I feel like we're talking different languages. I don't understand what the argument is; something just isn't translating. Ironic, considering the topic!
Well, to resolidify this - In my normal Canadian life, I might use learnt or learned as the past tense of "to learn" (Canadians are versatile/indecisive). But if I were writing for an American market I would use learned. So the words aren't really interchangeable/the same. If they were, I might use learnt.
But... they are. You can use learnt in the US. It might be rarer but it's not going to mark a character out as non-USian. IDK, I just don't get it. I don't think I'm going to.
No, I think it would mark a character as non-American. I've had my irregular past tenses "corrected" by US editors. Americans really don't use "learnt" as a standard thing. They might know what it means, but they don't use it. Like Brits know what a car's trunk is, but using the word would mark them as non-Brits.
Grade eight vs. eighth grade is another weird one. (any grade applies). I can't even remember which is American because, again, Canadians are bilingual, but whichever is wrong is wrong, to Americans.
It's a bit weird that we have two non-Americans arguing about American usage... I think @ChickenFreak's American?
Can someone tell me whether I'm correct that "learnt" and "learned" would SOUND different from a UK speaker? I'm very curious. Spoken by a US speaker, they would absolutely sound different. One ends with a 't', one ends with a 'd', and that's also how they sound. So they're distinguishable not just in print, but in speech. As well, a US speaker would not normally use the word "learnt". It would feel "other", somewhere between archaic and foreign. If you consider, oh, the difference between "car" and "motorcar", you get a difference in flavor, right? Doesn't "motorcar" feel a bit older, a bit more pedantic, somehow different in flavor? So learned and learnt are...different. Yes, their sounds are extremely similar--but in the US, not identical. Yes, their literal meanings are identical. But their nuances and flavor are distinctly different. I'm not sure how else to explain it. "color" and "colour" are the same word. "learned" and "learnt" are not. Yep! And I've never ever ever also ever ever heard an American use "learnt" unless they were faking a British accent or something similar.
Yes, we sound the T and D, so we say them differently too. I still argue that, in the UK at least, one is traditional (learnt), the other is modern. A 20 year old would say learned, his grandad would say learnt.
And, just another wrinkle, growing up in small-town Nova Scotia, a jumper was a type of skirt with (believe it or not) shoulder straps. And, of course, for girls, so the first time I heard a male Brit make reference to wearing a jumper, I thought he was a cross-dresser.
Although it seems that 'burnt' is most often used as an adjective rather than a verb whereas 'learnt' is always a verb... and 'learn-ed' (pronounced as two syllables) is the adjective in that case. English is a heartless bitch-bastard-scumbag.
His toast was burn-ed. I think I'll start a new trend! (Whenever I read a lot of Shakespeare I fall into the habit of mentally pronouncing the endings as a separate syllable in order to make the rhythms work the way he wanted, and that does sometimes spill over into everyday life...)
Unless they're from a traditionally rural area south of the Mason-Dixon line. Then you might hear it used as "It's what we learnt in school." Think: Andy Griffith Show from the 60's.
Seems I'm late to this discussion and all the points I brought up (well, most) have already been covered. (sigh) It's what I get for burying myself in writing all day, I guess.
Yep--approximately the same in the various areas of the US where I've lived. That is, a dresslike garment with an incomplete top half--straps, straps and bib, sometimes just sleeveless--so that it needs to be worn over a shirt.
Dive - Dove vs Dived .. in the UK he dived into the door way, he definitely didn't dove ... the only time you see dove in UK english is to mean the bird... collared dove, rock dove etc, and its said duv , not d oh ve
incidentally in the UK a jumper is what the Americans would call a sweater - generally knitted out of wool or acylic , so for uniform tops it might well be a sweatshirt (generally made out of woven cotton or nylon) instead of a jumper
Glad you crossed that bit out. During my years studying in the UK, I adjusted my language for the "locals" so thoroughly that the only time anyone took me for American was when one of my classmates or supervisors introduced me as one. The accent got me in trouble when I returned home--- my fellow-citizens thought I was doing it to be stuck up, whereas it had simply become a habit. And oh! I'm still having to excise the Briticisms from my spelling.
