Earned and earnt

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:41 pm

Does "earn" ever get included in the list of those optionally irregular verbs?

If not, why not?

And out of curiosity, when you say "You've earned it" do you pronounce it as if it is spelled/spelt "earnt" ?

I could ask the same question about "learned it" "burned it" and "smelled it" I suppose, but they are recognised as having two possible forms, whereas I'm not sure about "earn".

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 11:44 pm

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/earnt

But I declare for the umpteenth time that some Big Brother must declare correctness for us, or the concept can only ever be fuzzy.

These T endings are all retreating at warp speed, I think. They all get less correct each passing day. As to pronunciation, I dunno, I think I'm probably not consistent.

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:42 am

Doesn't this /d/ become devoiced if followed by a voiceless sound and then some people might use /t/ in writing too? By the way this {-ed} morpheme when realised as /d/ or /t/ tend to disappear qaccording to some phonological environmentrs? A NN speaker asks.

I earned some money working there.

José

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:57 am

It might sometimes get devoiced but it wouldn't usually influence how people spell it, since that applies to all -ed endings, and nobody writes "spant" for "spanned", or "rolt" etc.

The point you make does show that it might be a complex thing to answer Juan's pronunciation question though.

This discussion below suggests that "earnt" might be on the increase. I'd like to see some evidence for that, it doesn't make much sense to me.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:earnt