Get ‘learned’ vs. Get ‘learnt’: Do Language Rules even Matter?
What’s up with this? Is it “learned” or “learnt”? And is this something you can actually “get”?
Controversies like these get people riled up in a huffy. I’m here to tell you, it just isn’t worth getting upset over.
First off, as a linguist, I can tell you that language is a live entity; it rolls with punches, and it evolves over time.
What is grammatically correct in a language is not always a function of what is most commonly used in a language.
Let me introduce two camps of linguists: prescriptivists, who shout “can’t everyone just play by the rules for once?” and descriptivists, who insist “it is the way it is”.
Let’s take the age-old adage of McDonald’s very unfortunate slogan “I’m lovin it”- a slogan that has been exhausting language teachers since 2003. Technically, this is grammatically incorrect since the verb, “to love”, is a non-action or passive verb which cannot be expressed using the present continuous tense (think how strange “I am owning a car” sounds).
However, didn’t everyone go around “lovin” everything since the birth of that slogan? In retrospect, was it meaningfully significant that the phrase was grammatically incorrect? Probably not. Did the incorrectness of it add to the street allure of the ad campaign by using slang English? Probably so.
Point is that language rules are only rules in the absence of newer rules to replace these rules.
Make sense?
Next, what is correct or normative in a given time or space does not translate to what is correct or normative in another time or space.
Let’s look at the phrase “a most + ADJECTIVE+ NOUN”, such as “that is a most interesting book”. This phrasal construction was at the height of correctness and popularity from the 1820s right through to the 1850s (www.english-corpora.org).
While this expression is still grammatical, if you went around using it in the 21st century, people would think you stepped right out of a Hemingway novel!
On the other hand, the expression “get + VERBed”, such as “get married”, “get fixed”, or “get learnt”, only really began to be used about 100 years ago.
And interestingly enough, the frequency of use skyrocketed in the 1990s, and it is currently at its peak usage (www.english-corpora.org). For this reason, we see some new slang expressions exhibit this construction, including “get turnt” and “get lit”.
Now, back to the point of what is accepted in one space may be rejected by another.
While “learned” and “learnt” are both correct forms of the past participle, “learned” is more commonly used in North American, and “learnt” is more widely used in the rest of the English-speaking world.
From an analysis of British texts, we can see that “learnt” appears about once for every three instances of “learned”. Meanwhile, in North American English texts, “learnt” appears only once for approximately every 500 instances of “learned” (www.grammarist.com).
Well, what have we “learnt” here?
Firstly, a long-winded account of the origin of my blog title. You’re welcome. Or perhaps, ‘your’ welcome.
Secondly, the best way to break language rules is to learn them first.
Lastly, language rules are only rules to those who accept the rules, and if it were not for those rules being broken, new language would never be created and we would be stuck in a most tedious colloquy (= formal conversation from the 19th-century).
Note to the reader: This is literally my first blog post ever! I am brand new to Medium and if you like what you see, it would pull my heartstrings if you follow me or clap at my article. I will be sure to follow you back. :)
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