次の方法で共有

More geeky language stuff

  • [アーティクル]

British English tends to have more irregular forms than American English (learnt vs learned, spelt vs. spelled, etc.) so why don't we say "ust" instead of "used"?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2003
    Learnt and Spelt look regular enough to me ...It is using "Loose" when you mean "lose" (or was it the other way round?) that is irregular not to speak of the terrible "Me bad".
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    "Write Us" - what's that about then?
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    Mike: The "irregular" means it doesn't follow the "regular" rule of adding "ed" on the end. See for example:http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/b/brsp-amsp.htmlUsing "loose" instead of "lose" would just be a mistake :-).
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    Rich: No idea :-) It always irks me when I hear people say that. Perhaps even more annoying is "Do you want to come with?" or "Let's go with" or any number of other possibilities where the pronoun "me" or "them" etc. is omitted.
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    Regarding "ust" vs. "used" - you need to separate pronunciation from spelling. You can't use spelling to justify pronunciation rules, and definitely not in English (eg, why do the Brits say "lifftenant"?) The rule for the regular past tense suffix is it's [d] after voiced sounds, [t] after voiceless. Since "use" ends in a voiced sound -- [z] -- the ending is [d]. So to answer your question, we don't say "ust" because by the language rules, "ust" is illegal. Just like you can't write "int x const = 0" in C because "const" is illegal in that position. Now, if you mean "used" as in "I used to like soccer" then that is pronounced with a [t] because the final consonant in that word is voiceless -- [s].</linguistics_lesson> ;)
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    That's lefftenant.No, I have no idea why, probably just so it didn't sound like French ;-)Another example: why "kernel" and not "colonel" with all the l's pronounced?
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2003
    If "ust" is illegal because the [z] is voiced, then "learnt" and "spelt" are illegal (and maybe they should be :-) ) because the endings [n] and [l] are also voiced sounds. Maybe it has more to do with sounds that are nasal ([m], [n]) and laterals [l]; or sounds that don't have a voiceless counterpart. Most of the irregular verbs that can take a t/ed end with these sounds: learned/learnt, spelled/spelt, spilled/spilt, dreamed/dreamt, burned/burnt