0

I found that many people use the form of 'is ain't' on the Internet. I don't know why they use "Is" + "Ain't" whereas it doesn't make any sense?

According to Google, there are about 193,000 results contain 'it's ain't'. So, how does this make sense and why they do that?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    I only see about 79,000 results, and almost all of those look like incorrect references to "It Ain't Easy" or "It Ain't Hard To Tell". Don't forget that there are many people on the internet who are also not native speakers of English.
    – stangdon
    Aug 18, 2021 at 11:32

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Natural language has little to do with logic, and in non-standard, spoken English you find all kinds of oddities.

In this case someone who start saying "it's not..." but decides to substitute the more casual "ain't" could well end up saying "it's ain't". It is common enough that people wanting to emulate a relaxed and free voice in a song might deliberately use this: A lot of the hits on google are for "It's Ain't Easy" or "It's Ain't Over Till You're Crying" and other song titles and lyrics.

Native speakers don't "expand" contractions to understand them. We we hear "It's five o'clock" we don't mentally think "that means "it is five of the clock". Similarly when we hear "It's ain't easy" we don't expand it to "it is am not easy" Which is clearly ungrammatical.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    'A lot of the hits on google are for "It's Ain't Easy" or "It's Ain't Over Till You're Crying" and other song titles and lyrics.' — worth calling out that these are typos in these case too (i.e. the songs are It Ain't Easy and It Ain't over 'til You're Crying).
    – anotherdave
    Aug 18, 2021 at 14:07

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .