Here I go again. There are three main parts to any verb: simple present, simple past and past perfect. There are many more tenses, but with these you can pretty much cover everything. So, if you take the verb "to come", for example, we have "come, came and come". We don't have "come, came and came". But you hear it all the time in the public thoroughfare and it drives me crazy. A presumably educated guy on the radio -- head honcho at a local retirement home -- just said..."A lot of families had "came" to get their loved ones before the holidays..." Please.
When our kids were little, we used to play this game in the car all the time. We would say a verb and they would have to give the three tenses. So it was:
am (is)...was...been
swim...swam...swum
ride...rode...ridden
wake...woke...woken
call...called...called
speak...spoke...spoken
plead...pled...pled
take...took...taken
eat..ate...eaten
give...gave...given
see...saw...seen
quit...quit...quit
take...took...taken
shake...shook...shaken
brake...broke...broken
lie...lay...lain
spell...spelt...spelt
ring...rang...rung
write...wrote...written
bring...brought...brought (no, it's not bring, brang, brung!)
give...gave...given
drag...dragged...dragged (no, it's not "drug", as they say on American television)
There are many regular verbs and a gold mine of the irregular variety. It's actually a lot of fun to see how many you know.
And don't ever use "gotten" -- a non-word. There is always another option when you are tempted to utter "gotten". Future past? Please say, "The conference was to have started tomorrow." Not, "The conference was to start tomorrow." The latter is all you hear on the CBC -- an impenetrable bastion of terrible grammar.
When you love grammar, you love grammar. I was fortunate enough to have stumbled upon a 1934 Ontario teacher's handbook entitled 'Grammar is Important'. Yes, folks, they used to teach grammar in Ontario elementary schools back in the day. (Don't you hate that expression.) It is such a gem because, yes, grammar is important. It's perfection, it's delicious, it's satisfying, it's orderly, it's sublime, it's sweet. Remember that old nomenclature "grammarian"? Well, I am one. And for that I give all the credit to my grade eight teacher, Miss Anderson; she was a tyrant in that department and gave absolutely no quarter. Ever. Unfortunately -- and I am not being a snob here -- I am sure my ears will continue to be battered by the mangling I hear.
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Just heard a beauty: A local doctor was talking about some incident and stated that..."the staff was inadequate trained". In other words, the staff had been trained in "inadequate". Of course, he didn't mean that, but that's what he said. Yikes!
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