1) Like I said: English is not my first language.
Ok, cool it down pal, it´s nothing personal. English isn´t my first language either.
2) But even if it were, here's a quote from the article mentioned above:
English doesn't like two nasal consonants like "m" and "n" together
Sad enough, but "amn´t I" is part of the language, and that´s all I wanted to say.
If I pronounce it "am not I", I'm not making any contraction at all, I'm just spelling the words out, so to speak.
Of course, but if you pronounce "amn´t I" you are indeed contracting. And by using the contraction you are not saying "am not I?" but "Am I not?" instead.
As for it being on any dictionary: it's not in my Larousse, neither in my Oxford's nor in my Merriam-Webster's A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English.
You might try the Heritage Dictionary of the English language, I found some notes for "usage" under "ain´t". You first look up the contraction "aren´t", which is indeed included in the dictionary, and it will send you to "ain´t", where you are going to find: usage of "aren´t", "ain´t"
and "amn´t", with the corresponding percentages of acceptance according to each speech situation. It just takes a little more investigation than just looking up "amn´t" straight away. So, and according to this, English seems to accept two nasal consonants together, like in "amnesia" for instance.
English is a language of sounds, to be heard, rather than symbols, to be seen, as opposed to Spanish. At least that's what my Linguistics professor used to tell us.[/QUOTE
]*sigh* ...but what do I know?
I honestly do not know what your teacher means, since spoken Spanish is a language of sounds, like any other. Could you explain a little bit what he means?
What do you do now? I honestly don´t know. I´d say you take it easy, this is a just a conversation topic, nothing personal.
Coc
