Art
December 26th 07, 01:51 AM
was its regularity.
Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below all inflexions
followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs the preterite and the past
participle were the same and ended in -ed. The preterite of steal was
stealed, the preterite of think was thinked, and so on throughout the
language, all such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken, etc., being
abolished. All plurals were made by adding -s or -es as the case might be.
The plurals of man, ox, life, were mans, oxes, lifes. Comparison of
adjectives was invariably made by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest),
irregular forms and the more, most formation being suppressed.
The only classes of words that were still allowed to inflect
irregularly were the pronouns, the relatives, the demonstrative adjectives,
and the auxiliary verbs. All of these followed their ancient usage, except
that whom had been scrapped as unnecessary, and the shall, should tenses
had been dropped, all their uses being covered by will and would. There
were also certain irregularities in word-formation arising out of the need
for rapid and easy speech. A word which was difficult to utter, or was
liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be ipso facto a bad word:
Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below all inflexions
followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs the preterite and the past
participle were the same and ended in -ed. The preterite of steal was
stealed, the preterite of think was thinked, and so on throughout the
language, all such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken, etc., being
abolished. All plurals were made by adding -s or -es as the case might be.
The plurals of man, ox, life, were mans, oxes, lifes. Comparison of
adjectives was invariably made by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest),
irregular forms and the more, most formation being suppressed.
The only classes of words that were still allowed to inflect
irregularly were the pronouns, the relatives, the demonstrative adjectives,
and the auxiliary verbs. All of these followed their ancient usage, except
that whom had been scrapped as unnecessary, and the shall, should tenses
had been dropped, all their uses being covered by will and would. There
were also certain irregularities in word-formation arising out of the need
for rapid and easy speech. A word which was difficult to utter, or was
liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be ipso facto a bad word: