Dreams

[Noelia]

Cuando estaba en la secundaria, me enseñaron cosas del inglés británico que nadie parece usar en Estados Unidos. Nos enseñaron que el participio pasado de "learn" es "learnt" y no "learned" -que era el error comun de todo el mundo, porque uno siempre tiende a conjugar los verbos como si fuera regular.

Learnt y Learned se escriben distinto pero se pronuncian igual, y aunque fue dificil acostumbrarme a escribir "learned" ahora ya memoricé las dos versiones y uso ambas dependiendo con quien hable.

Pero ayer, me pareció escuchar otra cosa en una pelicula, y como no tengo los subtitulos en inglés, tengo que confiar en mi oído.

Dos veces escuché algo como "I have dreamed" y "I dreamed" en vez de "dreamt". No me llamaría la atención que en EEUU también hayan convertido este verbo en regular, pero lo que si me llama la atención es que, "dreamed" y "dreamt" no se pronuncian igual, y por eso pude detectar la diferencia cuando lo dijeron.

Uno tiene la cabeza programada para escuchar "I have dreamt" (con el sonido de "dreamt" y no con el sonido de "dream" entienden?)

Estoy segurísima que John usa la misma versión que yo aprendí "I have dreamt", pero como esta película es de EEUU, me gustaría saber si es común alla usar "dreamed" en cambio.

Noelia

[rlewis78728]

I want to think about this one a little more but I will give you a couple quick thoughts right now - American style.

1) To me, there is a pronunciation difference between 'learnt' and 'learned' as there is between 'dreamt' and 'dreamed'. But that may be because I have never said or written 'learnt' and maybe if I were to say it I would say it wrong since we (or at least I) don't use it at all. So maybe I would pronounce it wrong if I tried to use it.

2) I have heard people use 'dreamt' as well as 'dreamed'. For me, I think my use of 'dreamt' is very infrequent. If I were to use it, I might say "I dreamt it" but I think I'd be more likely to say "I dreamed it". I don't think I'd ever say "I have dreamt it", though.

3) Generally, I don't like 'learnt' or 'dreamt' and unless I wasn't thinking about my grammar, I would be more likely to use 'learned' and 'dreamed' - especially in writing.

I'll ask other people and see what they think and will let you know.

Robie

[Noelia]

Thanks Robie.
Yeah, well, phonetics are my kryptonite with this language, so if there is a difference between the endings "ed" and "t" thats too subtle for me to hear.
However the stem of the verb -in the case of Learn- remains the same and you pronouce them similarly

learnt / learned

In the case of "dream" that changes.

Dreamed / Dreamt

Dreamed is pronounced like "dream"
And Dreamt is pronounced like "dremt" you know what I mean?

It's a big difference for me!

Noelia

[sendai]

I never say "learnt". In slow speech, the difference between the two is clear to my ears. In fast speech, depending on what word follows the difference might nearly disappear. For me the vowel sound is the same in both words.

I think I say dreamt more than dreamed, but I'm not sure. For me the vowel sounds in those two words are different, as Noelia said. To me, dreamt sounds more informal, but I can't really say why.

[Noelia]

Thanks..... I hate when this happens, when half the people say it one way and the rest say it the other way, they make me choose and I don't know which one... I don't want to go around the world sounding like someone from Spain saying "vosotros" in latinamerica, I want to learn the common thing, but it seems it's hard to find out which one is it!

This is from google:
aproximadamente 2.410.000 de "i dreamed"
aproximadamente 1.670.000 de "i dreamt"

aproximadamente 81.700 de "i've dreamt"
aproximadamente 192.000 de "i've dreamed"

Clearly the "dreamed" thing is more popular... I wonder if there's something about the context that I havent found out yet?

Noelia

[sendai]

Even though I say dreamt a lot, I never write it. Dreamed just fits better in writing, probably because writing is inherently more formal than speaking. Also, dreamt looks funny, at least to me. I think for those two reasons you see dreamed more in writing.

If you want my advice, stick with "dreamed". One less irregular participle to remember, and (at least in the US) they appear to be interchangable. They both sound perfectly normal and common to my ears.

[rlewis78728]

I didn't even think about the verb sounds in dreamed vs. dreamt but you are right that it IS different than learned vs. learnt in that respect. Sorry, I missed that part.

I asked some of my co-workers from India how they learned the differences and officially, they learned that learnt/dreamt are the past participles and should be used like "I have learnt/I have dreamt" but learned/dreamed are past tense so "I learned/I dreamed".

That said, they also told me that the used the -ed version more often than that -t version even though they know it's not formally 'correct'.

I'm going to continue to ignore the -t version because as sendai said, it sounds and looks funny to me. But I will understand you perfectly if you choose to use it. Very much like using vos or not in Argentina.

[Noelia]

Ok so I checked some of my old books from high school and they do show both options for both verbs. I have a couple of books from fifth year so I guess they were more modern than the ones I used in first, when I learned English.

Curiously I didnt remember having learn(t-ed) the "ed" endings for those verbs I only remember my teacher saying "learnt / dreamt" as the correct ways.

My teacher was an old woman who learned English in a school but she's from here. British English is (or used to be) more popular here in schools than american English, especially in the past, so it might be that she taught us that way. And of course you won't expect a teenager to check what the teacher says in the book. I didnt even want to learn English back then.

If John ever reads this thread I'll have the final answer to this problem, I want to know how he says it and see if they taught us a Britishism or my teacher just chose the one she liked the most and taught us that.

Thanks everybody for the answers!
Noelia

[johnr]

Hola,

Por fin he leído los mensajes y .. siempre digo 'learnt' en una frase como ..
Ah yes, I learnt that at school' o 'I dreamt about that the other night'.

pero diría 'I have dreamed' y 'I have dreamt', de manera intercambiable.
Pero siempre diría 'I have learnt'. Nunca diría 'I have learned'.

Espero que te ayude pero lo dudo.

[johnr]

Cuanto más pienso en esto, más me confundo LOL. Quizás la influencia de los EEUU por la televisión es muy grande.

[Noelia]

Of course! It couldn't be easy, when we crossed that stupid line between intermediate and advanced we entered this new world where questions have multiple answers and you have to "feel" which is the one.... right Robie?

OK thanks everybody for the answers, it *was* helpful!

[Robie]

Yes, this concept of "feeling" the language is very strange. And even though it appears there is no right or (should that be 'nor'?) wrong answer to this question it turned into a very interesting topic.

En mis sueños, estoy cruzando la liné entre intermedia y avanzada pero si pienses esto, entonces espero que no me despierte.

[mahlele]

To add, my opinion...no offense to anyone who uses "learnt" but to me it sounds uneducated, I am not sure why. But as for dreamed and dreamt..I use both. I say...last night i dreamt about something crazy. But if it was further in the past...I dreamed about horses when i was a child. It's something I always dreamed about, then last night i dreamt about it...hahaha, this is too funny.
Marlene