Try again: SHA N’T - 495 per million words
If you want to get any joy from this one, natcorp.ox.ac.uk/, you’ll have to subscribe. The one above is free.
I also think you need a few lessons in how to search a corpus, esp on tokenisation. Here’s a good start:
natcorp.ox.ac.uk/docs/fused.htm
You do realise that shan’t, aren’t, won’t, can’t, don’t etc. are made up of two words , don’t you?
Would you like to create a thread about that? It’s free.
Really? Wow! I’d’ve NEVER guessed that! :roll:
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Your knowing it didn’t lead you to understand my sha n’t search, now did it?
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Have you actually looked at and analyzed the handful of search results for shan’t in the BYU Corpus of American English?
If you had an ESL student who was preparing to live and work in the US, what would your advice to him/her be with respect to using the word shan’t? From what you’ve written, it seems you’d either simply say “Some Americans use the word shan’t.” or you would simply start spewing various search numbers rather than mentioning context or register. Would you even bother to mention, for example, that some of the search results in American media are excerpts of things written by people whose mother tongue is not English and who have never lived in the US?
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I’d advise them to ask just where and when it is used, for what purposes, and by whom. And I’d get the person below to tell me who exactly “us” means:
Let me ask you a similiar question: If you had an ESL student who was preparing to live and work as a writer, journalist, or similar, in the US, or one who was planning to study American literature, in the US, what would your advice to him/her be with respect to using the word shan’t?
You advise your students soundly.
Hats off.
MrP
Wow, Mr P gets excited over a little typo. See edit.