Indeed. They know what they can do with their *******ized form of the language.
Learned learnt / burned burnt etc
- Thread starter Pawnless Endgame
- Start date
Indeed. They know what they can do with their *******ized form of the language.
Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2004
- Posts
- 7,018
- Location
- England
LOL another 1!
The house burned down last week.
The house was burnt down last week.
just to confuse matters a little more...
The house burnt down last week.
The house was burned down last week.
I think they can be used either way really its more of an accent variation.
- Joined
- 10 May 2004
- Posts
- 13,019
- Location
- Sunny Stafford
Reminds me of "things going 'swimmingly'" - that word gets on my nerves.
It isn't accent, but it is usage convention.
Burned is generally used more often in standard English in the US and Canada.....they would use 'burnt' in a specific adjectival way such as 'burnt out' as opposed to 'burned out' and not as a verb......whereas in the UK and othe English speaking nations the conventions are interchangable and either is equally acceptable.
No idea as to its validity as I don't usually care for such things, but I've seen learned (as if pronounced learn-edd) in order to describe someone in a way to mean they are well educated. Doesn't seem to be an ambiguity about which form you would use in that context, otherwise I probably use them interchangably without really thinking about it.
i will never 'get' the hung/hanged situation
whenever i see headlines such as ''found hanged in his home'' my brain just cant comprehend it
anyone care to explain ?
if i hang my washing out was it hanged it or hung out ? and what happened to hung drawn and quartering ?
ARghhhh
whenever i see headlines such as ''found hanged in his home'' my brain just cant comprehend it
anyone care to explain ?
if i hang my washing out was it hanged it or hung out ? and what happened to hung drawn and quartering ?
ARghhhh
Last edited:
That depends on the context....people are hanged, pictures are hung.
It is again, usage convention, at one time either was acceptable and over time the conventions evolved so that hanging as in a person was treated differently than an object.....probably just to differentiate the relative emphasis of each.
In the case of your washing, it is hung out to dry......and the 'hung, drawn and quartered' is in fact more commonly refered to as 'Hanged, Drawn and Quartered', it is simply a quirk of the English Language and the use of Hung instead of Hanged in 'Hung, drawn and quartered' is a hold over from when the terms were interchangable.
Last edited:
i did some reading and yes that explains it . dont know why i didn't investigate earlier tbh , its always irritated me for some reason !
i hung the cat out to dry but i hanged the cat to its death
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Oct 2011
- Posts
- 22,422
- Location
- ST4
With Spelt being a type of medieval wheat I tend to use 'spelled', even though it does sound wrong.
As I understand it, 'American English' uses the same language form as used at the time it was colonized (sic) by the English settlers. Rather than the Americans changing the language, they continued to use it in its original form, whereas in England the language continued to evolve.
Id rather use the word educated rather than learned in that exapmple though.
Oh, I like this quote though:
'Wisdom is only possessed by the learned'.