Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello,
I'm not sure if I should use the word "broke" or "broken" in the following sentences?
1. Has someone ever "broke / broken" a promise they made to you?
2. Have you ever "broke / broken" a promise you made to someone?

broken

I've never broken a promise.

José

I wonder, would the closer similarity (only the syllabic n separates them, i.e. the vowel quality is the same in each) of 'broke' (preterite/Simple Past tense) to 'broken' (past participle), or 'swam' to 'swum' (/æ/ and /ʌ/, reasonably "close" to each other - hope you'll forgive the untechnicality of that description!), versus say the arguably less close relation between 'did' to 'done' or 'drew' to 'drawn', perhaps help explain why (or if, assuming that 'I've never broke a promise' actually occurs that often!) some of the following seem somewhat more acceptable (to my ear at least), and some less so:

?I've never broke(n) a promise before
?I've never swam before
*I've never did this before
*I've never drew before

BUT (and as José's post implies), it's probably best to simply teach correct facts (their correctness is incidental to their absolute factual usage status) than to ponder ultimately incorrect "possibilities". (But hey, by all means start worrying descriptivists if you do find an 'incorrect' usage more frequent than the correct!).

thanks for the answers

I see people misusing this all the time online. "I've never broken a promise" is correct, I think the issue is that a lot of younger Americans don't know about the past participle. Oh well...