Oct
15
2010

Never Trust A Spell Checker

Leant vs. Learned

(Add / View Comments) (0)Friday, October 15, 2010 - 11:54:28 pm
(Posted Under: No Category)
Y'know, I grew up using "learnt" in my vocabulary. I always learnt things, hardly ever were things learned by me. There is just something uneducated sounding about "learned", unless you're using it in the context of say a "learned professional". I'm sure a quite search of my blog will indicate this.

Neither the less, I've noticed Firefox yelling at me whenever I type it. You know, in the form of that red squiggly "you spelt* that wrong" line. And recently, I caved, and allowed it to change my "learnt"s to "learned"s. Despite the disconcerting feeling doing as much gave me. It still didn't feel "right", but hey, I don't want to look like an illiterate idiot either.

Anyways, I just Googled it, to discover that what I've always thought to be correct, well...actually is. Apparently "learned" is the more accepted version in the US, but technically both are valid, and as I'd always felt, "learned" is actually more appropriate in the context of a "learned professional", and "learnt" when you, well, learnt something.

So, I guess I'll be more weary the next time I trust a spell checker over my own linguistic instincts. Especially when it comes to the Firefox one, as it's also complained about "spelt" in this post, when that is also perfectly valid and reasonable past tense use of "spell".

Where are the configuration settings for the Firefox spell checker anyway? I need to turn off "dumb ass" mode. [lol]

Switch Styles

About Style Switching.

!Weblog Index

Sep October 2010 Nov
SU MO TU WE TH FR SA
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Categories

RSS FeedRSS Feed