“AMN’T” AND “AIN’T” (COMMENT). Nick commented that Eavan Boland was mocked as a little Irish girl living in England for using “amn’t.” Boland writes about the incident in OBJECT LESSONS. She was six or seven, and what happened had great meaning for her. She says: “One day my tongue betrayed me out of dream and counterfeit into cold truth.” She used “amn’t” when an English girl at the time would have said “I’m not.” And the teacher “whirled around…her face set, her tone cold. ‘You’re not in Ireland now’ was what she said.”
The contraction “ain’t” is plausible and grammatical, but is considered in the United States to mark a user as uneducated. It was hard for me to get used to the use of “ain’t” by upper class English characters in earlier twentieth century books (think Lord Peter Wimsey).