H. L. Mencken

“ As for shoed, it merely reveals the virtual disappearance of the verb in its passive form. An American would never say that his wife was well shod; he would say that she wore good shoes. To shoe suggests to him only the shoeing of animals, and so, by way of shoeing and horse-shoer, he comes to shoed. His misuse of to learn for to teach is common to most of the English dialects. ”

“ The English, in their writing, still use the future perfect, albeit somewhat laboriously and self-consciously, but in America it has virtually disappeared: one often reads whole books without encountering a single example of it. ”

“ One has just been discussed: the addition of a degenerated form of have to the preterite of the auxiliary, and its use in place of the auxiliary itself. Another is the use of will instead of shall in the first person future. Shall is confined to a sort of optative, indicating much more than mere intention, and even here it is yielding to will. Yet another is the consistent use of the transferred preterite in the passive. Here the rule in correct English is followed faithfully, though the perfect participle employed is not the English participle. “I am broke” is a good example. ”

“ All signs of the subjunctive, indeed, seem to be disappearing from vulgar American. One never hears “if I were you,” but always “if I was you”; “was you going to the dance?” is a very common form. In the third person the -s is not dropped from the verb. One hears, not “if she go,” but always “if she goes.” “If he be the man” is never heard; it is always “if he is.” Such a sentence as “Had I wished her, I had had her” would be unintelligible to most Americans; even “I had rather” is fast disappearing. This war upon the forms of the subjunctive, of course, extends to the most formal English. ”

“ Even the present perfect and past perfect seem to be instinctively avoided. The Englishman says “I have dined,” but the American says “I am through dinner”; the Englishman says “I had slept,” but the American often says “I was done sleeping.” Thus the perfect tenses are forsaken for the simple present and the past. In the vulgate a further step is taken, and “I have been there” becomes “I been there.” Even in such phrases as “he hasn’t been here,” ain’t (=am not) is commonly substituted for have not, thus giving the present perfect a flavor of the simple present. ”

“ But the perfect participle (which is also the disused preterite) of to sit has survived, as in “I have sat there.” To speed and to shoe have become regular, not only because of the general tendency toward the weak conjugation, but also for logical reasons. The prevalence of speed contests of various sorts, always to the intense interest of the proletariat, has brought such words as speeder, speeding, speed-mania, speed-maniac and speed-limit into daily use, and speeded harmonizes with them better than the stronger sped. ”

“ In “I have got a house” got is historically a sort of auxiliary of have, and in colloquial American, as we have seen in the examples just given, the auxiliary has obliterated the verb. To have, as an auxiliary, probably because of its intimate relationship with the perfect tenses, is under heavy pressure, and promises to disappear from the situations in which it is still used. ”

“ I do not suppose anyone will deny that a man reacts to the genius of his mother tongue, without knowing why. There are, and must have been, even deeper depths of reaction than these strong verbs, to account for the choice of vowel sounds in different words, which process in early ages was entirely unconscious.
This, of course, is only to intimate that there must have been “method in the madness” of friz. As for clum, it seems to me that it is visibly clomb descended to the next lower level, and then denuded of its final b, probably by analogy with thumb. ”

“ The conjugation of to win is yet far from fixed. The correct English preterite, won, is still in use, but against it are arrayed wan and winned, and Lardner, as I have noted, believes that the plain form of the present is ousting all of them. Wan seems to show some kinship, by ignorant analogy, with ran and began. It is often used as the perfect participle, as in “I have wan $4.” This uncertainty shows itself in many of the communications that I have received since my first edition was published. Practically every one of my conjugations has been questioned by at least one correspondent ”

“ Moreover, this perfect participle, thus put in place of the preterite, was further reinforced by the fact that it was the adjectival form of the verb, and hence collaterally familiar. Finally, it was also the authentic preterite in the passive voice, and although this influence, in view of the decay of the passive, may not have been of much consequence, nevertheless it is not to be dismissed as of no consequence at all. ”

“ This tendency to take well-worn paths, paradoxically enough, is responsible both for the transfer of verbs from the strong to the weak declension, and for the transfer of certain others from the weak to the strong. ”

“ In the same way ain’t has displaced is not, am not, isn’t and aren’t, and even have not and haven’t. One recalls a famous speech in a naval melodrama of twenty years ago: “We ain’t got no manners, but we can fight like hell.” Such forms as “he ain’t here,” “I ain’t the man,” “ain’t it the truth?”, “you been there, ain’t you?”, “you ain’t drank much,” “them ain’t what I want” and “I ain’t heerd of it” are common.
This extensive use of ain’t, of course, is merely a single symptom of a general disregard of number, obvious throughout the verbs, and also among the pronouns, as we shall see. ”

“ To spread also tends to become weak, as in “he spreaded a piece of bread.” And to peep remains so, despite the example of to leap. The confusion between the inflections of to lie and those of to lay extends to the higher reaches of spoken American, and so does that between lend and loan. The proper inflections of to lend are often given to to lean, and so leaned becomes lent, as in “I lent on the counter.” In the same way to set has almost completely superseded to sit, and the preterite of the former, set, is used in place of sat. ”

“ Perhaps in another generation the subjunctive forms will have ceased to exist except in the single instance of were, which serves a useful function, although we manage to dispense with a corresponding form in other verbs.” Here, as elsewhere, unlettered American usage simply proceeds in advance of the general movement. ”

“ Both are very old in English. Boughten and dreampt present greater difficulties. Lounsbury says that boughten probably originated in the Northern (i.e., Lowland Scotch) dialect of English, “which inclined to retain the full form of the past participle,” and even to add its termination “to words to which it did not properly belong.” [33] The p-sound in dreampt follows a phonetic law that is also seen in warm (p) th, com (p) fort, and some (p) thing, and that has actually inserted a p in Thompson (=Tom’s son) . ”

“ Lardner has many specimens, among them “if Weaver and them had not of begin kicking” and “they would of knock down the fence.” I notice that used, in used to be, is almost always reduced to simple use, as in “it use to be the rule,” with the s very much like that of hiss. One seldom, if ever, hears a clear d at the end. Here, of course, the elision of the d is due primarily to assimilation with the t of to—a second example of one form of decay aiding another form. ”