1. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    "Shined" versus "shone"

    Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by jannert, Aug 23, 2016.

    Another spot where my age is apparently showing. Suddenly I'm seeing it everywhere. The sun 'shined' down on the earth, etc.

    Apparently this is a new thing, but is marginally acceptable—depending upon which definition source you read.

    The verb 'shine' has two meanings. The first is 'to emit light.' Like the sun does. The second is to 'polish something until it gleams,' like shoes or furniture.

    I was raised to believe that the past tense and past participle of 'shine,' when it meant emitting light, was always 'shone.' The past tense and past participle of 'shine,' when it meant polishing, was 'shined.' They weren't interchangeable. Now ...apparently ...in some circles ...they are interchangeable, to the extent that the emitting light usage sometimes is now also 'shined.' (I don't think the reverse has happened yet.)

    I don't mean to be an old stick-in-the-mud, but when is this kind of thing going to stop? I'm fine with the evolution of language, but evolution doesn't happen overnight, as it seems to be doing with language just now. The whole idea behind language is to communicate with others, using words that mean the same thing to both parties. If folks just start choosing whatever ol' word they want, instead of bothering to learn and use the standard one, communication is bound to be impaired.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2016
  2. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    I mentioned this on a crit in the workshop yesterday where the writer "had his face suddenly shined" and I said shone- I'd assumed it was a UK English vs American English issue
     
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  3. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, I mentioned it myself, in a different critique a few days ago. That usage really jumps out at me as being wrong. When I saw your critique, I thought ...maybe this is something I need to check out. And, to my dismay, this usage seems to have become 'correct,' although in a lukewarm way.

    So ...shit. What happens next? Their, they're and there become interchangeable, simply because people can't get their heads around the correct usages?

    I've just about learned to accept people saying they're bored 'of' something, rather than bored 'with' or bored 'by.' But 'bored of' still jangles, every time I hear it or see it written.

    I'm getting too old for this shit?
     
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  4. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Mr Shine , him diamond ;)
     
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  5. Mike Kobernus

    Mike Kobernus Senior Member

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    I believe you are perfectly correct in your understanding, Jannert. Stick to your guns. And if people continue to get it wrong, USE those guns on them... ;)
     
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  6. Michael Pless

    Michael Pless Senior Member

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    I think we're both getting a bit old! I dislike a lot of the errors that many regard as normal in today's use of the language: your for you're; and "try and succeed/win/reach/etc." in lieu of "try to succeed/etc." Then there's the use of the apostrophe to warn there's an "s" on the way - are they really that scary? I saw signs in a store that read "pant's" and another that read "shoe's." My feeling (I'm in Australia) is that some time ago, the basic rules of the language became regarded as unnecessary, and the result was a lot of difficulty to communicate and teachers who were not only illiterate but they didn't know they were illiterate: my eldest daughter was given a list of spelling words to learn, many of which were incorrectly spelt by the teacher.
     
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  7. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I'm with you on shined/shone - yikes.

    I think I may perpetrate the "bored of" atrocity myself, though, at least in casual writing/dialogue - it's the way the idiom sounds most natural, to me. Sorry!

    In terms of reasons/causes... I do think language evolution has always been with us. I'm not sure if it's happening any faster today than it has in the past, but if it is I think it would be logical--everything ELSE seems to be happening much faster today than it has in the past, too. And I think a lot of people's mental flexibility about language comes from our exposure to so many other dialects and regionalisms in our interconnected world - it's hard to be too rigid about language when what's wrong in one place may be perfectly correct somewhere else. Since I like the global communication trend, maybe I have to be tolerant of the linguistic shifts that come with it?
     
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  8. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    I'm fairly sure that eventually the power of the internet and netflix is going to relegate UK English to a dialect and encourage the dominance of American English but this is probably in the natural run of things - UK English became the lingua franca for trade when Britain had the worlds formost empire and armed forces. Now that those days are gone it is natural that the American form should predominate (along with Latin american Spanish, Cantonese/mandarin and Hindu/Urdu) so i can't get excited about thins like Math vs Maths

    What worries me more is the sheeer butchery of the language some perpetrate - like "different to" - you hear that on the news and see it in print all the time - you can't differ to something FFS you differ from or are similar to ... and lets not even consider the barabarism of 'different than'

    come to that I saw the BBC website last year reporting that someting had been "raised to the ground" :eek: Seriously people, its "razed" and 'to the ground is a redundancy because you can't really raze anything any other way.
     
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  9. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    It is quite a scary time, and I believe it's all down to the advent of social media and mobile texting. The miss-spellings highlighted in this thread are all over social media, which is now so massive and dominates so many lives that it's regarded as acceptable. It's become the norm in those areas, and no one seems to care.

    Having said that, writers from 100 years ago would probably be horrified by the number of contractions I used in the above paragraph.
     
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  10. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    I think of the "bored of" thing like "fond of" or "resenting of". It fits neatly with other language. English is a bit of a messy Frankenstein language, it could use some improving in sense, as much as I really feel the point about common understanding.
     
  11. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Well, can't you say "differ from" or "different to" aren't they different phrases? They seem separate enough. "Differ" is like an action, so it's differs from in that it describes almost a movement. While as "different" is a quality, you are "different to." That makes sense to me.
    That spelling error is atrocious though.
     
  12. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    the one that really grates on me is could of, should of would of - in the name of all thats holy its "'ve" not "of" "I could have been someone, I could have been a contender" arghhhhh
     
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  13. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    no , being different is the action of differing - I am different from you because our genetic make up differs - and differing is a movement away , nor a movement together. Of course we could agree to differ :D
     
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  14. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    I guess my opinion is different to yours. :p:p
     
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  15. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Yeah, I don't do that one. Seems like people being to lazy to find out how a sound they know is written so they wrote it out phonetically. Unfortunately, the English language isn't very phonetic.
     
  16. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    I figure this type of evolution is a by-product of English being adopted as the global Internet language. People who don't really understand the rules (read: ESL) use the language online but, not knowing grammar all that well, have an unintentional influence on those native speakers too lazy to learn their own language. Thus, we get evolution that makes no sense to those who took the time and trouble.

    I'm not sure what we can do about it except provide a good example. And if that means bucking the trend toward 'the sun shined' then sobeit! (And 'sobeit,' BTW doesn't appear in the spell-checker. [sigh])
     
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  17. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Um, that's because that's three words, joined together. So be it. When were they ever conjoined?
     
  18. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think we also have broader bases of education and general literacy than at most (any?) other periods of human history. There are billions of people reading and writing English; there's going to be some variation!
     
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  19. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Interesting point. I think this is a really cool discussion.
     
  20. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    That's a good point, too. Even the Big Four, Canada, Great Britain, India and the U.S., can't all agree on the nuances of spelling and grammar.
     
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  21. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Of course that's only true if you're using the contraction, which of course is where the mistake stems from. Without the contraction, 'of' should be 'have', and I'm afraid to say it was only in th elast ten years or so I learned this myself.
     
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  22. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I think I'm concerned that a lot of this kind of thing is evolving not from regional differences (which take time to establish) but from just general ignorance (ignorance, as in 'not knowing' rather than 'stupid') of what the standard form actually is. That's what worries me.

    And no ...different to? I can't accept that one as grammatically correct. What is wrong with the standard 'different from?' This usage bothers me, because it smacks of individuals just choosing whatever form they want to use. I could decide to say, "Me get sad and can't be arsed to differ," but that's verging on the incoherent, even though I know what I meant. But as long as I decide that's correct? Well it's correct—and the rest of you just need to keep up.

    Where does it stop?

    If we, as writers, truly want to be able to continue to communicate our thoughts to our readers, we'll need to realise there is already a language in place to do that. It's up to us to learn it.

    Over a great deal of time, certain words do take on new meanings, and I'm okay with that, if the change is meaningful. When I was young, being gay was a lot different from what it is now. I accept that change, and realise I can't use 'gay' in its original context any more. However, 'gay' is a much more positive word than the ones it replaced to describe same-sex orientations. So that's fine, as far as I'm concerned. That's language evolution. However, that's different (in my opinion) from me cringing every time the sun shined in a piece of writing. Shone is a perfectly good word, and there is no good reason to dump it. I do suspect this has changed because somebody didn't know any better, and it caught on.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2016
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  23. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think when the changes actually get in the way of comprehension/communication, as you suggested, then there's a problem.

    But most of the examples I'm seeing in this thread don't seem like they're at that level. They grate, and they may lessen our enjoyment of a piece of writing, so that's an important factor for the writer to consider.

    But in terms of societal ills? Non-standard grammar is pretty far down my list of concerns.
     
  24. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Well, yes, compared to world peace, this is a minor issue and one I would certainly sacrifice to achieve said peace. But we're a writing forum, and correct usage of grammar is certainly an issue with writing. And yes, at the moment, 'shined' is comprehensible. But as in my example, where does this end?

    Unless there is a good reason to change standard grammar, I'd say don't change it. Without standardization, language becomes crazy.

    Incidentally, when was the last time you heard a person say (out loud) 'the sun shined yesterday.' I have NEVER heard that said out loud. I've certainly seen it written a lot, though.
     
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  25. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Strong verbs (the verbs that conjugate through stem change) have shown a very slow, but noticeable tendency to give way to weak verbs (the verbs that change at the end); hence shined displacing shone and (in the U.S.) lighted displacing lit. My personal preferences are the same as yours, Jan, in that shined and shone are both valid but have two different contextual applications. I also prefer lit over lighted, but living here in 'Murica, I am in the minority. In truth, the strong verbs are a remnant category of verbs in the grand scheme of things and the few we have left are a meager representation of this once standard manner of verb conjugation in Old English.

    It never stops. And I mean that quite literally. Never. A language that fails to change fails to describe the changes in the people making use of the language. I point to my usual example of the Real Academia Española desperately trying to hold reign over a language (Spanish) that is spoken over too broad an area by people who find themselves in socioeconomic and sociodemographic situations where things like isolationism and founders effect are still very strong effectors for language change. I often joke with my fellow Spanish interpreters that we are the last of a breed, that soon enough an interpreter from Peru will not be able to interpret the Spanish from Puerto Rico, and vice versa. We will have to stop thinking of ourselves as a united front and realize that the term "Peruvian Interpreter" and "Puerto Rican Interpreter" have validity as regards language as much as national origin. This tends to fall very negatively on the ears of my fellow 'terps. :whistle:

    And when one is a traveled person, the oddities can seem more pronounced. For me, the phrase that indicates approval of someone's self-benefiting action was "Good for you!", but then one day I started hearing "Good on you!" That doesn't even make any sense! Where the heck did that come from? :bigconfused:

    If you've lived in the south east of the U.S., you may also have heard people use the word anymore in a positive contextual context rather than in only a negative. For me, that word indicates a negative: We don't make those anymore. We don't have that anymore. We don't do that anymore. But in Florida (at least), it gets used in a way that makes it synonymous with nowadays or these days: Target is so expensive that anymore I shop at Walmart.

    What???? :bigconfused::bigconfused::bigconfused:
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2016
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