Learned and Learnt Are Both Correct, but Usage Differs by Country

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lawrence from San Diego.

Hi, Lawrence.

Hello, Lawrence. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Well, a couple weeks ago, I guess it was, my girlfriend is a professor at California State Long Beach, and she was writing an assignment for her class.

And I often look over her assignment.

She looks over my papers, and the last line of the paper, or last line of the assignment, was write a paper telling me what you have learned.

And I looked at that, and I said, well, that’s not right.

It should be telling me what you have learned.

And she said, no, no, have learned is correct.

And I said, it doesn’t sound right to me.

So, of course, being Internet people, we went to the Internet, and I did some research, and I looked around, and I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer.

We thought it might have to do with something, the fact that she’s Indian, and so she was educated, you know, with the Queen’s English.

I’m American, so, you know, I was not.

And there seems to be some indication on the web that that might be the difference.

But, you know, I wasn’t so sure about what the rules were.

So was her usage correct?

Is it a British versus an American thing?

Or is it something that we’re getting out of using?

Is it, you know, what’s the rule for using the P form as opposed to the ED form?

You’ve come close to the heart of the thing, Lawrence.

You’ve come really close to the heart of it.

Well, this is a long history, and I’ll point you to some books at the end of this call that might help you with a little more detail.

But the short version is that in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a movement to make the E.D. forms of a bunch of different sorts of words the most common one.

And that was to replace the T form.

So learned instead of learnt and spelled instead of spelt and so forth.

However, this movement lasted in the United States, and we never really reverted, but it didn’t last in the UK.

And so in the UK, they still have retained a great number of those old T spelled forms.

And at the same time, they coexist in the UK with the ED forms.

And of course, they propagated those T forms like learnt to the Commonwealth countries, except for Canada for the most part, which in this case is more or less like American English.

So, for example, if you go to the Antipodes, to New Zealand and Australia, you’ll find that Australians love the T forms.

New Zealanders use them a little less, but they’re very common there.

Of course, this is true in India as well.

The British had hundreds of years of history in India, and the English spoken there hews very closely to the British model with some of those wonderful Indian exceptions that people have written books about.

One of them is called Indian English by Pingali Salaja.

That’s S-A-I-L-A-J-A.

And there’s another one called Contemporary Indian English by Andreas.

I don’t know how to say this, but it’s S-E-D-L-A-T-S-C-H-E-K.

And we’ll link to those books on our website.

Oh, well, that’s really interesting.

You know, at first I suspected it was something having to do with Queen’s English versus, you know, the American English.

But then, you know, looking on the web, I got more confused with the past participles and all that other stuff and what was what.

But, you know, and of course the web is a notoriously bad place to get good information.

Or at least clear information.

And the radio is a great one.

Thanks for calling.

It’s great.

I love the show and you guys are great.

Awesome.

And so, I mean, I’ll have to start sending you more questions.

I have tons of them.

Oh, they will feel really spoiled.

Hey, we’ll talk with you later.

Don’t forget to tell everyone about you learned today.

I will.

I will indeed.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I love it when we hear from people about the language issues that come up in their relationships.

Yes.

Right?

Married couples, boyfriends and girlfriends, just sometimes even roommates.

You can tell us about yours, words@waywordradio.org, or call us 877-929-9673.