First published on April 28. Edited on April 29
THE death of Prince Philip gave the media another chance to tell the story of how he was considered some sort of a deity for a community of people on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. So it came about that I was listening to an anthropologist on a BBC programme telling us that the prince “drunk” a special ceremonial drink as part of his role.
I am surprised at how often writers and sub-editors feel they need to stop and debate whether the past tense of drink is “drunk” or “drank”, or whether the past tense of “swim” is “swum” or “swam”. Is it “rung” or “rang”; “sung” or “sang”?
The correct words, in my view, are “drank”, swam”, “rang” and “sang”. They are the past tense forms. Simple past tense.
Words such as swum, drunk, and sung, which I think of as “the ‘U’ forms”, are past participles. They express an action that happened at a certain time and have an auxiliary or “helping” verb (had, was, be) before it:
- He had drunk the soda
- She had swum all day
- They had sung in the choir
They are also used in the passive sense:
- He was drunk
- The anthem was sung
To complicate matters, there are some words where the “U” form does create the past tense. Off the top of my head I can think of dig, sting, spin, and cling. The past tense of these words are dug, stung, clung and spun (the old form, span, has fallen out of use).
It could be that our problem only arises with irregular verbs. With regular verbs, we usually simply add an “-ed”, a “t”, or a “d” for the past tense. Irregular verbs require us to know a whole range of variations. First-language speakers of English pick these up as they grow and speak their mother tongue; learners enjoy the discovery of the variations.
Whatstheword 