In the same way the distinction between /will/ and /shall/, preserved in correct English but already breaking down in the most correct American, has been lost entirely in the American common speech. /Will/ has displaced /shall/ completely, save in the imperative. This preference extends to the inflections of both. /Sha'n't/ is very seldom heard; almost always /won't/ is used instead. As for /should/, it is displaced by /ought to/ (degenerated to /oughter/ or /ought'a/), and in its negative form by /hadn't ought'a/, as in "he /hadn't oughter/ said that," reported by Charters. Lardner gives various redundant combinations of /should/ and /ought/, as in "I don't feel as if I /should ought to/ leave" and "they /should not ought to/ of had." I have encountered the same form, but I don't think it is as common as the simple /ought'a/-forms. In the main, /should/ is avoided, sometimes at considerable pains. Often its place is taken by the more positive /don't/. Thus "I /don't/ mind" is used instead of "I /shouldn't/ mind." /Don't/ has also completely displaced /doesn't/, which is very seldom heard. "He /don't/" and "they /don't/" are practically universal. In the same way /ain't/ has displaced /is not/, /am not/, /isn't/ and /aren't/, and even /have not/ and /haven't/. One recalls a famous speech in a naval melodrama of twenty years ago: "We /ain't/ got no manners, but we can fight like hell." Such forms as "he /ain't/ here," "I /ain't/ the man," "them /ain't/ what I want" and "I /ain't/ heerd of it" are common.
This extensive use of /ain't/, of course, is merely a single symptom of a general disregard of number, obvious throughout the verbs, and also among the pronouns, as we shall see. Charters gives many examples, among them, "how /is/ Uncle Wallace and Aunt Clara?" "you /was/," "there /is/ six" and the incomparable "it /ain't/ right to say, 'He /ain't/ here today.'" In Lardner there are many more, for instance, "them Giants is not such rotten hitters, /is/ they?" "the people /has/ all wanted to shake hands with Matthewson and I" and "some of the men /has/ [Pg211] brung their wife along." /Sez/ (=/says/), used as the preterite of /to say/, shows the same confusion. One observes it again in such forms as "then I /goes/ up to him." Here the decay of number helps in what threatens to become a decay of tense. Examples of it are not hard to find. The average race-track follower of the humbler sort seldom says "I /won/ $2," or even "I /wan/ $2," but almost always "I /win/ $2." And in the same way he says "I /see/ him come in," not "I /saw/ him" or "/seen/ him." Charters' materials offers other specimens, among them "we /help/ distributed the fruit," "she /recognize/, hug, and /kiss/ him" and "her father /ask/ her if she intended doing what he /ask/." Perhaps the occasional use of /eat/ as the preterite of /to eat/, as in "I /eat/ breakfast as soon as I got up," is an example of the same flattening out of distinctions. Lardner has many specimens, among them "if Weaver and them had not of /begin/ kicking" and "they would of /knock/ down the fence." I notice that /used/, in /used to be/, is almost always reduced to simple /use/, as in "it /use/ to be the rule." One seldom, if ever, hears a clear /d/ at the end. Here, of course, the elision of the /d/ is due primarily to assimilation with the /t/ of /to/--a second example of one form of decay aiding another form. But the tenses apparently tend to crumble without help. I frequently hear whole narratives in a sort of debased present: "I /says/ to him.... Then he /ups/ and /says/.... I /land/ him one on the ear.... He /goes/ down and out, ..." and so on.[53] Still under the spell of our disintegrating inflections, we are prone to regard the tense inflections of the verb as absolutely essential, but there are plenty of languages that get on without them, and even in our own language children and foreigners often reduce them to a few simple forms. Some time ago an Italian contractor said to me "I have /go/ there often." Here one of our few surviving inflections was displaced by an analytical devise, and yet the man's meaning was quite clear, and it would be absurd to say that his sentence violated the inner spirit of English. That inner spirit, in fact, has inclined steadily toward "I have /go/" for a thousand years. [Pg212]