Used to

[pne]

What spelling do you use in the following sentences?

NB For the purposes of grammar, please answer with what you would say (i.e. I'm looking for best written approximation of spoken English, not "standard written English" answers).

Also, I see that the "When it started out" sentence is not a good example; please disregard the exact wording and choose what you would use for the negative of "used to". (Can anyone suggest a good example? "When we were kids, we didn't used to have this sort of thing", perhaps? I can't think of a good example off the top of my head.)

And in general, I'm not asking whether you'd use the exact wording in a given sentence, but trying to elicit which form of "used to" you'd use in a given situation.

[Poll #430362]

Comments

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon among some speakers of Australian English. It's only among a *very* small minority of speakers; but for those speakers, when the previous word ends in a vowel, an epenthetic [n] is inserted, so it sounds like this:

"I nyused to do it when I was a kid."

It sounds odd, but I've heard this in the speech of at least two people, and neither of them has ever had any contact with the other.

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

Australian English speaker here, (tho my parents are English so I speak more English English, than Australian English--) I've heard a couple of people do that before, but I never attributed it to the Australian English thing. I just figured they were lazy speakers, or just a way of speach, like someone with a lisp..

But now you've pointed it out to me I'll be analysing everyone I talk to! :P