is "shan't" completely extinct?

is shan't now used by anyone other than people writing historical novels or similar? do you ever use it? i can't remember if i've ever said it out loud or even written it down apart from just then.

I shan't myself

there's probably a thread for this sort of thing already.

I shan't bother searching for it.

xxp William Shantner

MC Shan't

& "shall", of course! almost as extinct.

Extinct? I should't think so. I use it unironically about once every four or five years.

there may be a "will versus shall" thread but i suspect it's hopeless trying to search for it

This was Friday's Dinosaur Comics subject!

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-2089.png

I never say (and probably never have said) "shan't", but "shall" is really common (in Britain anyway) in questions like "where shall we go tonight?" or "shall I tell him?"

lol @ dinos

I've always thought that "shan't" was a bit rude and aggressive, because there's a bit in one of the Mr. Men books where an evil elf says "Shan't!" in response to a perfectly reasonable request from one of the titular Men.

"Shan't'" makes me think of small spoiled Edwardian children throwing tantrums

I think the slight hesitancy about using "will" in questions is because -- according to actual real proper grammatical diktat -- "will" is to be used when volition is indicated, which means that "where will we go tonight?" is much the same as "where do we want to go tonight?" and "will I tell him?" the same as "do i want to tell him?"

in both cases unanswerable because the questioned doesn't know the answer to what the questioner WANTS to do, though may well have an opinion on where's a good place to go, or whether it's a good idea to ask him...

i have used it twice on ilx

You're all mentalists. I use both "shall" and "shan't" all the time.

Words that rhyme with dursn't
Rhyming Words
No words found.

fred durs't

I want it
I want it
I want it
You SHAAAAAAN'T have it

I drop the occasional shan't but never on its own evil-elf style.

"Shan't'" makes me think of small spoiled Edwardian children throwing tantrums

lil shan'tlords

Singing sea shan'tys.

little lord shan'tleroy

The only time I can recall it being used in the last 20 years is:

Homer: Now that we're alone, papa bear has a little honey for his
mama bear. [gives Marge a pair of tickets]
Marge: [chuckles] [gasps, reads] "Good for a three hour getaway at
the Mingled Waters Health Spa...mineral bath, facial, massage
--" How did you afford these?
Homer: Ho ho, never you mind.
[flashback to "Springfield Bentley" store]
[Homer sits in a Bentley wearing a monocle with a salesman]
Homer: [forced British accent] What advantages does this motor car
have over, say, a train -- which I could also afford?
Salesman: Well, you'll notice how the heated gas pedal warms you feet
while --
[Homer floors it and they speed away]
[two seconds later] -- gently massages your buttocks.
Well, Count Homer, shall we discuss the --
Homer: No, we sha'n't.
[pulls passes from the Salesman's pocket]
Yoink! [runs off]

Shan't evokes Enid Blyton novels, to me. But "shall" is a really common word, I am suprised to see some people here suggest it too is archaic.

I mean, "we shall overcome", anyone?

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=shan%20%27%20t&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=shall&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

Didn't post a two-in-one plot as shall is orders of magnitude more frequent.

That shan't peak is all the spoiled Edwardian children growing up and going out into the world.

ya but shan't would seldom be found in written form outside of reported speech

'shall not' peaked in the 1820s

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=shall%20never%20surrender&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

similar 20s-40s peak in the "won't" graph. Then the 60s happened and it was all yes yes YES - but not for long.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=won+%27+t&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=won%20%27%20t&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=mayn%20%27%20t&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

history mayn't

I'm required to use "shall" incorrectly in my work

Incorrectly how?

of course... "shall" is more common than my brane could comprehend today. i probably do say it after all.

it's damn henry james that got me thinking of shan'ts

and shouldn't it be spelled "sha'n't"?

I think the distinction in meaning between will and shall has completely disappeared. At school I was advised always to use shall with "I" or "we" (and will for the rest). I can't remember the reason for this, but I've stuck with it, and it does seem to give people the impression that one's emails have been given some thought.

You're all mentalists. I use both "shall" and "shan't" all the time.

Absolutely, some real shallops in this thread imo.

I think I say "shan't" fairly frequently e.g. "I shan't bother going to that tonight", but I don't think I've ever written it before and I can't say I've noticed it written much either. It does look very wrong tbf.

Pretty sure I've ever used "shall" in conversation in my life, let alone "shan't". It's an English thing to say.

'never' that is

and shouldn't it be spelled "sha'n't"?

Lewis Carroll used to do that.

He was on acid though

At school I was advised always to use shall with "I" or "we" (and will for the rest).

haha this points in the right direction (sometimes) but for the wrong reason!

Grammatically, shall is for pure futures and conditional, will to indicate volition (or "will", if you will):
Today I shall go to the beach. <-- declaration of what is to be
Today I will go to the beach. <-- declaration of intent
If it's sunny, I shall go to the beach. <-- conditional
Not sure what to do to today, I think I will go to the beach <-- indication of volition
Will you go to the beach later? <-- query re desire (roughly means "Are you thinking of going to the beach later?"

xp Fowler explicitly mentions that some variance is
Will you go to the beach? Yes, I will <-- affirmation of intent (1)
Will you go to the beach? I shall! <-- fuck intent, this is happening, d00ds (2)
Will you go to the beach? No, I won't <-- Because I don't want to (3)
Will you go to the beach? No, I shan't <-- I'd like to, but something (outside my control) means it's not happening (4)
Hence as noted above, it's odd to use "will" in questions involving I or we (because the people you're asking can't know what you wish).

However, I had to look all this up and decode a particularly cryptic essay in Fowler, which strongly suggests that
(a) it was all already breaking down irreparably 50 years ago, and Fowler is merely crankily standing against the vernacular tide
and (b) that the extent of the distinction is anyway often nugatory (see 1 versus 2: 2 is at best a joky intensifier of 1)

It's a pity, because the distinction between (3) and (4) actually seems quite useful. I guess -- as per the dinosaurs -- all those sulky posh infants put the rest of the world off.

xp Fowler explicitly mentions that some variance here is Scottish, yes.

oh sod, delete/ignore the first half-line starting "xp Fowler..."

"Shall you go to the beach?" seems really odd, and I think this is because it's declaring a kind of regal omnipotence on the part of the questioner, who can ensure the questioned is going to end up at the beach willy nilly (="will he, nill he" = whether he wants to go or not).

they only ppl i know that use shan't were the kids of an english english teacher, oh how we abused them.

I think the omnipotence element of shall and shan't is where this sense of class creeps in: of course posh people are going to use "pure futures" more, they run the world!

This obligation/volition distinction is rather subtle and complex - suppose I'm going to the beach for a rather onerous family outing, am I going out of duty or a personal desire to do the right thing? Expecting a couple of simple verbs to shoulder all that responsibility seems a bit much.

oh ffs i've just discovered ANOTHER essay by fowler -- the one I decoded is under he heading "shall and will", this one is under the heading "will & shall"

I think between compiling the S section and W section, he realised what c0cks the pedants and counter-pedants actually were (he's usually already arrived at this judgment): "There is the English of the English, & there is the English of those who repudiate that national name; of the English of the English shall & will are the shibboleth, & the number of those who cannot 'frame to pronounce it right', as they talk to us in the newspapers, best reveals to us the power in the English Press wielded by Scots & others who are not English. That power need not to be grudged them... but the mere Englishman, if he reflects upon the matter at all, is convinced that his shall & will endows his speech with a delicate precision that could not be obtained without it, & serves more important purposes than that of a race-label. [new para] The idiom is a strange one...

I cannot get to the bottom of that lithely impatient, subtly intolerant display of multiple ironies: he is basically saying FUCK EVERYBODY.

Fowler, number one halt the flow of prose gangster.

^^^This is certainly actual-real Fowler writing in 1926, not one of his later editors, who sometimes smooth his crankiness out a bit. This is why I love him, the way the sheer rage sometimes bubbles up through the care...

Don't think that's true, Marcello: one of his main bugbears is writers insistin g on the "correctness" of unhandy pseudo-classical formulations: he generally prefers unprissiness to prissiness; his obsession is distinction of meaning really.

I think he's having a manic episode on this particular subject, mind you: he's caught between elucidating the distinction (because he can, and because it's his grounding) and shouting IT DOESN'T MATTER (which he's not allowed to, given his job).

Things that should have existed but didn't and won't: audio CDs of Modern English Usage narrated by Kenneth Griffith.

With foreword by Patrick Magee.

my dad's version of all this is that ppl in the victorian era were inventing grammatical and meaning rules through a kind of inventive back-formation, and decided that as 'shall' and 'will' were clearly the equivs of the german 'sollen' and 'wollen' they therefore worked the same in some inchoate way. so WILL is volition and SHALL is duty and inevitability (which are the same bcz victorian imaginary) - but they have different meanings when used about yr interlocutor because it'd be rude to imply that they are not doing what they want to do, so you can't impute inevitability unless you are working really hard to convince someone despite all evidence to the contrary.

i will go to the ball = i want to
i shall go to the ball = it is going to happen and there is nothing i can do about it but you know i'm fine with that
you will go to the ball = this is going to happen, you're into it
you shall go to the ball = although everything in life is stacked against it and you are a girl in rags barefoot in the hearth yet NEVERTHELESS

I use "shall" all the time in contracts, which are all in the 2nd and 3rd person.

What about uppity teen who doesn't want to go to the ball? "You shall go to the ball and you will like it!"

xp to self (so a small edwardian child saying "SHAN'T" is actually denying both duty and inevitability, raging helplessly against the superstructural victorianism that defines its attic-nursery-bound life)

What about uppity teen who doesn't want to go to the ball? "You shall go to the ball and you will like it!"

this too!

but you can't use 'shall' about someone else unless you have some kind of power over them - you are their mother, their fairy godmother, in a contractual relationship.

no doubt there is a ton of dubious victorian back-formation to wade through (another fowler bugbear, it's why his book is called MODERN English Useage, implied subtitle is fuck a victorian) but the fact of the still-clear (and more to the point) used distinction between should and would suggests that not all the blame lies with germanophiles who could flourish sollen and wollen at their colleagues

mark c makes good point about niceties of legal useage -- this too will often come across as class-related of course

What about uppity teen who doesn't want to go to the ball? "You shall go to the ball and you will like it!"

Naw, ah'm ur'nae daein' it!

aye, yir goany!

whit if ah dinnae?

"You shall go to the ball and you will like it!"

Is this what Tevez thought Mancini was saying?

the odd thing is that my intuitive sense of shall vs will seems often to be the opposite of what Mark S says (and what I have heard stated in the past)

I say "shall we?" sometimes; other than that, I mostly just use these for the lolz

i think they are these days currently set about with much dated class/identity-pol resonance, hence lolz ftw -- when/if i have the willpower (and indeed the shallpower) i will get my head round the five columns of caveats and special cases in fowler's two essays :/

I use "shall" all the time in contracts, which are all in the 2nd and 3rd person.

― Mark C, Monday, 7 November 2011 11:41 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya depending on jurisdiction and convention, "will" and "shall" have legal differences, e.g. esp in engineering specifications http://www.northstarcsi.com/writing/spex-shallwill.htm