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Whoa, razoman, using my name in vain, are you?
I remember a dictionary in the late fifties that had "amn't" in it, as the abbreviation for "am not". Actually, it was probably an old dictionary even then.
BTW, we have 3 ways of forming future tense in English: (1) "will" (The plane will leave tomorrow.), (2) "going to" (The plane is going to leave tomorrow.), and (3) a time-oriented word with the present tense (The plane leaves tomorrow.) or present progressive (The plane is leaving tomorrow.). The second and third ones show that "ain't" can actually be used in a different tense, substituting "ain't" for "is": The plane ain't going to leave tomorrow, and The plane ain't leaving tomorrow. It can even show the past, although I think that's mostly in the south (I ain't never done that.). Of course, I'm not saying that any of these are grammatically correct. Actually, ain't none of them right!
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Ain't.
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I ain't paying my english teacher anymore, and donating the money to QA.
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tewald wrote: The second and third ones show that "ain't" can actually be used in a different tense, substituting "ain't" for "is": The plane ain't going to leave tomorrow | I'd argue that this is using "ain't" in the present tense as an auxilliary verb to form a future tense.
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Richerby, you're right about the form of "to be", but that's how the future tense is formed in English. From one point of view, we have no future tense in English, since it can't be formed by inflecting a main verb.
If someone said, "He has gone home.", would you say that that is present tense, since "has" is present tense? Present perfect is formed by using the present form of "to have" and the past participle of the main verb. The final result is more past tense than present tense.
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