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Comments

jilbur

re: glide/glid--man, we have to do some hardcore word activism on the strong verbs. What's up with all the pussy '-ed' stuff? All the best verbs are strong verbs.
freeze
speak
sing
strike
The list goes on and on. Dork that I am, my useless background in historical linguistics tells me that strong verbs used to rule da house and weak, dental-ending past tenses had to sit on the wall and eat scraps thrown off the table. Somehow the tide turned just because lazy folks couldn't be bothered to change a vowel or two instead of just tapping a tongue on the palate.
Well, I say: It's time to fight back. I mean, you gotta choose your battles, right?
Also: hate getting head-butted, and a 6 yr. old's skull gets no softer or lighter over the years. P.s.--my husband and I both bawled our heads off at the end of Finding Nemo ...*scuttles off under barrage of derisive laughter*

alice

Historical linguist in the house, yo!

I don't know why I wrote that. I just really wanted to.

There will be no derisive laughter here. Anyone laughs derisively at you, they know what they've got coming. (As she shakes her fist menacingly at invisible people.)

Jess

Well, to go even further with the linguistics comments... (and I feel ya on those, jilbur; I'm a linguistics major; just embrace the dorkiness :))... we all know English is a Germanic language, right? Well, in Dutch, also a Germanic language (with *many* links to English), 'to glide' is 'glijden'. So present tense is 'glijd(t)' and past is 'gleed', with none of those, as jilbur puts it, 'tongue' endings. That looks a bit more like your glide/glid idea to me.

So we could get all philosophical and say that you have an innate understanding of an older, 'purer' form of English without all the weird modernizations... or we could just say Dutch has nothing to do with this and I am once again rambling on about nothing. :)

jilbur

On the contrary, Dutch has everything to do with English: it's the only language that sounds like an American Pentecostal speaking in tongues.
I have the street creds on this one--my brother-in-law is Dutch.

Julia S

Oh puh-lease. I have had it up to here with you cunning linguists.

(Chuckles at own cleverness while laughing derisively - sounds like the hiccups but it is SO not the hiccups.)

alice

Dude. I totally have an understanding of a purer form of English.

Why do I keep writing like that?


hillary

The past tense of "glide" is "glade," of course.

the mighty jimbo

shouldn't the plural of asparagus be asparagi?

really.

nothing better than a plate of fresh, chilled asparagi. with parmesan.

Neil Cotton

Glide - Verb, to Glide
Future - Glide (I will glide)
Present - Gliding
Past - Glode

however in books, which are focused on making things sound good, there is a distinctive lack between standard English, and "nice" English and you are likly to find the word "glade", and this is especially used to describe past tense of a woman walking. "She glade across the platform"

Hang-glide is a conjuntive, and therefore the past tense would be hangglode.

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