Pa: You’re late.
Johnnie: I was kept in for half an hour after school by the geography teacher.
Pa: You mean you’ve been a naughty boy.
Johnnie: Yes.
Pa: Why?
Johnnie: I didn’t know where the Azores were.
Pa: Serves you right. [color=red]Aren’t I always saying you’ll get into trouble one day for not remembering where you’ve put things?
I know ‘I were’, but I have never met ‘I are’. Is it a slang usage?
Aren’t I
The contraction for “are not” is usually used in questions like: “Aren’t I going with you?” However, “am” is the proper be-verb to be used with the pronoun “I”: “I am going with you.” The technically ungrammatical usage of “aren’t” in questions where “I” is the subject can be considered a “forced” mistake, because there is no good grammatically correct alternative. There is no contraction for “am not;” we don’t say “Amn’t I going … ?,” and the uncontracted form, “Am I not going with you?,” sounds so formal that it is not practical in most situations. Consequently, [color=blue]even though “aren’t I” is technically ungrammatical, and can sound a bit jarring to the ear, it is considered correct in normal conversational speech.
Additional note:
Michael Swan: “Practical English Usage” Second Edition
“‘Am not’ is normally only contracted in questions, to ‘aren’t’”
“The question tag for ‘I am’ is ‘aren’t I’?: ‘I’m late, aren’t I?’”
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