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British or American?

Sorry Em, but u know this is "blog material".

so like 3 weeks ago, at bible study, i heard em say the word "learned" and i was like "WHAT DID U JUST SAY????" and i made a big deal bout em saying the word "learned" cuz i thought it sounded.. well... not right. but anyways tonite deary em left a message on msn while i was offline :P lol

ems *komen sent 30/05/2007 10:01 PM:
franky poo

if you remember

one day i used the word "learned" and you asked me "isnt' it 'learnt'"

well both forms exist

and it's not that one's american and one's british

though some people say that

it's cos they dont know grammar

the two differnt forms actually have slightly differnt meanings


and are constructed differently in speech

same goes for burned/burnt

dreamed / dreamt

ahhh thank you SeiSei Emily hehe u have enlightened me ^^
lol.... British or American... will never forget it.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

learnt - i learnt how to sepll in grade 12.
learned - the scholar is very learned.

you say learned 'learn-ed' as in LEARN.....ED.

fanny dong said...

sepll lol that's ironic

colin said...

hmm... wat is "seisei"?

Anonymous said...

aaaaah an intellectual blog. let me conclude by putting on some stimulating words:



pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

metaphysico-theolo go-cosmonigology (34 letters).

praetertranssub stantiationalistically (37 letters),

osteosarchaematosplan chnochondroneuromuelous (44 letters)

Tingy said...

pfft... nerds

Anonymous said...

do you mean sensei frank?

and sven... some of those aren't whole words. so you can't really count the letters... over more than one word...

Anonymous said...

true true.


the first one is though =P

Anonymous said...

no.... "learn-ed" is different as well.

Anonymous said...

if you really want to know the details, "learnt" is the past tense of the verb, while "learned" is the past participle.

(fried chicken = past participle + noun)

fanny dong said...

yeah i did mean sensei.... Dunchideskca ^^ (asian emo)

Anonymous said...

dunchideskca?

is that like .. Russian?

fanny dong said...

it's my attempt at japanese and what i thought was "thank u" when really it was "whats the time"

Anonymous said...

You mean "Nan ji desu ka?" LOL~~~ You crack me up... I thought I knew the difference between learned and learnt until Ems crapped all over me with that past participle stuff.

Anonymous said...

Let Headmistress Ems teach you about past participles, etc. She'll do a far better job than many of those teachers in high school given half of them can't read or write at a fairly high level these days.

And yes, "learn-ed" is different from "learned" or "learnt".

"Learn-ed" means a person who is well educated and knowledgeable (like a professor at university).

Somehow I always thought "learnt" was the past participle, past tense while "learned" was just the past tense, but I could be wrong.

It's similar to the differentiation in meanings for "blessed" and "bless-ed".

I <3 my dictionary and grammar texts.

michael said...

english sucks...lets speak jibberish now!

aodgj jnbsfff soiooroglll mmxnndsjuwe...akjdkasd, jiasooeriot...sodiasioe. oierwoei? aodnlasnkd!

Anonymous said...

ooooooooh i remember past participle... i havent heard those since i was a newbie learning english ...

my first verbs were:

do did done
eat ate eaten

and then came the 'exceptions' which screwed me over

beat beat beaten
read read read

T_T grrr i hate tenses. indonesian is amazingly ambiguous about these things =P ignorance is bliss!

Anonymous said...

yes i am bored from studying...
hence all my comments on ppl's' blogs

Anonymous said...

Blessed and bless-ed... Great. More confusion. Ems, please clarify...

Anonymous said...

i never learnt any past participle in english... i learnt it in... chinese class...

Anonymous said...

thats coz u didnt start as a tourist like me

Anonymous said...

LOL @ sven...

"read read read" XD

don't worry, no-one seems to learn grammar these days... except when you're learning a foreign language ehehe =P


um... a past participle is a form of a verb which acts to describe a noun. the word "past" in front of "participle" already signifies the past tense =P so the example "fried chicken" i used before is literally "chicken having been fried". using the word "fried" as a past tense verb would be something like "i fried chicken", but in the past participle sense would be "i eat fried chicken". notice how there's a verb, "eat", in the second clause, as well as the past participle which is describing the noun, "chicken".

there are present participles too, which are things like "running" man, "racing" car...


"blessed" would be the past tense of the verb "bless", while "bless-ed" is describing a noun... something like that, b?

fanny dong said...

buhhhhhhh

Anonymous said...

fanny dong, look what u started.


Ems explain the difference between:

I have read the the book.

and

I had read the book.

Anonymous said...

the first one has a mistake in it. the second one doesnt.

Anonymous said...

*has a fit*

er...

basically i think that together, "have/had" and "read" demonstrate different nuances of the past tense (in latin and classical greek there are many different past tenses... eg. imperfect, aorist...) by using the present and past tense of the verb "to have" with a past tense verb (in this case, "read")

using "have" and the past tense "read" conjures a different temporal sense to using "had"... "i have read" is more like... "i just read these books"

actually, that's really confusing because "read" is the same in present and past. let's use something like... "buy/bought".

so... as i was saying...

"i have bought these books" means something more like "i bought these books in the recent past/just then", while "i had bought these books" means something along the lines of "i bought these books a while ago (and now i'm telling you about them, as if telling a story)"

wahahahahah frank, ur attempts to stop the growth of this comment list have failed! >=D

Anonymous said...

ems said:
""blessed" would be the past tense of the verb "bless", while "bless-ed" is describing a noun... something like that, b?"

spot on.