Ain't Necessarily So

'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.' - Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll


I began college with a double major - English Literature and Philosophy. My Dad's comment was, "Great, you can think about trying to get a f@#*in' job." I would have been upset if I wasn't jealous of such an excellent retort. 


My English Lit knowledge helped in my Logic class during an oral exam. When asked to explain Logic, I responded with that quote. The Franciscan brother who taught the course looked at me without saying a word. I continued explaining that Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll's real name) was a mathematician and logician eruditely illuminating on the logic inherent in the quote. When I finished, Brother Vianney quipped, "Curiouser and curiouser" I bowed to him in acknowledgement of his maintaining the Carroll allusion. Since I was being graded, I discretely refrained from pointing out that while my quote was from Through the Looking Glass, his was from Alice in Wonderland. 


I did get a job teaching grammar in a parochial elementary school. Several years later I became the Fredo Corleone of my family and went to learn the casino business. However, language remains a passion for me. English is fluid, expressive and expansive. It collects words and phrases from a host of sources making them its own. A myriad of exceptions exist for every rule. Many "rules" are arbitrary and became so, not for the language's sake, but for political or socioeconomic reasons.


That leads us, circuitously I admit, to today's subject matter - AIN'T. We have all been taught that this word is vulgar slang not to be used by polite, educated individuals. But it ain't so. The word was an acceptable contraction of "I am not" into the 19th Century.


No one belittles a speaker for saying "Aren't I?" This interrogative dissects as "Are I not?" Correctly is should be "Am I not?"; ergo, the correct contraction would be "Ain't I?". What caused this calumniated contraction to evoke such wretchedness?


As the 19th moved into the 20th century, the upper class decided ain't's usage beneath them. Commoners and the working-classes used it, and patricians decided to banish it from polite English. It remained in use with the the working class, and other "undesirables" into the 20th century and is still used today. 


The contraction has become the "utility player" of slang words. It now substitutes for a multitude of other contractions displaying the fluid, ever-changing quality of English. It's a favorite of writers and purveyors of bon mots giving phrases a je ne sais quoi. 


Will ain't ever regain its place in "accepted" English? As the saying goes, "It ain't over till it's over" As ever - BB


“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass

City of Brotherly Love

A trip to the Jersey shore gave impetus to the last blog. The approach of my natal anniversary kindled this musing on the city of my birth, Philadelphia.

"I was thrust unto this stage of fools" in Philadelphia on Thursday, June 17, 1954. About four months after my birth, my family moved across the Delaware to Haddonfield NJ, another colonial-Quaker settlement. This could explain my love of oatmeal and affinity for Barbara Bush who resembles that guy on the Quaker Oats' box.

As a kid, Philly was like Oz to me. We'd drive across the Ben Franklin Bridge to visit relatives and/or friends. As we approached the crest of the bridge, the skyline produced awe and excitement.

Several of my father's medical school alumni moved to South Jersey at the same time. The families grew up doing things together. Several came from South Philly. We'd go to block parties on holidays in their old neighborhoods. The sights, sounds and smells of these Italian urban communities seemed alien, yet wonderful.

Until the early 70s, we would celebrate Thanksgiving at my great-aunt and uncle's in southwest Philly. The best part would be the ride home when Dad would drive us past boat house row adorned with lights and then through Center City with all the stores festooned in holiday finery.


Closer to Christmas, all the cousins and their Moms would meet in Center City on a Saturday afternoon. We'd start with lunch at the Horn & Hardart's automat, walk through Lit's Brothers and Strawbridge & Clothier looking at the decorations and Christmas villages. The afternoon would finish off at the Wanamaker's light show accompanied by the world's largest playable pipe organ.

These memories swirl happily through my mind tinted with the  rose-colored glasses of remembrance. The curmudgeon in me refuses to allow nostalgia to lull me into the belief that those were simpler, better times.

In the first eight years of my life, Eisenhower used the CIA to overthrow the legally elected governments in Guatemala and Iran, Francis Gary Powers' spy plane crashed in the USSR showing the world America was spying on them, the Cuban missile crisis had us on the brink of nuclear war and civil rights' abuses on black Americans was at its zenith. By the time I was 10, we began sending troops to Vietnam to support a government which forbade elections and came to power in a bloody coup.

No wonder despite my fond memories I have an ever-present feeling of impending doom - as ever - BB

"The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here." - Finley Peter Dunne