Re: Conjugation
American style
Posted by James
Briggs on January 11, 2002 In Reply to: Conjugation
American style posted by R. Berg on January 11, 2002
: : Elsewhere
on this forum, someone worries that US spoken english is becoming less rich in
vocabulary. Being from the UK and therefore prone to a "holier than thou" attitude
when it comes to the English language, my natural tendency is to agree and view
American english as evolving into a more simplified form - hence the loss of the
diphthongs "ae-" and "oe-" (as in anaesthesia/anesthesia or diarrhoea/diarrhea)
and the dropping of the silent "u" (as in colour/color and many others).
: :
It is indeed a given with the evolution of language that things tend to progress
towards regularity as time moves on, with exceptions to generic standards slowly
falling into disuse. However, whereas US english seems to have adopted a more
simplified spelling structure, when it comes to verb declensions, it's the UK
that seems to have moved towards simplification more quickly.
: : I'll cite
the two examples that come to mind.
: : To get - I get, I got, I have got (UK)
:
: I get, I got, I have gotten (US)
: : (And yet, "to beget" and "to forget"
in UK English follow the above US route in declension)
: : To dive - I dive,
I dived, I have dived (UK)
: : - I dive, I dove, I have ????? (US)
: : (I
can't think of another example that follows the above US declension)
: : It's
interesting to me that the US has preserved irregular (or "strong") verb structures
longer than the UK. It just goes to show how diversified a common language can
become, given only 200 or so years of separation.
: In the U.S., "dived" is
standard for past and for past participle. "Dove" is colloquial. "Gotten" now
appears without a cautionary note (i.e., status label) in the American Heritage
Dictionary. However, at the small publisher's where I worked 30 years ago, the
house style book said of "gotten": "We do not recognize this word. Say 'got.'"
:
If we in the U.S. exported as much academic writing as we export pop culture,
the rest of the world might have a higher opinion of our mastery of English.
:
As far as 'colour' vs 'color';'tumour' vs 'tumor' etc are concerned that 'o'
version was often the way the words were spelt in Britan up to the turn of 18th
century. It then became fashionable to put in the 'u' on this side of the Atlantic,
a habit which was never taken up on the other side. In Britain we still retain
the old spelling in some instances, eg the distrist of London known as 'Honor
Oak', and the female name 'Honor'. By and large, and by an overwhelming amount,
the US spelling is more accurate, and based on the original Latin - 'Labor' and
not 'Labour'. Perversely, many of the derivative words in GB English retain their
old spelling - 'Laboratory' is a good example! A pet hate of mine is the use of
'Foetus' in GB English. This is wrong, and 'Fetus' is the correct way to spell
the word, based on its Latin origin. All our Medical Journals in the UK have long
used 'Fetus'. I've tried, off and on, for more than 20 years to get the 'Times'
to change - to no avail.
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