On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:48 am Gregory Ewing wrote: > rantingrick wrote: >> "Used to" and "supposed to" is the verbiage of children >> and idiots. > > So when we reach a certain age we're meant to abandon > short, concise and idomatic ways of speaking, and substitute > long words and phrases to make ourselves sound adult and > educated?
Say what? "Used to" isn't idiom. It is grammatical English. Avoidance of "used to" is a hyper-correction done by people who don't know as much about English as they think, like "the grammar policeman let Johnny and I off with a warning", perhaps the most widespread hyper-correction in English. (If you take Johnny out of the picture, the policeman let I off with a warning... which is obviously wrong. Whether Johnny was there or not, the policeman let *me* off with a warning.) "Used to" is unexceptional English: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/usedto.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/quiznet/newquiz114.shtml http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_used-to-do.htm http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/usedtotext2.htm Any-grammatical-errors-are-deliberate-ly y'rs, -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list