Return to a discussion today that has followed me for most of my life. It involves the use of "amn't", and whether or not this is proper English! "Am not I going to church?", seems to just come out as "amn't I" when I speak or write! I'm told this should be "aren't I?", but that sounds daft to me! How can you say "I aren't" or "I are not"? That seems like bad bad English to me! However, I hear this "aren't I?" stuff being said by folk with plummy voices all the time! Of course, "aren't we?" is quite correct! Why not "amn't I?"?

I know some great academics in the English language, and the Rector of Falkirk who is always correcting ma spellin', read this blog and are maybe best placed to comment, but my mammy drilled "amn't I" rather than "aren't I" into us from an early age, and I'm loathe to stop using it!