Amn't I

Just been reading Kirsty Wark's new novel "The House By The Loch" set in Galloway and "amn't" is used quite a lot. I don't use it myself but I rather like it.

DH says: "A long life and a Scottish education has raised no difficulty with amn't I. As with aren't I a small e is introduced to make pronunciation easier.
I regard amn't I as the correct original (though increasingly archaic) version of the Queen's English".

Hear, hear Mr G!

I agree that in Scotland and NI, "amn't I?" is normal. If you say "Am I or amn't I?", you can see the logic of it - we don't say "I are" or "I aren't", so "aren't I" is the form that's an aberration.

To me, amn't is correct anyway - "I am not" turned into a question.
It's incorrect to say "I are not".
OHO "aren't you...." etc is correct.

" I've heard plenty of people saying 'amn't I' but if anyone said it in school they were corrected to 'aren't I'."

I am shocked. I wonder where your teacher was trained.

alexa that doesn't happen in Scotland. 'Aren't I' just is not used!

mcem, yes but the bit in inverted commas is what somebody else wrote.

I was born in Scotland and lived most of my life there so I agree with you. It's too bad any school teacher would object to any regional dialect, except perhaps its use in a business letter.

I have just posted on another thread, 'ant's nest...'

Now I'm wondering if it should be 'ants' nest'
Or ants nest

And recently heard in a long list of reason why a man should not marry her, the girl said,
'....And then there's I'

???

Now you have opened up a new hornet's hornets' hornets nest BradfordLass

Assuming there's more than one ant inhabiting the nest, it's "ants' nest". You write down who or what owns the nest (= ants) and then put the apostrophe after it.