“I shall come, not will”

Question

Recently I asked about

I shall come, not will

whether it could be used instead of

I will definitely come, not maybe

How I came to such a question.

Here Shall and Will Usage

I asked about "Shall I win?" pointing that it could have some variants of understanding:

1) Shall I win? = Should I win? (suggestion)

2) Shall I win? = Will I win? (archaic with 1st person)

3) Shall I win? = is it 100% that I will win? (predestination\inevitability)

The excellent guy Mixolydian said either variant was possible, that it didn't matter what person you used "shall" with, it could have this "predestination\inevitability" anyway. Out of this we're getting that nowadays we can use "will" for simple future actions and "shall" for almost predicted (almost 100% surety of happening) future actions.

If I want to say to someone:

Don't be afraid, I will come anyway.

Don't get panicked, I will definitely come

Be sure, I will come in any case

I can use "shall" for it meanining an action into which I will put 100% effort:

I shall come!

And what if my original sentence is

Don't doubt, I will definitely come, not maybe or probably

Can I use

I shall come, not will

pointing that "shall" guarantees me putting all my strengths into it while "will" doesn't give any assuarance that I will do everything to finally come.

As I understood, it wasn't very easy to ask such a question because English was different everywhere - US, UK, Australie, Ireland etc. I heard it was acceptabse to use even "thee\thou" in Ireland or somewhere like that while all other world has already forgotten such words...

Answer 1

No

To a native English speaker this sounds jarring and confused. There are slightly different connotations to shall and will as you have discussed but these are not nearly enough for the phrase to not sound bizarre.

Shall and will have very similar meanings with the main difference being the level of formality.

As discussed the phrase is not grammatically incorrect and due to the slight difference between the connotations of shall and will you could argue that what you are saying makes sense.

However having done a quick survey of 8 of my native speaking friends:

• 3 understood the idea of what was trying to be said without any prompting from myself but did not think that it sounded natural/made complete sense

• 5 misinterpreted the idea of what was being said. 2 of these people described the sentence of meaning the exact opposite of the sentiment you were trying to convey. I.e They believed the sentence meant the speaker would endeavour to do as asked but would not make any firm commitments.

May I ask why you are so keen for this sentence to be permitted?