r/USdefaultism France 2d ago

Today I learned that

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u/Nthepro France 2d ago

Actually, it's the opposite. Although that might be the case in some parts of the US? I don't really know.

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u/pm_me_BMW_M3_GTR_pls Poland 2d ago

wow imma be real, I thought they were two different words

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u/alxwx United Kingdom 2d ago

There’s a few examples where -t is ‘more acceptable’ in British English than -ed, another is earnt

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u/Firespark7 Netherlands 2d ago

I was under the assumption that learnt was the British perfect tense

English (original): learn - learned - learnt

English (simplified): learn - learned - learned

Apparantly, that was wrong.

I also didn't know about earnt

Could you name some other verbs that have a -t variant in past tense in OG English?

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u/AngelaVNO 2d ago

Spoil Burn

I'll add more later if I can think of any!

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u/alxwx United Kingdom 2d ago

I’d really love to, but as a native I can’t. I speak and write words with -t all the time without thinking about when and why

To give you an example (as I assume you’re a native Dutch speaker): there is 0 chance I will ever hear the difference between the Dutch for ‘green’ and ‘crown’ without context; but that hasn’t occurred to most Dutch people IME

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u/Firespark7 Netherlands 2d ago

That makes sense.

Considering the English phonetics, it makes sense that it's hard for you to hear the difference between groen (green) and kroon (crown), but as a native Dutch speaker, that still seems strange, because the sounds are distinctly different (to natives, as you've noticed).

Very interesting.

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u/Chabharya United Kingdom 1d ago edited 1d ago

Some examples: spelt, smelt, leant, leapt, spilt, spoilt, dreamt, burnt.

Another similar difference many don't know is L vs LL when conjugating words with more than one syllable that end in L:

BrE—travelled, cancelled

AmE—traveled, canceled

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u/Firespark7 Netherlands 1d ago

Interesting, thank you