*had went, and other fuddles

[LarryLatham]

Hi everyone,

I don't consider myself a grammar maven, nor do I think of myself as the grammar police. In fact, I believe I am, among English teachers anyway, rather lenient in regards to calling speakers out for departing from general norms of "proper" English. I am inclined to believe that English usage continuously evolves, sometimes rather rapidly.

But I am noticing something happening in American English (I have no knowledge of whether the same is occurring in British English, but perhaps some of you do) with so determined a regularity that I'm now wondering if we are in the midst of an evolution. So my purpose in this post is to ask those of you who work with native speakers (if there are any who visit this site, where most of the readers work with non-native speakers) if you've noticed the same thing I have.

Many ordinary speakers of English, who I have reason to believe are native speakers, are using Simple Past Tense verb forms in Past Perfect constructions. They use them with so much frequency that it seems they are not simply making mistakes; they believe they are using ordinary English.

I'm often hearing constructions like these, in person and on 'reality' TV:

*They had went home earlier.
*He had ran out the door.
*She has threw the trash out already.
*Bob has took those papers to work.

It seems that what is happening is native speakers are getting confused (perhaps in school) by not learning irregular verb forms. They are "regularizing" certain parts of all verbs by thinking the Simple Past form and the Past Participle form are identical. Are we not doing our jobs with native speakers? Are you seeing the same thing I am? Am I over-reacting to a small, limited anomaly? Or, is this the direction English is heading--toward the elimination of irregular verb forms?

Larry Latham

[Lorikeet]

Aargh! Thank goodness I haven't been hearing that.

[Stephen Jones]

It seems that what is happening is native speakers are getting confused (perhaps in school) by not learning irregular verb forms. They are "regularizing" certain parts of all verbs by thinking the Simple Past form and the Past Participle form are identical. Are we not doing our jobs with native speakers?

Not us teachers guv! We're innocent!

It's not our job to teach native speakers how to speak. By definition native speakers neither need teaching how to speak, nor can it be done. A teacher of English as a first language can teach native speakers of one regional or social dialect the standard forms of the language so they become disglossic, which evidently has not succeeded here, though one would doubt if Network English was the standard for Jerry Springer.

The answer Larry is that, if you keep noticing it, it is either a trend, or the increase in the popularity of reality shows means that you are more exposed to certain social dialects than you were before, or the dumbing down of American television (which every generation has mistakenly believed to be an impossible task) has meant that people no longer mind their p's and q's when on TV, as they may have done twenty years ago.

[Andrew Patterson]

I've never heard such constructions from native English speakers, but *"Had went" is quite a common among Polish learners.

Andrew Patterson.

[lolwhites]

I haven't heard it anywhere in the UK, and the English-speaking students at the college I teach in use pretty nonstandard English sometimes. Maybe in 100 years the Participle will disappear... There is, after all, a tendency for language to "regularise" over time and don't forget that a lot of what we consider "standard" today would have been considered crass and vulgar to previous generations.

Larry, is this phenomenon confined to Perfect constructions, or do you hear it with Passives as well?

[Lorikeet]

....or the dumbing down of American television (which every generation has mistakenly believed to be an impossible task) has meant that people no longer mind their p's and q's when on TV, as they may have done twenty years ago.

Aha! You been watching TV Larry?

[ardsboy]

As a native of the British Isles, I know that the use of the past-tense form in place of the past-participle form is a common feature of - ahem - "uneducated" and/or "working-class" and/or "rural" speech, and has been around for a very long time. It's actually part of a much larger picture. A thousand years ago, the verbs we now call "irregular" followed quite "normal" germanic patterns of vowel change, as in /breyk-browk-browkn/. Moreover, local variations (dialects) often had their own variants on the norm, as in today's 'We got beat' (not 'beaten'), and 150 or so years of universal public education still hasn't "erradicated" such local variations entirely. On top of that, the "regularisation" of -ed for past tense and participle means that, while we generate -ed verbs by rule (all neologisms are thus always -ed verbs), the old, once-regular germanic verbs are now learnt by memorisation. Add to this the fact that many "irregulars" have the same past-tense and -participle form, you don't need to be a genius to see the immense room for confusion and variety amongst speakers. Ultimately, it don't matter a darn, except it ain't no Standard English, and us lot is teachers, like. Cheers, john.

[LarryLatham]

Larry, is this phenomenon confined to Perfect constructions, or do you hear it with Passives as well?

I've only noticed it with perfect constructions, lolwhites, but it could be part of passives as well.

Aha! You been watching TV Larry?

Alas, I must confess to a certain fascination with crime and punishment shows, such as "Forensic Files." Perhaps it'll be my downfall, at least as an English teacher.

This probably wouldn't bother me if I encountered it here and there. But it seems to be popping up everywhere, and not only with speakers I can easily classify as probably 'uneducated', as it seems to occur not only with them, but with others I'm pretty sure have been to some sort of college, given their jobs. The odd thing is, where I notice it is with irregular verbs. The users seem to know that the past tense form is irregular (nobody ever says"goed" or "had goed"), but then use that one as a participle. Go figure.

Larry Latham

[Andrew Patterson]

Moreover, local variations (dialects) often had their own variants on the norm, as in today's 'We got beat' (not 'beaten'), and 150 or so years of universal public education still hasn't "erradicated" such local variations entirely.

Would you include the British use of "got" and American "gotten" for the past participle of "get" here?

Just don't call British people uneducated for doing so. [/quote]

[ardsboy]

Owing to the inscrutable workings of the language gods, the older 'gotten' is now Standard American, whereas 'got' is now Standard British. It's still mutating, though, as in American Non-Standard 'don't got'.

[Stephen Jones]

the older 'gotten' is now Standard American

Standard American forms are nearly always "older" than the British equivalent.

This is particularly true of spelling.

The reason is that the earliest colonization of America ocurred before English spelling was standardized. This happened at the end of the seventeeth century and culminated in Dr. Johnson's dictionary in 1757. The criterion used was etymological and words that had been spelt "phonetically" for two centures suddenly got the old/new spelling of the language they had come from.

in the early 19th century, Webster helped to reinforce the difference since for political reasons he chose, wherever possible, an "American" version over the British one.

[sita]

Hiya!

me as a Welsh lass would always insist on

had gone

Best wishes

Siân

[ardsboy]

Sorry, the bit about 'don't got' in my last post was supposed to come after mentioning that American can make a distinction between 'have you hotten the money?' and 'have you got the money?'. Cheers, john.