In Praise of “Ain’t”

By Richard Goodman

Reading a column by Roy Blount, Jr.—such a delightful fellow—on regional speech inspired me to write a few laudatory words about “ain’t,” smugly labeled nonstandard in my dictionary. As a boy growing up in southeastern Virginia sixty years ago, I was taught in school that “ain’t” wasn’t proper. “You should say ‘isn’t’ instead,” my teachers insisted. Most—if not all of us—did say “ain’t,” though. It was as natural as rain. I think the teachers’ insistence that we not use ...