Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Sentence Method question...

 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3
Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5771 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 25 of 27
18 April 2009 at 9:28pm | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
Anyhow, I simply wouldn't use 'used' in a negative form of the sort posited above - not with "never" and not with "didn't". The whole idea of negating something with a repeated aspect in English strikes me as weird: either you never did it (and hence don't use 'used to'), or you only did it sometimes, and so you say "I occasionally/I sometimes/I rarely/I didn't often..." ...

Well that's exactly it.

The only circumstance I would ever think of using the negative of "used to" in is as follows

A: I didn't think you liked eggs
B: Well, I never used to, but I like them now.

as opposed to
A: I thought you liked eggs
B: Well, I used to, but not any more.

I mentioned "didn't used to" as it specifically came up in a grammar course for natives that I took, and then it was mentioned in a book I was teaching English from. I checked it out in the British National Corpus and it was only in the spoken corpus once, but loads of times in the written, hence why I saw it as a valid example of simplified "educated native" English.
1 person has voted this message useful



charlmartell
Super Polyglot
Senior Member
Portugal
Joined 6004 days ago

286 posts - 298 votes 
Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 26 of 27
19 April 2009 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
icing_death wrote:
Depending on context, I think another valid "opposite" of used to is will. (Three years ago, I used to go to the
library every day. Three years from now, I will go to the library every day.)

What on earth do you mean?
1 person has voted this message useful



Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 4895 days ago

762 posts - 664 votes 
Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 27 of 27
23 September 2017 at 4:02pm | IP Logged 
charlmartell wrote:
icing_death wrote:
Depending on context, I think another valid "opposite" of used to is will. (Three years ago, I used to go to the
library every day. Three years from now, I will go to the library every day.)

What on earth do you mean?


My guess is that both of them don't change the succeeding verb, yet "used to" indicates the past and "will" indicates the future, thus they are valid opposites.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 27 messages over 4 pages: << Prev 1 2 3

If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.1719 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.