[Grammar] Are you finished with... or are you done with... or are you through with...?

[Eameron]

Hello!

I want to know what is correct, Are you finished with this lesson/ chapter or are you done with this lesson/ chapter or are you through with this lesson/ chapter? My friend said 'are you done with this lesson/ chapter' is correct and 'Are you finished with this lesson/ chapter' is wrong. But I think the three are correct. I also want to know what to use in formal writing and speaking?

 

[MikeNewYork]

In my opinion, all three are correct and commonly used.

 

[Rover_KE]

Welcome to the forums, Eameron.:-D

None of them is colloquial in BE.

I'd say 'Have you finished this book?' 'Have you finished this chapter?'

Rover

 

[MikeNewYork]

Rover, I am surprised by your answer. I understand that you are a BE speaker, but I did not expect this big of a difference. I went to Google (admittedly Google US) and found:

"Are you through with the" -- 37,700,000
"Are you done with the" -- 5,740,000
"Are you finished with the" -- 5,020,000

"Have you finished the" -- 361,000
"Have you completed the" -- 2,300,000

I understand that Google searches can be problematic, but it is a huge data base.

 

[5jj]

Rover, I am surprised by your answer. I understand that you are a BE speaker, but I did not expect this big of a difference.

Well, I went to the British National Corpus and found:
Are you through with... ? 0
Are you done with ...? 0
Are you finished with ...? 0

In other contexts, 'are you through/done/finished', might be acceptable in British English. With the lesson/chapter sentence Eameron was asking about, they are rather unlikely.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Two great peoples separated by a common language. +|;-)

 

[konungursvia]

Two great peoples separated by a common language. +|;-)

You can always go to google.co.uk and do those searches there, in quotes, and then click on the left-hand side menu option "Pages from the UK:"

Are you done with -- 10,400,000 from the UK alone;

Are you finished with -- 583,000 results;

Are you through with -- 2,750,000 results.

I only add these to help with the search results, however. I agree with my British colleagues that all sound North American, and to me as a Canadian, the ones with "done" and "through" sound distinctly US to me, though we do hear them here too.

 

[MikeNewYork]

It appears they are heard in the UK as well. Thanks.

 

[Eameron]

Thank you so much for your answers. Now I will send the link of this thread to my friend. haha

 

[5jj]

It appears they are heard in the UK as well.

As I said in post #6, 'Are you through/done/finished with ...' may be heard in BrE in other contexts. 'Are you finished/through/done with this lesson/ chapter' are unnatural in BrE. If we use these expressions, we are implying that we would like to avail ourselves of whatever it is -"Are you done with the screwdriver? (I need it if you are.)" We don't normally need a lesson/chapter.

We frequently say in this forum that Google is of little value in judging the acceptability of a construction. Just one minute ago, I got 43,900,000 Google hits for "I ain't done it". COCA gave two citations. One of the COCA citations was "All I's sayin' is it be impossible. That don't mean I ai n't done it", a fair indication that this is not a construction found commonly in standard English.