What happened to English grammar?

I feel the same j08 about men fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not so sure about torpedoing a ship though.

It's just that I remember reading awful accounts of the Belgrano sinking. It may have been necessary from a military point of view but in my view not a cause for 'celebration'.

We have already covered that point petallus.

And we have never been in a situation where we are responsible for the lives of so many British men. I doubt it was an easy order to give.

You like playing wars do you grumppa? (a patronising one)

I guess troops coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq are regarded as heros simply because people have seen these wars on tv and it is fresh in their memories. Feelings on the wrongness or rightness of these wars, and the methods used in the fighting, doesn't really come into it. The men themselves are rightly honoured.

People have short memories.

I was hoping I'd torpedoed the thread, heroically.

Thanks Bags

It was a point I seriously wanted to make though.

Hopefully grumppa you've scuppered the thread - notice nervous avoidance of sank, sunk, sunken, sunked.

It might. Why not?

Just for the record, Fowler 3rd Edition, 1996, ed. Burchfield, notes that the past tense "is now overwhelmingly sank rather than sunk". It is notable in passing that this now aligns the English with the German "sinken, sank, gesunken".

I hope this doesn't lead to the thread morphing into a discussion of the First and Second World Wars, with the General Belgrano being replaced by the Graf Spee.

Here's the wooden spoon for you, petallus.

Non sequitur alert:

I don't consider the man who sank the Belgrano to be a hero.

I find that headline writers seem to feel themselves exempt from normal rules of English usage. And if you add mistakes to an attempt to write a snappy headline it can be incomprehensible or misleading. Some of us are so embedded in a lifetime of correcting students' language that they can't help noticing this kind of thing. And it is so distracting that it can actually prevent you from appreciating the story!

Oh that English were so regular !Of course its beauty is that it isn't. So many times when teaching foreign students you have to say there is no rule for this: it's just English usage.

'I still think this thread should have been in Pedants' Corner and not in Chat. If it had to be started at all'

Ana, can you please tell me why I should not have started this entirely innocent thread, which was ridiculously distorted for very obvious personal reasons.
Perhaps you can tell me which subjects I am allowed to post about?

I still maintain that the headline should have read that the ship either 'sank' or 'was sunk', as that is normal usage. It was a simple past tense, so participles do not come into it But it doesn't really matter, does it? Certainly not worth all the unpleasantness, which is certainly not of my doing.

I shall I say 'I thunked you for your present' in future then!

I'm glad you started it, greatnan. I haven't had such a good laugh at some people's ridiculousness (not yours) for a looong time. Yo ho ho. It has been hilarious! Every time I use the word sunk (or sank) now I shall have a wee chuckle. In fact, I'll probably try to find ways to use sunk, just so I can reminisce and chortle to myself.

grummpa, I corrected past participle to "past tense" later in the thread. Past tense is what it says in Fowler. So sunk is correct. So is sank.

Since we are being linguistically pedantic, it isn't really a grammar issue at all in that case, but a diction issue which, to be honest, is what I thought right at the start.

So the whole thread is a heap of bullshit

I love gransnet (except it’s raining sheep and goats here) (they have sheep in the Falklands too).

'I still think this thread should have been in Pedants' Corner and not in Chat. If it had to be started at all'

Ana, can you please tell me why I should not have started this entirely innocent thread, which was ridiculously distorted for very obvious personal reasons.
Perhaps you can tell me which subjects I am allowed to post about?

I still maintain that the headline should have read that the ship either 'sank' or 'was sunk', as that is normal usage, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Certainly not worth all the unpleasantness, which is certainly not of my doing.

Well said grumppa . You got there before me The OP was exactly spot on. The past simple tense is sank. The past participle is used to form the present perfect tense : the one that includes has/have in which case both options may be acceptable though I would always use sunk eg it has sunk or it has been sunk (passive).So everyone is kind of correct but the distinction between the tenses has not been made .

And, Holby was rubbish jingl

But the sunk in the DM headlineas originally quoted isn't a past participle. It's an active verb in the past tense.

Gracesmum Referring back to Bags' post of several pages ago where she says her Fowler's(1965) gives both sank and sunk as the past participle, my Concise Oxford(1982) is in agreement, so it seems that the OP is incorrect anyway, never mind all the ridiculous inferences about hurt feelings and insensitivity.

Gracesmum Well said.
The thread title was.." What happened to English grammar?" Not rewriting the Falklands war, but six pages later???

I am glad I have been out all Day

By no stretch of the imagination is it reasonable to see a connection between pointing out yet another example of a red top's bad English and any possible insult to a casualty of the Falklands War. I'm with absent on this - how on earth can some people see a teacup without blowing up a storm to fill it? This thread is NOT about the Falklands War, or even about the sinking of the Belgrano - it is about the poor literacy of the DM 9who else?) using "sunk" where they should have used "sank". End of.

I'm getting very distressed by all the nasty comments on this thread! Please friends, do stop and let it go!

Galen