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Fake past tenses


Richie Freebird

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It's sometimes the case that a strong verb (so irregular) regularises over time - what was once 'dreamt' is now accepted as also 'dreamed', 'learnt' as 'learned'.

Aren't these both acceptable because of the tenses - the difference between "I dreamed / I learned" and "I had dreamt / I had learnt" ?
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It's sometimes the case that a strong verb (so irregular) regularises over time - what was once 'dreamt' is now accepted as also 'dreamed', 'learnt' as 'learned'.

Aren't these both acceptable because of the tenses - the difference between "I dreamed / I learned" and "I had dreamt / I had learnt" ?
Let's have a look.Your first examples are the simple past tense (called the preterite) - think 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'Your second examples are the pluperfect tense, which doesn't use the preterite form of the verb but the past participle. In your example they're hard to spot because the verb forms look and sound so similar, but if you change the verb then you see the contrast: 'I went' but 'I had gone', 'I was' but 'I had been'.So the question to answer is whether one form of 'dream' or 'learn' is preterite and the other the past participle (which is what your question boils down to), or whether there's interchangeability (because the two forms both apply in the same sense, which is what my comment meant) . In this thread we've been looking at preterites only, so I'll stick to that.Here's use of 'dreamed' from Clive Barker:

I dreamed I spoke in another's language,I dreamed I lived in another's skin,I dreamed I was my own beloved,I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,And when I breathed a garden came,I dreamed I knew all of Creation,I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.I dreamed--and this dream was the finest--That all I dreamed was real and true,And we would live in joy forever,You in me, and me in you.

'Dreamt' is also used as a preterite, in this example by Daphne Du Maurier:

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Where does 'turnt' stand in the list. Used these days in a variety of different ways including being stoned or generally getting fucked up. but is someone saying 'I turnt round the corner' or similar is also becoming more common place, around here. It should be 'turned', shouldn't it? And not some long lost version of turned that no one has informed me of, ever.Regarding the words ending in 't' like dreamt. Google spell checker in Chrome will decide on the day whether it puts a red line under them or not. Most confusing.

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It should be 'turned', shouldn't it? And not some long lost version of turned that no one has informed me of, ever.

Yes. The origin is the Old English verb 'turnian', which was a weak verb, so it was 'turnde' in the preterite singular (and 'turndon' *chortle* for plural).
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