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MUSCOVITE Posted 14 years ago
Grammar
used to MODAL VERB
Hi,
(1) Did you use to eat a lot of sweets when you were a child?
(2) Jack didn't use to go out very often until he met Jill.
I understand 'use' is pronounced like [ju:s] in (1) and (2)?
What part of speech is 'use' here? Is it a verb? If it is so, why not [ju:z] then?
thank you!
mus-te
(1) Did you use to eat a lot of sweets when you were a child?
(2) Jack didn't use to go out very often until he met Jill.
I understand 'use' is pronounced like [ju:s] in (1) and (2)?
What part of speech is 'use' here? Is it a verb? If it is so, why not [ju:z] then?
thank you!
mus-te
Top answer
MUSCOVITE I understand 'use' is pronounced like [ju:s] in (1) and (2)? Yes. MUSCOVITE What part of speech is 'use' here?
- MUSCOVITE I understand 'use' is pronounced like [ju:s] in (1) and (2)?
- Yes.
- MUSCOVITE What part of speech is 'use' here?
- Is it a verb?
- Yes, it's a verb.
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3 Answers
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MUSCOVITEI understand 'use' is pronounced like [ju:s] in (1) and (2)?Yes.
MUSCOVITEWhat part of speech is 'use' here? Is it a verb?Yes, it's a verb.
MUSCOVITEwhy not [ju:z]Just because.
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Because of this pronunciation, you will sometimes see the form 'did X used to ...?', which is pronounced in the same way. It is incorrect, but I have seen it in newspapers and magazines.This form may also be partly caused by the lack of a present-tense form of this verb. When I was at school in the 1950s, we were taught that the 'correct' question form was through inversion: 'used X to ...
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