Stan CareyEavan Boland and the emergence of a poetic self. On the blog: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2026/03/29/eavan-boland-and-the-emergence-of-a-poetic-self/
"Without knowing, I had used that thing for which the English reserve a visceral dislike: their language, loaded and aimed by the old enemy."
—Eavan Boland, on using the word "amn't" in a London school at the age of 6 or 7
Bodhipaksa@stancarey In Scottish schools the teachers would come down hard on you if you used a Scots word, as if you'd uttered profanity. I'm curious if the same kind of colonial mindset exists in Irish schools.
@bodhipaksa Irish was systematically suppressed here for centuries. That was internalized as shame and extended to Irish English: I know someone who wrote an Irish English idiom in school and was made cut it out of her copybook with a scissors and bury it in a hole in the ground outside
Hamish BuchananThe English did the same to Indigenous languages throughout North America, too.
It's weird that they're so concerned with the purity of their language when it is itself a hybrid of several others, and has evolved a lot over the years.
It's worth remembering that it's the Irish and the Scots who are doing this to themselves. Colonized or formerly colonized people who believe the colonizers provide the norm for language and behavior are just as hard on their own people as any colonial master would be. Often worse.
BTW, @stancarey "amn't" is common in Scotland as well. https://martin-millar.blogspot.com/2010/09/scottish-usage-amnt.html
Yes. There is none so zealous as the converted. I remember my grandfather being proud that Scots soldiers were the bravest, toughest fighters in the British colonial wars.
I'm a life-long Canadian and fell no real connection to Scots history or culture, but I do enjoy the little Scots turns of phrase that turn up in my language now and then.
RE 🇨🇦@hamishb @bodhipaksa @stancarey
I've been aware of "amn't" as a contraction of "am not" for a while, but I've never heard it used.
The word "ain't" is also a contraction of "am not", but it has been banned as slang since I was a child.
I have to wonder if the prohibition on "amn't" is an extension of the prohibition on "ain't".
"Aren't" as the first person contraction apparently is a result of the fact that "an't" (another variant of "ain't") and "aren't" have the same pronunciation in certain dialects of English.
@hamishb @bodhipaksa @stancarey
This reminds me of something that happened in the reverse, seemingly just in Canada.
My dad used to pronounce "khaki" as "car key", in a typical rhotic Canadian English accent. Canadians had added the 'r' in as an over-correction from the non-rhotic English accent, which "khaki" and "car key" are also homonyms because the "r" is not pronounced.
My dad is the only one I knew of. I'm not sure how many Canadians still pronounce it this way, as we tend also to "do it to ourselves" in comparison to American English.