Texted vs. Text

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning, this is Paris Romero in Fallbrook, California.

Hello, Paris.

What’s on your mind today? What can we do for you?

My mother and I are having an argument that’s lasted more than a year.

Wow.

Are you still speaking?

You must be tired.

We’re still speaking. We love each other, so our arguments are just for fun.

Okay, okay.

My mother is multilinguistic.

She was born and raised in Denmark and then moved to the United States when she married my father.

So words and using words and the content of them is a frequent conversation with us.

And the current argument is about the word text.

We have cell phone plans with me and my children, and we are texting each other.

But when I just completed a text, mother says that I just text.

And I say, no, I texted.

So for her, text is both the present and the past tense of the verb to text.

Correct.

Right.

There’s no ED there for her.

Correct.

Well, the thing is, we’ve got a dilemma here.

We have a problem because you now have to tell your mother that she’s wrong.

Yay.

Maybe text her.

Yeah, maybe text her.

Just break it to her.

So she doesn’t swat you or something.

Here’s the thing.

She’s not the only one to make this claim.

The problem with text is it ends with that T sound that sounds a little bit like it already has the past tense affixed to it.

It already sounds like an ED word kind of, right?

And for a lot of people, the sound of the word alone is sufficient to make it feel and act like the past tense form.

And so I can get it.

And there are many people since text messaging and texting became popular who’ve made the same argument that she’s made.

She’s definitely not alone in that.

But if you look at the evidence and you look at all of the authorities on the subject,

The dictionaries and the grammarians and so on and so forth,

And even if you just look at the popular usage of this verb,

By far and away to something like a value of five nines,

As they say in the science world and the computing world,

That is 99.999% of the time people prefer the ED form.

But in any case, so your mother’s wrong in this.

Now your dilemma is how do you tell your mother you’re wrong

So that she feels like she won?

Well, I’m not going to send it to her in a text

Because then she’ll just hit delete.

She won’t get it.

More than likely, I’m going to do it

And I’m going to do the happy dance,

But I’ll probably first tell her you’re number two,

Which is our family slogan.

We’re number two.

We’re number two.

So I’ll have her do the chant and do the happy dance

And then I’ll tell her she’s wrong

And that’s why she’s number two and I’m number one.

Well, Paris, thank you so much for calling today.

Thank you so much for helping us end the argument.

Okay, stretch before you do that happy dance, okay?

Yes, I will.

Okay.

Thank you, Paris.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us with your arguments.

We’ll make your house and home a happy place.

1-877-929-9673, or at least we’ll sow some more Discord.

You can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.