Do Italian Speakers of English Really Talk-ad-a-Like-a-This?

Also, how did we get “won’t” from “will not”? Spoiler: We didn’t.

We hope you enjoy the third installment of our new biweekly Q&A — for paid subscribers only — with Lexicon Valley host John McWhorter. Please keep the questions coming, from grammar to etymology to really anything at all that strikes you as even tangentially related to language and how we use it. Just leave a comment below or send an email to lexiconvalley@booksmartstudios.org. And thanks so much for your generous support of everything we do here at Booksmart!

Darrin S. wants to know why we don’t say willn’t as opposed to won’t, given that won’t doesn’t seem like what you’d get from combining will and not.

And that’s because it isn’t!