51.25% of speakers reported that they or people they know use ain’t instead of didn’t in sentences like ‘I ain’t really wanna do that,’ while 48.75% of respondents in our study said they do not use ain’t here. Based on these results, about half of our speakers in the Black Boston community prefer to use ain’t and half prefer to use didn’t in the past tense. Interestingly, our Boston speakers were more likely to use ain’t in sentences like ‘I ain’t really wanna do that’ compared to in sentences like ‘Why ain’t he do that?’ or ‘He ain’t see her yesterday.’

- Ash & Myhill (1986:37)
- Fisher (2018)
- Fisher (2022)
- Howe (2005)
- Labov, et al. (1968:206)
- Weldon (1994)
- Wolfram (2004)