for the last fucking time

[rone]

"Didn't this used to be..." is WRONG. "Did" is past tense, so "used" need not be. "Didn't this use to be..." is the right way to write that. Hell, i even found this written wrong in American Gods.

Comments

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

"Used to" is an idiom, though. It does not conjugate.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Sheer poppycock. "I used to be a chef." "I did not use to be a crackwhore."

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

You were so a crackwhore!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Those pictures were Photoshopped, i tell you!

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Look, no way could they have been Phtoshopped. For one thing, I use Paint Shop Pro. And for another, you were a crackwhore.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

"used to" is a mistranscription of "use to" which when spoken sounds like "used to".

anyhow, my linguist friends tell me that by the time someone is complaining about anything being ungrammatical, it's too late (e.g. who/whom, regardless/irregardless, etc.). at this point the formerly ungrammatical form has become the current grammar. language isn't static; it changes. in fact my linguist friends claim that toddlers control change in grammar (so blame sesame street and barney) and that teens control change in metaphor, idiom, and vocabulary (blame mtv and substandard educations).

-- end geek

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I agree that "used to be" is a phrase and ought not to be conjugated - mentally, one is putting parenthesis around the "used to be" phrase. But also, "didn't this use(d) to be" is hardly proper English either way - it's demotic, you can't make it correct. The correct English is probably just "Wasn't this - ?"

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, but if i argue for the stamping out of ungrammatical idioms, i'll never hear the end of it.

[alfvaen]

And what you are doing now is...? Arguing for the stamping out of ungrammatical idioms?

I can't even figure out in my mind a grammatical sentence where the phrase "used to" could derive from. Unless it does come from "I was used to it being there"->"It used to be there".

Maybe we should change it to "useta" so its atomic inconjugable nature is more clear. I've never seen it "use to" myself in what I consider correct writing; however much the "d" is elided against the "t", it's still there in my mind.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

No, the stamping out of ungrammatical ungrammatical idioms.

I did consider "useta" as a viable alternative. However, my position on this is such: In English, the verb "to use" is used in an auxiliary manner, in the exact way the verb "soler" is used in Spanish. As such, it should be used in a consistent manner, even if it isn't technically conjugated.

So quit trying to justify lexical abominations, you little rat finks. I will only bend so far.

[peglegpete.livejournal.com]

For the record, I vote FOR rone being a crackwhore. A particularly cheap and skanky one, at that.

Ridiculous backformation.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

"Used to" is not a past tense; it's a past participle, and "was" is elided. If you're going to insist on a correct inversion of the expression, it would be "Wasn't this used to . . . ?" and nobody would understand it. All the more reason to insist on it, of course.