Is the past tense of texting text ed as in blast ed or treat ed or is it like wrecked or tracked?
You're asking about the pronunciation rather than the spelling, right? This one is easy. When a word ends in one of the sounds 's', 'z', 'sh' or 'zh'—sound, not letter—then its plural (or the third-person singular verb) has the additional vowel to separate the two sibilants. "Dogs" is pronounced /dAgz/ and "cats" is pronounced /kats/; but "busses" is pronounced /bVs@z/, "buzzes" /bVz@z/, "cashes" /kaS@z/ and … I can' think of a word that ends in '-zh' just now, but you get the idea.
Likewise, a word that ends in a '-d' or '-t' sound has the additional schwa to separate when you add "-ed": "Backed" is pronounced /bakt/ and "bagged" /baIgd/, but "breaded" is /brEd@d/ and "texted" is /tEkst@d/.
[Moments later:] Oh, of course: Any word that ends in the sounds '-tch' or '-dge' ends in '-sh' or '-zh', too, so "batches" is pronounced /batS@s/ and "badges" /badZ@s/.
Wow that's great. Thanks.
Garry Shirts said:
Is the past tense of texting text ed as in blast ed or treat ed or is it like wrecked or tracked?
Of course, Bob is completely correct.
But, I think there might be more to your question than first meets the eye. I have often heard /tekst/ with a past meaning for the action of texting. I have also often heard the verb text casually pronounced as /teks/. (*Tex me when you get there.) This casual pronunciation, based on the rules Bob accurately describes, would result in a past tense form pronounced /tekst/. This treatment, while far from standard, still follows the phonetic rules above, just as if the verb were spelled *tex with a past tense of *texed. (c.f. hex, hexed)
I do not recommend that one adopt the casual pronunciation. However, the alternate spellings of txt and txtd are perfectly acceptable. (wink)
Hmm. Normally I'd complain about the sloppy pronunciation, but it occurs to me that something like that in reverse is going on in the American South, where quite a few people apparently think you can die by drownding. So if someone drownds in the present tense, he drownded in the past. I correct it when my wife or kids say it, but not for a stranger. (Southerners are funny about that.) So maybe I shouldn't be too quick to complain about "texed", too.