Haf and have

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:09 AM -0800 3/25/03, Peter A. McGraw wrote:

>And in the  case  of "used to," of course, there's also "I'm used to (doing
>things a certain way)," which is distinct from both of the others:
>
>1) [ju:zd t@] as in "The knife was used to cut the bread"
>2) [justtu~justu~just@]  as in "He's used to that"
>3) [just@] as in "I used to think that, too."
>
>True, #2 can be realized identically with #3 as in the example given above,
>but not in all environments--e.g., not in "He's used to it".  Conversely,
>#3 can't be realized as either [justtu] or [justu] (or [ju:zd t@]).
>
>I remember a high school teacher who was into hypercorrections and spelling
>pronunciations saying "...to which you are used."  I'd never heard of
>hypercorrections or spelling pronunciations at that time, but I was well
>aware of how phony that was.
>
The trickiest thing about "used to" is how to spell its use in
negative sentences (didn't useta):
"didn't use to" and "didn't used to" both seem equally impossible,
although the pronunciation is no problem.

larry