractions are not hard for a robot to replicate, and data is to w most advanced artificial intelligence known to star fleet. Like current “””AIs””” already use contractions flawlessly, but data just can’t figure it out cause he’s like not human enough? Data could literally just write a subroutine with very simple logic to determine when to contract. I suspect the reason he’s like this is because some writer wrote down that data doesn’t use contractions as a way of conveying he’s a cold robot and the writers just got carried away with it.
I think the reason that sci-fi robots don’t use contractions is because the first fictional robots were probably imagined as servants to powerful people therefore would talk as formally as possible, and the trope got used over and over.
I am soooo glad I found this channel. 🤔 I'm so glad I found... 🤔 (I also react badly to inappropriate contractions in written language. I'm just over-sensitive... 😅)
The logic of the situation is that the 'contracted' morphemes are becoming clitics and inflections. There is no apostrophe in speech to remind us that something is 'omitted'; the perception that there is is not only writing-based but historical, and synchronically there are just words combining an auxiliary with either /nt/ or a pronoun. Already with the NEG contractions we have to treat them as inflections of the verb, and of course it's not just a simple morpheme addition as in many case the auxiliary morpheme is altered (will, won't).
With the AUX contractions it's not so obvious that they are inflections rather than clitics, as the auxiliary morpheme can appear at the end of nouns or whole phrases ("the one in the back's not good enough").
I don't pay attention to contractions because I'm from the USA and 77. When I first started using the computer, I had many people ask what I had written or what I meant because the 'translator' or 'computer' used British English exclusively. To this day, when writing to friends who don't speak English, I specifically don't use contractions. I even double check myself. I have been thanked many times over the years. Very recently, I noticed that subtitles for regular vlogs on TH-cam are in Australian English, Canadian English and United States English, not just English. I feel that is going overboard and just use Australian English because it is first on the list, alphabetically, and completely forget as I never notice a difference.
I don't use contractions in my writing for people who use, what I call 'stilted' English, and Robin Hood. Robin Hood? Well, I have series that is based on the BBC/Showtime Robin Hood/Robin of Sherwood. I don't know why, but I feel the contractions are wrong for that era. Of course, the object of the 1984 programme is that it was specifically written for young people of the 80s. The actors had long hair and were in their early twenties. So, Richard Carpenter used contractions in the scripts to make the speaking flow along the 1980s' speech patterns. However, Scarlett said "ain't" so often, that I use it for him. However, it is to be noted that Ray Winstone was raised speaking Cockney and, since he wasn't given a specific direction, he spoke wif a Cockney accent wot 'adn't even been invented in those days. When Carpenter finally caught it, he thought it was hilarious and left it. It make Will/Ray stand out. AND, most people didn't even notice. So I do leave his character alone.
Obviously, with so many choices in English now-a-days, I'm sure a 'translator' wouldn't have a problem with...well...wouldn't.
I hope , i will lear to speak acurately like this after listening these videos! Marvellous! woonderful!
Thank you for the kind words!
I noticed something about contractions when I read the fantasy book series "The Wheel of Time." The series was created by Robert Jordan, and he wrote the first 11 books. Then after his untimely death, Brandon Sanderson wrote the bulk of the last three books (books 12-14), based on Jordan's notes and incorporating some passages that Jordan had written.
I immediately detected a jarring change in writing style when I started reading book 12. At first I couldn't put my finger on what specifically was different. But then I realized that while Robert Jordan used many contractions in his prose, he never (as far as I can tell) used contractions ending in 'd (such as he'd, she'd, they'd). On the other hand, Brandon Sanderson used these 'd contractions so often that I felt like maybe he was getting a bonus for every one that he used.
I liked Jordan's style much better than Sanderson's on the issue of 'd contractions -- I guess because the 'd contractions seem to me more informal than other contractions, and just too informal for that particular genre of literature. (I also don't like the fact that these contractions are ambiguous. For example, "he'd" can mean "he would" or "he had".)
On a similar topic -and if you haven’t made a video on it already it might be one worth mentioning for non-native speakers- is certain contracted and/or assimilated words which are common in speech (even across many dialects) but almost never found in writing (except in extremely informal instances).
For example:
“gonna” ~ (going to..)
“which’re” ~ (which are)
“Imma” ~ (I am going to)
Some of such rapid-speech contractions may fall under the umbrella of “weak forms” which I know you touched on once before in another video. However, some are so commonplace that I would argue, if it weren’t for standardized spelling, they might have morphed into essentially a kind of quasi-inflected morpheme, where the contraction has become so thoroughly fused that they are viewed by the speaker as a single unit (though that’s a topic for another discussion).
Terms like “gonna” are so frequent that the auxiliary verb within it can be redupliacted without any notice by the speaker, such as in the bewildering and [seemingly] redundant phrase “I’m gonna go to the store”; which at least in American English (if not elsewhere) has de facto replaced the more straightforward “I will go to the store.” Some of this may come down to simple changes in phrasings and the kinds of statements speakers feel most comfortable with, but for a non-native speaker the effect can be viewed as strange, since one can understand why a foreign speaker would be baffled at the idea of not using a phrasing such as “I intend to” or “I will.”
“I’m gonna // imma go to the store. Y’want anything?”
Anyways, that’s just something this video made me think about.
"I'm gonna go to the store" is expanded to "I'm going to go to the store." In my opinion, it doesn't say the exact same thing as "I will go to the store." "I will go to the store" is ambiguous in time. When will you go to the store? Now? Tomorrow? In five days?" "I'm gonna go to the store" means you are going to either right now or very soon. The timeframe between those is slightly different.
@lumbrefrio Very true. I was mainly using it as an illustration of both a phonological contraction and of a phrasing which can seem bewildering to some non-English speakers who might see the phrasing as seemingly redundant.
You’re absolutely correct though, and it isn’t truly redundant, since it conveys a subtle distinction between a _Perfective_ intended action instead of an _Imperfective_ intended action. “Will go” is stated where the speaker is resolute in the action being performed, whereas “going to” is not. So yeah, it isn’t actually the same, but it’s functionally similar, hence why I decided to include it (particularly for the aforementioned strangeness of the construction).
Additionally, if it peaks your interest: my study of Sumerian has actually caused a great deal of introspection into the eccentricity of English grammar, since Sumerian is extremely different both to English and most Indo-European languages in general.
For instance, the sort modal difference between “will go” and “going to” is found embedded within the verb morphology in Sumerian, where the modal prefix [ga-] denotes intent to carry out an action, but where the speaker does not state definitively that the action will have taken place. This is because most uses of [ga-] occur on verbs in the Imperfective aspect. (You could use it on verb in the Perfective aspect, it’s just less common to do so).
This is contrasted with the use of the prefix [ḫa-], which when used on a verb in the Perfective aspect denotes either certainty, requirement, or expectation that the action will have been completed (whether in the future or past). This is because Sumerian doesn’t embed tense into verb conjugation, which for an English speaker is bewildering.
However, a Sumerian speaker would be equally baffled by the kind of distinction between “will go” and “going to go,” being contrasted with “will have gone,” because to them “will have gone” would seem to be the proper Perfective Aspectual statement, and “will go” and “going to go” would both look like incomplete actions, for which they’d ascribe an Imperfective aspect. They’d consider the distinction superfluous and seemingly redundant. Cool stuff! (For a language nerd like me) :)
3:48 I *_HAVE,_* personally, seen the contraction: ”’tis”, in modern use, as well; but ’tis very rare, now, compared to: ”it’s” 😅.
5:02 My favourite contraction that breaks this pattern is in the Gershwin musical _Girl Crazy._ "I'm bidin' my time, 'cos that's the kinda guy I'm."
Here in America we take contractions (like everything else) to the extreme. Double contractions (she'd've, couldn't've) are very common, and even triple contractions (y'all'd've, I'mma) are used frequently in some dialects.
Different American slang will in fact contract words not normally contracted. Normally I say "Have a gud'un" I naturally would drop the H some times or make the last and in rather then un. It's "Have a good one" How ever after asking it so many times, shortening one is easier to say.
Mr Data's manner of speech is my reference for spoken English.
I've noticed that it is usually young native speakers who confuse contractions and their homophones, like you're and your, while for me, as a non-native speaker, it was always clear what the difference is. I think that this might be because native speakers first learn by overhearing, rather than logical study, so they just don't think what contractions are actually derived from when writing.
I've also noticed that I never actually pronounce the contraction in they're (and sometimes you're). Or at least, I pronounce them like "theya" and "you ah", even though I'd spell them with contractions when writing.
I don't think it's so much about age. It's mostly less-educated people who confuse these words (although of course, everyone confuses them now and then).