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KarenB · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 227 Location: Hainan

Please don't laugh, but you know how it is when you hear something incorrectly so many times you begin to wonder if you're the one who's wrong.

Anyway, I was testing my students on irregular verbs, and I gave them sentences where the correct answer would be "flew" and "have flown" but I kept getting the answer "flied" for both situations -- so many times that I began to wonder what was up.

Well, in my American Websters' Dictionary, I've got fly, flew, have flown, but I decided to check the students' dictionary (Oxford) just in case, and they have "flied" down as both the past tense and past participle of the verb fly in "situation 15" (they had lots of different examples of how to use "fly"). Well, I looked up situation 15, and of course the explanation was in Chinese, but it seemed to have something to do with a fly ball.

So, is this British English or what? I've certainly never heard it used in American English. If it is Brit Eng, when it is appropriately used???

shenyanggerry · Joined: 02 Nov 2003 Posts: 619 Location: Canada

'Flied' as far as I know is acceptable in describing a baseball game. i.e. 'He flied to left', 'He flied out'. I don't believe it acceptable when describing birds or airplanes.

dajiang · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 663 Location: Guilin!

What the...

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/flied

Now that I didn't expect.
And it's from the American Heritage dictionary too, not Brit Eng.

Got this from http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861612500/fly.html:

21. (past and past participle flied) intransitive verb baseball hit fly: in baseball, to hit a fly ball
She flied twice in the second inning.

Weird...

Dajiang

Spiderman Too · Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:36 pm Post subject:

I would never have believed it had I not seen it for myself:-

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/flied

flied (fld) intr.v. Past tense and past participle of fly

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=flied

flied - past and past participle of FLY

Spiderman Too · Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:36 pm Post subject:

accidental double post

KarenB · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 227 Location: Hainan

So it's American English??? (Odd that I never heard it in 40 years of living in USA).

It seems it's used as part of baseball terminology, but would be incorrect when referring to birds, thus would be incorrect in the following sentences:

The birds flew south last month.

The birds have all flown south.

Don McChesney · Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 656

"Flied Lice and Wegetables?" Laughing

KarenB · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 227 Location: Hainan

Hee hee!

One of the students actually misspelled "flied" and his sentence read, "The birds fried south last month."

brsmith15 · Joined: 12 May 2003 Posts: 1142 Location: New Hampshire USA

As in.....

"Would you like flied lice with your dumplings?"

"Yeah, you Gleek pleek."

Brian Caulfield · Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 1247 Location: China

Another common mistake I hear frequently is the term cooker for chef.
They have farmer , teacher , lawyer so why not cooker for cook . Flied is what business men tell me when I ask them what they did last week . "I flied to Shanghai for a meeting ."
This is probably the difference between English and other languages . The rules come more from the street than academics . If enough people use an incorrect expression it becomes correct .

Mysterious Mark · Joined: 15 Dec 2004 Posts: 121

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

So it's another Americanism then? Not a CHinglish invention?

What has me annoyed sometimes is when the TV newsreel reader says "the people were shook" ... Shook as a participle?

rocknroll · Joined: 17 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

We had a really a heated argument between 2 FTs on

When did you come ?
When did you came?

What did you ate yesterday ?
What did you eat yesterday ?

Which one is correct?

They even checked grammar books.

rocknroll · Joined: 17 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

SORRY FOR HIJACKING THE THREAD !