Past Tense Differences
In Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand it is more common to end some past tense verbs with a "t" as in learnt or dreamt rather than learned or dreamed. However, such spellings are also found in North America.
Several verbs have different past tenses or past participles in American and British English:
- The past tense of the verb "to dive" is most commonly found as "dived" in British and New Zealand English. "Dove" is usually used in its place in American and Canadian English. Both terms are understood, and may be found either in minority use or in regional dialect.
- The past participle and past tense of the verb "to get" is most commonly found as "got" in British and New Zealand English. "Gotten" is also used in its place in American, Canadian and Australian English as a past participle, though "got" is widely used as a past tense. The main exception is in the phrase "ill-gotten", which is widely used in British and New Zealand English. Both terms are understood, and may be found either in minority use or in regional dialect.
- Several verbs use the same form for both past tense and past participle in British English, but maintain separate terms in American English. These include shrink/shrunk (shrink/shrank/shrunk) and drink/drank (drink/drank/drunk). The use of the præterite in lieu of the past participle in British, Australian, and New Zealand English is nearly standard for many verbs, but is usually considered incorrect American English.
Read more about this topic: American And British English Spelling Differences
Famous quotes containing the words tense and/or differences:
“A pathological business, writing, don’t you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)