Talk:learn

Acceptable grammer [sic]

I came to this article because I had previously found another page that had "grammer" instead of "grammar", and I decided to search for articles that had the incorrect spelling and correct them. This article had:

"As recently as the 18th century it was acceptable grammer to say The teacher learned the students their lessons."

I could have simply changed "grammer" to "grammar", but on reflection, I thought that "usage" would be better. There are a lot of books about "correct usage". I would find that "usage" covers more than just "grammar". For example, when people say "dispute" for "refute", or "flaunt" for "flout", or "infer" for "imply", it's more a wrong word than an example of bad grammar. I would think of "bad grammar" as pertaining more to such things as wrong tense, wrong case, non-agreement of number between subject and verb, etc. While the definition of grammar can, of course, be extended to cover correct words versus incorrect words, I felt that usage was more appropriate.

I decided to put in my edit summary: changed "grammar" to "usage", rather than changed "grammer" [sic.] to "usage". I thought it might be a bit rude to draw attention to the incorrect spelling, which in any case was probably a typo; and the basic effect of my edit was to change a particular word to a word I found more suitable, so I didn't think there was any need to draw attention to the spelling.

To my considerable surprise, I found that my edit was reverted back to the incorrect spelling. Not only that, but I was reverted with some kind of rollback or popup tool, which on Wikipedia at least is meant to be used for reverting clear, bad faith vandalism. I realise, of course, that the editor who reverted me has a lot more experience than I do of Wiktionary, and obviously he did not intend to insert incorrect spelling. But it would still be nice to be told, even in the edit summary, what was wrong with changing it to "usage".

I have tried again. I have no strong preference for the word "usage". My main aim was to remove the incorrect spelling of "grammar", but I felt that "grammar" was not a hundred percent appropriate. I have now removed the word "grammer" altogether, so that the extract reads as follows:

"As recently as the 18th century it was acceptable to say The teacher learned the students their lessons."

If that is not acceptable, please explain why. Thanks. ElinorD 12:35, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This is okay by me.--Williamsayers79 20:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. ElinorD 08:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh?

"To improve, maybe used in an order."

Huh? DAVilla 08:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Meaning to teach

I don't think the word with the meaning of to teach comes from the Middle English word leren or from Old English lǣran ‎(as stated in the Etymology), because the n at the end of those is just the infinitive ending, not part of the root. So if Modern English had a word coming from those, it would be "to lere", not "to learn". I'm goin to modify the Etymology. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

As in to "to lear." 2610:148:610:6801:E48F:8075:10B7:32B8 16:46, 21 April 2017 (UTC)