this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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[–] Openmindedskeptic@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's because people got their words all mixed up. Back in the day, "is not it" would absolutely be the normal way to phrase "isn't it."

It sounds weird today of course.

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

I know this is a really old post, but “is it not” is also the formulation in other Germanic languages, so we can assume that it was the same formulation in old Germanic.