Why do people get bought and brought mixed up?

[Starllight]

A Monday morning irk of mine… Surely people know the difference?

Bought - past tense of buy

Brought - past tense of bring

As a side note, where I now live in Scotland I have never come across anyone get this mixed up. Perhaps that’s why it irks me when I see it?!

YABU - They’re both very similar and easy to get them mixed up
YANBU - It looks/sounds completely ridiculous when people use ‘brought’ instead of bought

I didn’t realise that ‘but’ seems to generally be said in the West of Scotland. DP from the Highlands cringes every time he hears it 😂

Another Cambridge graduate here who mixes these up unless I think carefully, boop (sort of!). This more likely to make the mistake in speech than in writing. I can recall the moment in my tweens when I realised they were two different words, and why, and that I'd been getting them wrong.

Am also well read, educated, and pretty excellent at all other parts of English grammar, to put the other suggested reasons to bed (so to speak).

It's a total affectation with my brother, but 😂 the west of Scotland did not feature in his upbringing! Daft lad

I know this so well! It always really amazes me when otherwise well-spoken or intelligent Scots do this. At a push it is dialect, but I don’t think it qualifies as Scots language so not legitimate on those grounds.

A similar one is “I done” instead of “I did”.

“The markets have went down significantly in the last quarter. When I done a comparison with 2021/22, I observed that…”

You have now! 😂

YABU on the basis that a) you went on to get it wrong yourself and quickly found an excuse (there’s always an excuse, so I’m sure they have their reasons also) and b) you brought up not having heard it in Scotland. I just think that last part was unnecessary and possibly insulting to the other countries. I could bring up things the Welsh/English get right that the Scottish get wrong but it would just be ridiculous to do so as you cannot and should not generalise about people. I say that as a Swedish national before anyone accused me of bias- I don’t give a hoot what country you were born in, I treat people the same regardless.

YANBU to find grammatical errors annoying. I bite my tongue a lot and I speak two languages fluently. I can hand on heart say that I did not speak a single word of English until I was 12. But I try not to judge people who get things wrong, after all, we’ve all done it. You live and learn. Will understanding the reason people got it wrong make you feel less judgmental of them OP? 😂

Which region, @MajorCarolDanvers and @Snowybeach?

* (I feel the need to apologise for the* typo in my first post: This should have been Thus!)

Scots tend to use “will” where an English person would say “shall”. I remember my English boss questioning it when I was a trainee.

He’d say “Can you draft a response for me please?” and I’d say “OK. Will I mention the issue we discussed about X?” He’d roll his eyes at me jokingly and say “I don’t know, will you?”

I don’t think I ever used the word “shall” in my whole childhood, despite being from a very well-spoken family (My Dad was a radio newsreader!). Eg my Mum would not have said “shall we have a picnic?”, she’d have said “Will we have a picnic?”

“Will” in that context now does indeed now sound wrong to me and I’m always saying to my son “Shall we go to the park?”. I still have a very strong accent though.

The one that winds me up that I've seen a lot recently and it shouldn't but it does, is the mixing up of the part participle vs past simple - and I'm not getting at people for not knowing this technical explanation, because I also didn't until I trained as an English teacher, but it's the difference for example between:

I saw one somewhere
I've seen one somewhere

The mistake that people make is to write: I seen one somewhere.

Or

I ate those eggs
I've eaten those eggs

The mistake: I've ate those eggs.

It only happens with irregular verbs (see / saw / seen; be / was / been; eat / ate / eaten; go / went / gone) but to me it feels so instinctive to use the right version that it is jarring every time I see/hear it used wrongly. Even before I knew the explanation of why we use one form over the other.

I don't think people are any more verbal today than they are in the past, I think there have always been groups of people who are more verbal than written, I just think that the difference is that social media, text messaging and instant messaging have caused people who would have previously rarely written anything to write more and write more publically, meaning that you notice spelling and grammar more. So in some ways it's the opposite of being more verbal.

If you hear somebody saying "I brought some apples and bananas from the shop" or "I seen him yesterday" then you'd probably put it down to dialect and think nothing of it. When it's written down, it is more surprising, because 10-20 years ago, almost everything written down would have been proofread and checked, because it would have been a professional document, a book, an article, or something else official. Text messages had their own grammar and spelling rules when you were charged per 140 characters, and even forums like mumsnet/netmums tended to delineate into ones where correct grammar/spelling was deemed important and ones where it was not. You just would not write to communicate with other people in a colloquial or casual way, unless it was a short note or something.

The way to remember is: Crete is an island, on its own. So discrete is a standalone point. That was a game changer for me 🙂

That truly is a game changer! Thank you

@RitaFires am I right in thinking that Irish people use “leave” to mean something like “take” or “give a lift to”? My SIL is Irish and I am sure she says something like “Your brother’s going to leave me to the station”.

Plbrookes · Today 08:39

^Telling my wife later, "I bought a coffee on the way and took it into work."
So, it could be either then.^

No, bring it here, take it there. She is wrong to say, "I need to bring this to school tomorrow," if she's at home.

Have you noticed bring and take? I think this is probably creeping in from the US, but take is often replaced by bring.

Stop just repeating that she is wrong! You think she is wrong but I and others have explained that we disagree.

In my opinion it is entirely correct to say “I need to bring a packed lunch to school tomorrow”.

Well, I think you're wrong.

www.grammarly.com/blog/bring-vs-take/#:~:text=When%20someone%20causes%20something%20to,we%20say%20it's%20being%20taken.

When someone causes something to move toward a place, we say it’s being brought: I asked Jane to bring pizzas to the party. On the other hand, when something moves away from a place, we say it’s going. When someone causes something to move away from a place, we say it’s being taken.

She could say to the teacher, "Yes, I won't forget to bring it tomorrow," which would be correct.

Yes I first noticed this with an American friend but I didn't want to post the example in case I had it wrong!

@Catnary

i think when I say those words, it's only context that informs the other person. I don't think they actually sound any different.

whereas bought & brought definitely do.

my phone changes quite a few things, it's going to get me into trouble one day! Especially when it changes shouldn't or wouldn't into should/would.did/didn't.

most of the time context makes it clear, but not always 🙈I see it on others post as well.

it changes to/too their/there/they're type things as well. I don't know why, it's bloody annoying!

How do you pronounce awesome & roarsome that they sound different?

Did you read my previous post about the use of “bring” when an item accompanies you on a journey you were doing anyway? It’s not the same as the “bring” that you are distinguishing from “take” in the above.

Even after the numerous explanations on this thread why people can get mixed up with bought and brought, my brain just can not fathom it. To me they are completely different words with completely different meanings.

Something else I am seeing a lot of recently is people online asking for 'advise''.

same with license instead of licence.

Yet they all write “practice” when they should be writing “practise”!

@Starllight even if you were speaking to someone at work??

Did you read my previous post about the use of “bring” when an item accompanies you on a journey you were doing anyway?

It's plain wrong to say, when in one location and going to another: "I need to bring it."

I see we won't convince one another, so shall we call it a day?

Only if you retract “it’s plain wrong” and replace that with “I disagree that it is correct”.

@pinkmummy1

Don't let it put you off posting. I'm 100% confident your posts would add far more value than those of the people who judge.

🌷

@FangsForTheMemory , I still remember a sister of 3 saying, ‘We’ve brunged them all in, Mummy’, (re toys left in the garden).
I love how small children will absorb grammatical rules and mis-apply them - in this case both regular and irregular past tenses of verbs!