Contracting Contractions

I know this woman who has taken contractions to the next level. This may be the beginning of a 21^st century trend, who knows? She has taken two syllable contractions and shortened them into one. Instead of “shouldn’t”, she says “shunt”, or something like that. Instead of “didn’t” she says “dint”. She has no other noticeable speech defects, so I don’t think it’s a physical problem. And she’s not from another part of the country or some remote part of the British Empire. This is not Pigeon English or a Cockney dialect or Pennsylvania Dutch English. No sir. She’s from right here. So, did she learn this from her parents? Do her kids use these odd words?

I’m not sure what to make of these words. On one hand, I don’t care for them. Frankly, she sounds pretty silly. And yet, when she uses them, she speaks very clearly and forcefully, and I never have any doubt what she means. And, you have to admit, this gets rid of those nasty apostrophes.

I think her secret goal is to make these “contracted contractions” into commonly used words and get them into the dictionary. “Dunt” be surprised when Webster adds these in a few years.