Some people just dont though Learned and learnt The verb to learn means to acquire knowledge of, or skill in, something through study or experience. To learn is one of those verbs with both an irregular form and a regular form. (See the table below for some others.) The past tense and the past participle can be written as either learned or learnt. However, they are not interchangeable, especially in the US. Americans Demand Learned In America, learned dominates. The use of learnt as the past tense or past participle of to learn is considered a spelling mistake by many. It will certainly annoy a fair proportion of your readers. Brits Prefer Learnt Outside America, learnt is more common, but learned is generally accepted. (This is almost certainly a result of American influence spreading.) The difference between learned and learnt (grammar lesson)
Its about 60 years since I did O level English Language but Dr.(Basher) Irwin taught us that learned was the formal written form and learnt was the vernacular spoken form. Although Basher was a part time prof of education at Manchester University he'd started as a riveter's mate in the NE shipyards and only got into education because the library reading rooms were a warm place to go when unemployed and he had a somewhat robust affection for the vernacular but also recognised that we needed to pass exams. In the North West at the time learn and learned had a slightly different local meaning in the dialect of the Cheshire plain close to the upper Mersey. Rather than acquire knowledge learn meant to be taught (knowledge) as in "you wait till your Da gets home and he'll learn you how to behave". Often with a large leather belt - them Yorkshiremen had it soft
With no qualifications except a more than 60 year old O level English, my understanding is that 'learnt' is used as the past tense of the verb 'learn' and 'learned' is pronounced with the second 'e' accented and used (as an adjective) as a synonym for 'educated'.. The meaning of this latter would support the meaning suggested by Robert w above! Chris
This is illustrated in the Report by the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Expeditionary Force (ANCXF) on Operation NEPTUNE, where the respective Naval Commanders, Forces S, J and G use "Lessons learnt", whereas the Report by Naval Commander Western Task Force (CTF 122) uses "Lessons learned". Michel
I tend to use learned and learnt as slightly different tenses, i.e. I would say that lessons are being learned, but that lessons have been learnt. I don't think there is any real justification for me doing it that way, but then I've always been of the opinion that grammar rules are there to incline rather than compel.
How about all changing to German, because I believe English is the simple version of German. May one lesson to be learned - der, or die, or das just needs to be remembered what is correct , like 1+2 =3 or 12 + 4 = 16, or was it 26? Der Mann Die Maenner Das male kid. simple isn't it? Stefan.
Many words have changed meaning over time which sometimes causes confusion. For example 'ready' to day means prepared but way way back it meant having taken advice or well advised so that Ethelred the Unready really meant Ethelred the un or ill advised not that he was always being caught unprepared. Something similar may have happened to learn
It's handy but not vital to have distinct forms for the past tense and past participle. Past participles perform 'double duty' in English, forming the perfect tenses (see below) and creating adjectives; that's what participles actually are: verbs turned into adjectives.1 There are two kinds of participle in English: the present active participle (sit > sitting = 'a sitting duck') and past participle (burn > burnt = 'the burnt remains') 2. And doesn't 'burnt remains' sound nicer that 'burned remains'? The latter makes it half sound as if somebody goes around finding remains and burning them, rather than the act of burning having left nothing but charred remains. Past participles are also used in the perfect tenses. These are used (among other things) to show that an action was/has been/will have been performed prior to an established time or other action. They often link that prior action to the latter state or action by cause and effect: We went to Bognor. [Done and dusted, no more to add] We had gone to Bognor three times in three years and [hence] had no desire to return. Present perfect: have/has learnt Present perfect continuous: have/has been learning Past perfect: had learnt Past perfect continuous: had been learning Future perfect: will have learnt / [be] going to have learnt Future perfect continuous: will have been learning / [be] going to have been learning So with the example in the thread title we have: Present / Past / Past Participle: Learn / Learnt or Learned / Learnt of Learned. 'Lessons were learned' and 'Lessons have been learnt' are both passive constructions ('the passive voice' being that mysterious thing that Microsoft spell-checkers don't appear to like). In passive constructions the grammatical subject (the thing or person performing the action) and the grammatical object (the thing or person on the receiving end of the action) swap places (this is often the explanation, but it isn't quite true--the object usually disappears). Hackers destroyed the message board. ['Hackers' as subject, 'message board' as object] The message board was destroyed by hackers. ['message board' as subject'. There isn't now an object and 'hackers' may be omitted, see below] The battalion quickly learned the lessons of desert warfare. The lessons of desert warfare were quickly learnt (by the battalion). Passive constructions are very useful for when we don't want to say, we don't need to say, we cannot say or we don't care who has performed the action, and that's why 'lessons have been learnt' is such a slimy phrase: we're not saying who learnt them or what they bloody well were! It's the epitome or a hackneyed bromide. With all that in mind, I'm with Don Juan: 'We learned the lessons', but 'the lessons were learnt' (possibly 'by us', but we're too slimy to admit it). 1. A similar terms that sticks in the mind from schooldays but is often unable to be recalled properly is the gerund. This is a verb that is changed into a noun: (learn > learning = 'Learning the lessons of desert warfare was a vital process' or The battalion did not look forward to learning the lessons of desert warfare.) 2. There are actually three, I think, but you don't usually need to know about 'perfect participles' much. For the sake of completeness: 'Having learnt the lessons of desert warfare, the battalion was ready for the supreme test.'
To all, to be honest, I always hated grammar, both in my German school days and later in in English and Arabic. Stefan.
I hail from Northumberland. I was taught and always believed that ‘Learned’ was the correct spelling. I moved to work in London in 1988 and ‘Learnt’ was used by the locals. I thought they just spelled words as badly as they pronounced them [], but did go to the bother of checking Collins, which revealed that either spelling of the word is acceptable. My father-in-law is from East Yorkshire and was also taught that ‘Learned’ was the correct spelling. Is there a regional bias; Mercian, Anglian, Northumbrian and Wessex[ian]?
A lot of use of English is still dependent on which side of the Danelaw line the region used to be. It is also the reason why English has so many instances of two different words for the same thing - eg Cattle or kine, pigs or swine, you and thou/thee, rock or stone and so on.
