English Grammar: Negative contractions of the verb "TO BE"

Learn ALL the negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, won't, and more) of the verb TO BE, in the present, past, and future tenses. This is basic English, so learn it right the first time, or review these if you're at a more advanced level -- many English students make mistakes with these! I'll even show you a non-standard, ungrammatical form, so that you'll recognise it when you hear it, though my advice is to avoid using it yourself! If you aren't sure what this lesson is about, I'm not joking -- all you need to do is click and all will be revealed!

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is on negative contractions or abbreviations, so this is something you will hear a lot when people speak because people use these abbreviations or contractions all the time, in informal speech especially because it's quicker. Okay? So we're looking at some contractions using the negative because the way it's constructed is a bit different from the way it's done with the positive statement. Okay, so negative contractions, verb "to be".

So, let's have a look first of all at the present tense. So, the positive would be: "I am", but the negative is: "I am not", but in the contracted form people say all the time when they're speaking: "I'm not. I'm not." And when it's written down you have an apostrophe which shows that there's something missing. So the letter "a" is missing here for "I am", so: "I'm not." Okay? Then... That's the first-person singular. So then second-person singular, "you": "You're not" because "am" changes to "are", "a-r-e", so: "You are not" contracted becomes "You're not" with an apostrophe, but then with all of these after the first person, all the other ones have an alternative version. So, you can either say: "You're not" or "You aren't", "You are", and instead of "not" spelt out, you've got "n't", so there are two different ways of saying it, either: "You're not" or "You aren't", and there isn't really much difference between them in terms of which is... They're both similar, they're both informal spoken. There isn't one that sounds more old-fashioned than the other. They're just alternatives. So: "You're not" or "You aren't". You may have heard people using this form and perhaps being confused by it, or you may be used to one form and not the other one, so this is giving you both here. So: "You're not" or "You aren't". Okay, then the third-person singular, so it's: "he", "she", "it", third-person singular. So it's either: "He's not" for "He is not", "He's not", or "She's not", or "It's not"; or it can be: "He isn't", and again, it's the "not" part that gets the apostrophe rather than the "is" part. "He's not" or "He isn't"; "She's not", "She isn't"; "It's not", "It isn't". Okay. And then moving on to the plural, first-person plural, "we", so: "We are not" becomes "We're not", "We are not". You may also be not quite sure how to pronounce these when they're contracted, so I hope this lesson helps you with that as well. Some people get a bit confused about how to say it, so: "We are not", "We're not", or: "We aren't", "We aren't". Okay? And then "you" will be the same again here in the plural, the second-person plural is just the same: "You", "You're not", "You aren't". And then we have the third-person plural for "they": "They are not" becomes "They're not", "They're not", or: "They aren't", "They aren't". Okay? So, I hope that's helpful, there.

And then there's a funny thing that happens, there's a non-standard version of this which you might hear in the UK, especially in the London area, but I think it's also used in other parts of the country, too. And it's a non-standard, which some people call bad grammar, but to be more polite, it's called non-standard. It's not the standard grammar, and it's this "ain't", and again an "'t" shows that it's not, but "a", "not", nobody says: "a not", but in the contracted form it's pronounced: "ain't" and it can be used for all the pronouns, which is quite useful really that it doesn't change. It may be non-standard, but at least it doesn't change so it's easy, although I wouldn't advise you to use it because it sounds very casual, very informal. So you would say: "I ain't", "I ain't", "You ain't", "He ain't", "She ain't", "It ain't", "We ain't", "They ain't", so meaning: "I ain't going to the cinema", "We ain't going tonight", "He ain't working today", things like that. So, "ain't" you will hear probably people saying it, especially if you're in the UK; you might hear it on television, on the radio, in films, and so on. Okay?

And then back to the standard grammar again now, going to the past tense, so: "Was not" becomes "Wasn't", "Wasn't", and "Were not" becomes "Weren't", "Weren't". So: "was" and "were" depending on which person. So: "I wasn't", "You weren't", "He/She/It wasn't", "We weren't", "They weren't".