When making offers and suggestions in questions, we can use shall.
Shall I take that for you?
Shall we go there today?
We can also use the negative shan’t.
Shan’t we try?
You shan’t go to the ball!
Employees shan’t work flexi-time during normal times.
Shan’t is a contraction of shall not and is quite formal. More often than not we use won’t as it works in both formal and informal constructions:
They won’t listen to me.
Why wont you listen.
I won’t try that.
Won’t we go to lunch on Tuesday? (more formal)
Shall and shan’t can sound quite formal.
Shall also sounds polite:
Shall I open the door?
Shall I do this?
What shall I do first; this or that?
Responding
Questions and suitable responses
Q. Shall I do this? (neutral)
A. You shall (most formal)
A. You could (neutral)
Q. Should one do this? (very formal)
A. One should (very formal)
A. Maybe/yes/of course (neutral)
History
Historically shall was used with first person pronouns to form future tenses:
You shall go to the ball! (famous line form a fairy tale and is said for effect)
So, I shall I go to work now. (still used but sounds dramatic)
So I decided, I shall go shopping after work on Friday and then go and have a beer. (again possible to use now but sounds dramatic)
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Using shall or shan’t can you describe your day, week or life in general?
Can you think of any other uses for shall?
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