Mar. 14, 2008 Friday

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English grammar is not something people spend a lot of time with. It's confusing enough that having to proofread our thoughts to get everything right before expressing ourselves would result in a dearth of expression.

But formal writing should at least make an effort. Magazines and newspapers are supposed to have everything proofread before it gets to print. But they don't. Split infinitives, dangling participles and irregular verbs are beyond most folks comprehension. So if it sounds okay, they leave it alone.

But English is a living language, and it goes through changes generationally (what sounds wrong to an older generation sounds fine to the younger generation). So ending sentences with prepostions and a disregard for "whom" become more commonplace.

Now a Harvard professor had calculated the life span of irregular verbs, and how long it will take them to become regular (irregular verbs being those that are spelled differently in the past tense - buy/bought, tell/told, have/had - rather than adding "-ed" to the present tense).

It's life span is determined by its frequency of usage ("hold" will become "holded" sooner than "have" will become "haved").

But don't give up on your favorite irregular verbs any time soon. The professor calculates that it'll take 5,000 - 40,000 years to complete the process.