Grammar Girl here, today's topic is Aint and a few other troublesome contractions.

To quote the famous opening lines of the first ever talking picture, the jazz singer,

wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet.

You may have been chided or at least corrected for using this slang contraction, but do you

know how Aint came to be and when it's okay to use it?

You'll recall that when two words are pushed together and at least one letter is removed

and replaced by an apostrophe, a contraction is formed.

You would or you had becomes you'd.

You'd love this carrot cake bunny, or you'd better stand up now, Neil.

She is or she has becomes she's.

She's very happy for you, Joy, or she's been walking all over you, Matt.

The random house dictionary points out that although Aint is considered improper or slang,

it actually arose as an alternative to two other contractions.

One clunky and one just plain wrong grammatically.

Let's assume someone says, I'm doing all right, Aint I.

Well, what is Aint I replacing?

It might be, am I not?

I'm doing all right, am I not?

That's correct, but a little awkward and in today's casual conversation perhaps unduly

proper, flip that around and shorten it into a contraction and it's even clunkier.

I'm doing all right, am I not?

A worse alternative is aren't I, that suggests the construction, I are doing all right, aren't

...