The expression aren’t I is often used in place of am I not, particularly in conversational speech.
Example 1 (incorrect usage): I’m going with you on vacation, aren’t I?
Although the use of this phrase is widespread, it is atrocious English that could be considered equivalent to you is, a phrase which most educated people abhor (although for some reason, these same people have no qualms about saying aren’t I). The correct form of the sentence in Example 1 is as follows:
Example 2 (correct usage): I’m going with you on vacation, am I not?
If you read this sentence aloud, it probably sounds awkward and formal, perhaps even a bit hoity-toity. However, it is correct English. If the phrase aren’t I is converted from a question to a statement, I aren’t, it becomes obvious that it is indeed grammatically incorrect.
that is correct. foreigners when studing english learn this rule. when I tried to communicate to german boy by skype he always said like this
Perhaps “aren’t I” isn’t technically correct as determined by some ‘official’ organization. But is there some reason why it rolls off the tongue so much more easily than “isn’t I” or “am I not”? Native speakers are filling in a hole where no first person negative contraction exists. I don’t see that this could be any less grammatically consistent than adopting “amn’t” as in Scotland.
I some parts of Scotland they say, “… amn’t I?”
Pedant,
What then is the tense of “Were I you,” or “If I were you,”? This doesn’t seem to be necessarily connected to time as would something more to the tune of “Had I been you,” or “If had been you”.
Correct grammar is always “what native speakers in a given time and place accept to be correct.” Consider Allman Brothers’ song “You can’t treat me this here way.” That is correct in the part of the US where they live. At least for those who belong to that speech community.
I mean “English grammer digest” insist on “am I not”!!
I’ve studied some books and each has used one of them. For example in “IN Charge 2”, unit 3, it is written: “I’m the only real witness, aren’t I?”
However, in “English Grammer Digest” it is used vice vesa.
I do agree with Andy, but the point is this, which one is completely correct? In turned to be an enigma!!!
Before you catch me….I meant aberration! 😉
I have always said “am I not?” in daily speaking, and I have always flinched when I hear”aren’t I?” come out of someone’s mouth.
I have just found this discussion, and it inspired me to conduct a bit of grammar research, since I don’t remember the reasons for the grammar I learned a zillion years ago. Perhaps someone will find these comments to make sense. Actually, since #1-#3 are just basic grammar, it doesn’t matter if they “make sense” or not.
#1 – The English subjunctive for all REGULAR VERBS is always the infinitive form of the verb, in present, past, and future tenses, and in all voices.
#2 – “To be” is not a regular verb! In fact, it is highly irregular, as evidenced by its wildly irregular indicative voices. (e.g. I am, you are, he/she/it is, etc.)
#3 -However, ALL subjunctive voices for “to be” are fairly “regular”: Present Subjunctive of “be” is “if I be,” Past Subjunctive is “if I were,” and Future Subjunctive is “if I were to be.”
#4 – Clearly, “aren’t I” can muster no linguistic defense from the subjunctive. It is colloquial or slang or some other abberation. It cannot be rationalized into “correct” no matter how hard someone seeks to justify his/her linguistic habits.
#5 – If you want to say “aren’t I,” go right ahead. It’s your right. Just don’t try to justify it grammatically. 😉
‘I aren’t’ is actually a misspelled version of a contract of ‘I am not’. Place apostrophes to indicate missing letters into the contraction and you will obtain the phrase ‘I a’n’t’. Lengthen the ‘a’ and it ends up being pronounced ‘aan’t’ which is then mistranscribed as ‘aren’t’. Simple, really. In some dialects, it becomes ‘ain’t’. Both are contractions of ‘I am not’ rather than an ‘incorrect’ use of ‘are’.
Andy, you are right in this. But English requires capitalization, Andy. A capital E. We live in a world where the use and understanding, by others, of that usage warrants both acceptability and correctness. Wittgenstein?
It’s not subjunctive.
The subjunctive mood would be:
“Were I not?” (past tense)
“Be I not?” (present tense)
The present subjunctive would be “Be I not?” (which sounds obscure)
In English the subjunctive mood of the verb to be” is always formed as “be” in the present tense and “were” in the past tense. For other verbs it is formed with just the bare infinitive.
Examples
They insist that I be here (Present subjunctive)
I wish you were here (Past subjunctive)
They insist he play (Present subjunctive)
The subjunctive can never be formed with “I are” so the example of “Aren’t I?” is certainly not a subjunctive and just wrong!
I don’t feel that this is subjunctive though, considering the statement is “I’m going on vacation with you.” So it’s establishing a planned, not a hypothetical event. On top of that, you would say (for the subjunctive) “were he to go on vacation with you,” but you wouldn’t say “he’s going with you, aren’t he?”
That being said, “Aren’t I” rolls off the tongue, and is used by way more commonly than “am I not”. This isn’t a grammatical error that is going to cause confusion either, so there’s really no reason to be so nit picky about it.
I’ve never seen the present subjunctive of “to be” other than in the word “were”. I have a hard time accepting that “aren’t I” is a valid subjunctive form because it’s ONLY used interrogatively.
I used to seek the answer to that in the Subjunctive mood as well.
Though that isn’t possible, because you guys have overlooked the fact that the Present Subjunctive form of the verb “to be” is simply “be” in English language – and not “are”.
“I demand that he be ready for anything” and NOT “I demand that he are ready…”
But you are right in that the Past Subjunctive is “Were”, “If English language were a bit more logical, many people would be happy.”
Or “I demanded that he were ready…”.
The other thing is that the Subjunctive mood cannot normally start a sentence, it needs something to introduce the concept of subjectivity, a conjunction, for example, – which is why this mood is also called Conjunctive.
As for the formality level for the “Aren’t I” vs. “Am I not” issue, I totally agree that it isn’t really obvious that it be incorrect and just because most people prefer saying “Am I not” to “Aren’t I” isn’t enough. It could as well be an exception in the English language, I mean, if there are negative inversions for “You aren’t” (=>”Aren’t you?”) then there must be something like that for the first person singular… Again, making a reference to the French : The French language has the verb “pouvoir” or “to be able” whose regular conjugation is “peux” for the first person singular pronoun “je” – “Je peux t’aider.” – “I can help you.” Though, when used as a question formed by inversion there are two ways : “Peux-je t’aider ?” (least common) and “PUIS-je t’aider?” (the most common of the two in written language) – “Can I help you?”. In this verb, the second interrogative form exists ONLY (!) for the first person singular “je” : “puis-tu” instead of “peux-tu” cannot occur. What if in English that is also the case, of which people just aren’t aware ? Who knows…?
And then I also think that all the argue about what is “more correct” is useless since English, unlike French doesn’t have an equivalent to Académie Française, to preserve the correct language.
All the <> is also trash. If you do the same thing for the personal pronoun “you”, “You’re ready, aren’t you ?” => “You’re ready, are not you ?”, it sounds just as awkward as for “aren’t I”, yet, “Aren’t you” is admitted to be correct…
Thanks for the opinion, Jackson. I appreciate it. The analogy with french is an interesting one, since french is a language where the subjunctive is alive and well.
rationale*
Andy, I completely agree. I’ve been trying to figure out why Standard American and British English would use “aren’t I” instead of “amn’t I”, as they do in Ireland, or “ain’t I”, as much of the English-speaking world does. i.e. what is the grammatical rational?
Your explanation with the subjunctive makes sense — as it is in the interrogative, that could be interpreted as a subjunctive. For instance in French there are certain verbs that in the affirmative you would use the indicative, but if it’s in the negative or the interrogative you use a subjunctive.
I didn’t mean to make my comment sound too complex, and I’ll rephrase in a simpler way.
In English, when people are talking about events that may or may not happen, they often use the ‘subjunctive mood’, something that is used a lot in other languages but is all but lost from english. For example, in the phrase I listed “If I were to go…”, we use an alternative to “I was” because the event in question may or may not occur. This is pretty much the last vestige of the subjunctive in english, yet “I were” is indeed correct in this case. So, my question then, is why can’t we say “aren’t I” if we are discussing events (say, going on vacation) that are uncertain?
Andy, you may be correct. Who am I to argue with a brain? But you have added fuel to the fire. Would you re-state your comment, with a great deal of simplification? You know, endeavor to help us simpletons.
Ok, I understand that ‘I are’ is not the correct conjugation of the present tense of ‘to be’. However, in the example sentence, isn’t the verb being used in a ‘subjunctive’ mood in which the specific event may or may not occur? For example, in the sentence “If I were to go with you on vacation…”, the conjugation of ‘to be’ as ‘I were’ is not the formal conjugation for the first person singular. But because the event is conditional and abstract rather than concrete, the alternative conjugation is used. So why not here? Simply saying that ‘I are’ isn’t correct does not solve the problem, guys.
If you just disassemble the contraction “aren’t,” you will see it is actually “are not”. So, “are not I” is definitely NOT correct.
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